Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 16th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as director of the Free Speech Union.

I intend to table an amendment to the Bill scrapping non-crime hate incidents. A non-crime hate incident—NCHI—is an incident or alleged incident that involves or is alleged to involve an act that is perceived by the intended victim to be motivated wholly or partly by hostility or prejudice towards one or more of their protected characteristics. This definition is hopelessly subjective, relying as it does on the perception of the complainant.

NCHIs have been recorded against a woman who said she thought her cat was a Methodist, a man who whistled the theme tune to “Bob the Builder” and former MP Amber Rudd, who had an NCHI logged against her against after a speech at the 2016 Conservative Party conference in which she called for British jobs for British workers. She was Home Secretary at the time.

The reason the police are logging these incidents is because in 2014 the College of Policing instructed them to record all hate crime reports that, on investigation, turned out not to be crimes, as NCHIs. That explains why, according to the most conservative estimate, 130,000 NCHIs have been recorded in the last 11 years.

The police should not be put in the invidious position of having to record what are often vexatious, politically motivated complaints. As the High Court judge said in 2020 when he found for Harry Miller, an ex-policeman who challenged an NCHI that had been recorded against him:

“In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi”.


Noble Lords may ask why it matters if an NCHI is recorded against someone’s name. It matters because they can show up in an enhanced DBS check and stop someone getting a job as a teacher or a carer. Why should the fact that someone has committed a non-crime prevent them from getting a job?

NCHIs are a breach of a sacrosanct principle of English common law: unless something is explicitly prohibited, it is permitted. The behaviour recorded in NCHIs is, by definition, not prohibited by law; it is non-criminal, so why are people being punished for it?

Recording NCHIs is also a colossal waste of police time. In a report published last year, Policy Exchange estimated that recording NCHIs takes up 60,000 hours of police time every year.

It is not just free speech lobbyists such as me who think that NCHIs have to go. His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, Sir Andy Cooke, has called for their abolition. Earlier this year he said:

“We need, at times, to allow people to speak openly without the fear that their opinion will put them on the wrong side of the law … I’m a firm believer … that … non-crime hate incidents are no longer required”.


Sir Andy is not alone among senior and ex-senior police officers in his opinion of NCHIs. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, a former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will be co-sponsoring my amendment.

The Minister said she hoped that the Bill will restore public confidence in the criminal justice system. Scrapping NCHIs, which risk turning the police into objects of ridicule, is a vital first step.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th January 2026 Lords Chamber

I also absolutely support the amendment that says that there should be no public funding for certain groups, which are obviously Islamist extremist groups, and so on and so forth. It seems sensible—but those amendments are very specific and very targeted, and they allow us something to really think about before Report. However, a lot of it is about the fact that we have problems in society and we want to solve them, so we bring in sweeping laws that are going to be anti-democratic and dangerous for everyone, rather than facing up to and confronting the real problems that we have, which are often not legal but cultural and political and caused by cowardice and their not being dealt with by politicians. They cannot always be dealt with via the law.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 370A, which seeks to grant the Secretary of State the power to designate and restrict extreme criminal protest groups—and I declare an interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

Last Monday, the Free Speech Union was the victim of an attack by a group that meets the definition in this amendment of an extreme criminal protest group. It is a group called Bash Back, which is a militant pro-trans group; it broke into the website of the Free Speech Union, stole confidential information about some of our donors and then published that information on its website and its social media accounts. To get that information removed, we had to apply for an emergency injunction; we then had to go back to court to put that injunction on a firmer footing; and there will be a third hearing or trial at which we try to make that injunction permanent. In the meantime, even though the information has been removed from the group’s website and social media accounts, that website and those social media accounts are still up. It has been extremely traumatic and disruptive—our website is still down. Applying for emergency injunctions and seeing that process through is by no means cheap; it is not entirely covered by our insurance.

One of the arguments we have heard this evening as to why the Secretary of State should not be granted this power is that the existing criminal law framework is adequate to deal with extreme criminal protest groups. I am glad to say that the Metropolitan Police does appear to be taking seriously what is a criminal offence—the data breach and the publication of that confidential data, in our case. The pro-trans group Bash Back has been active for at least six months and the criminal law as it stands has not been adequate to restrain it. This group took responsibility for vandalising the constituency office of Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health. In addition to smashing up his constituency office in Ilford North, it daubed the words “Child Killer” on the wall of his office because he said that he does not want the NHS to prescribe puberty blockers any longer. No one, as far as I know, has been interviewed by the police in connection with that violent assault on the offices of a Member of Parliament: certainly, no one has been arrested. The group followed up with an attack on a feminist conference in Brighton, and the threats and intimidation meant that that conference could not take place.

More recently, the group launched a violent attack on the offices of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, presumably because of the guidance note that the commission submitted to the Government about how to interpret the Supreme Court’s judgment about the meaning of the word “sex” in the Equality Act, which presumably the group does not agree with. It daubed graffiti on the walls of the office and used hammers to smash the glass on the office’s front. I do not suppose that I need to remind noble Lords that the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission at the time was the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, and one of the commissioners at the time was my noble friend Lady Cash. This is an extreme criminal protest group which has seemingly been allowed to operate with impunity because the existing—

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)]

Forgive me for interrupting—and I have hiccups, which is why I am trying not to interrupt—but the more important point about the attack on the EHRC’s London offices is that it is in a large building shared by several other organisations. Not only were the staff of the EHRC threatened by the very act of the attack, but the other organisations that use the building were also extremely disturbed by what happened, and there have been repercussions for the EHRC as a consequence as a tenant. I cannot say any more than that, but I wanted to make that point.

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[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention.

The group in question advertises the fact that it breaks the law in order to shut down and silence its political opponents, people with whom it disagrees. It advertises the fact that it engages in criminal activity to advance its point of view, its agenda, on its website and its social media accounts. It uses its social media accounts to recruit additional members of the group. It operates with impunity in the public square, so I do not think it can plausibly be claimed that the existing criminal law is sufficient to rein in a group like this.

Now, I take the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that we should be cautious before granting the Secretary of State additional powers to restrict the activities of protest groups. But I think it is worth bearing in mind that one of the reasons, perhaps, for the overdesignation of groups as terrorist groups under the powers granted to the Secretary of State by the Terrorism Act may be because the Secretary of State does not have enough flexible ways of responding to the threats posed by extreme criminal protest groups. Either he or she designates them as terrorist groups or they are allowed to continue to organise, protest and recruit. This would be an additional power—less extreme, I think, than designating a group a terrorist group.

One critical difference is that if a group is designated a terrorist group and someone expresses support publicly for that group, that can be a criminal offence. That is not the proposal in the case of what the consequences would be of designating a group an extreme criminal protest group. That is one respect in which it would be a less extreme restriction than designating a group a terrorist group. I hope that there would be less tendency to overdesignate.

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[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am so grateful for the thoughtful way that the noble Lord is attempting to grapple with these difficult issues. Does he remember the spy cops scandal, for example? Does he understand the difficulty when we constantly try to find ways to treat people who are not terrorists, but who we disagree with even quite viscerally, as quasi-terrorists? Does he understand the difference between the importance of prosecuting individuals for their actions and the dangers of guilt by association, with its chilling effect on free speech? I say this to him as a free speech campaigner.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. The issue is not that the groups in question are advocating points of view with which I profoundly disagree. That is not the basis on which I am supporting this amendment. It is that the groups in question advocate and engage in criminal activity to restrict the liberties of others.

I anticipate that people will say that it is hypocritical of me to support this amendment because I am a free speech campaigner. But the Free Speech Union has always made it clear that we do not think that the right to free speech includes the right to break the law to try to silence other people and to try to deprive them of their right to free speech through fear and intimidation. That is why I have been able to reconcile myself to this amendment, which is an attractive alternative to designating groups such as Palestine Action as terrorist groups.

[Lord Godson (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Blencathra. I pay tribute to him in this context, because of his own lived experiences during the explosion of demos in the last few years in this area, and his own issues in obtaining access to the Palace. Likewise, I have taken testimony for Policy Exchange, which I direct, from my noble friend Lord Shinkwin. My noble friends’ lived experiences should be noted. Of course, it is not just them. Overall, it is part of a coarsening of political life, perhaps as a whole in this country, but certainly in this particular area in which we work, where we legislate.

It is not just about those we agree with and those we do not agree with. It has been said, by one or two speakers, that we do not like Palestine Action, and we do not like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This problem pre-dates 7 October. It predates the explosions in those demos. It relates to Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion, which I do not agree with. But it also relates to the conduct, for example, of some ex-servicemen, whom I agree with on legacy issues and lawfare in Northern Ireland but who I have seen behave extremely badly towards some female colleagues of mine who do not work in this place. Similarly, I did not like the conduct of every person who was recently engaged in the farmers’ demonstration here; again, it is a cause which I support. It is across the piece and across the political spectrum. That is a problem which we need to take account of when we say that it is just people we do or do not like.

The issue at hand is the idea—which has been implied by one or two speakers in this debate—that we will become like Belarus or some other right-wing, authoritarian country if we go ahead with these amendments. The problem here is the very reverse: it is not the excessive power of the British state but its weakness and its failure to protect us—most dramatically demonstrated by the demonstrations that we have seen.

The blunt truth, as my noble friend has pointed out, is that too often we have had too many difficulties getting in and out of this House. Indeed, at some stages, we simply cannot get in at all. In my interviews with some senior police officers, they are basically saying, “You cannot seriously expect us to privilege the political classes by having extra protections” of the kind that my noble friend has talked about. Conversely, some noble Lords are quite demoralised themselves; when I have asked them about this, they say, “Well, we’re not very popular, so we’ve got to suck it up”. That is a tragic situation. What is so attractive to me about my noble friend’s amendment is that it asserts the absoluteness of our right to go in through the plenitude of entrances and exits of this House.

We all know that the future of this Chamber is being debated all the time, but for so long as we are here, we must have the right to do the work that we come here to do. One of the glories of today’s debate—including even the speeches of those whom I disagree with—is that we have all been able to get here to this House. I never want again to be in a situation where people cannot get in or out, or feel frightened to do so.

As my noble friend pointed out, the chilling effect is not just for us or for members of staff—I do not think we should be too precious about it; all of us are in public life, so noble Lords will have had death threats and various other forms of intimidation. The status quo ante, as described by my noble friend Lord Blencathra —which certainly obtained when he was first elected to the lower House in 1983—is light years away. We have to revert to that. That is why the necessary rectification that he is proposing is so important.

I agree with my noble friend on several other things, including charting the demise of the Sessional Orders in the House of Commons, and the legislative changes relating to protests in proximity to the Palace. He has already provided examples of the disruptive and obstructive protests around here in recent years. He was able to do that because it has increasingly become a feature of all our lives, and that needs to come to an end as quickly as possible.

There is one foreign example that is important for us all to note: the Dáil of the Oireachtas in Dublin. The Republic of Ireland provides protection for the workings of its national parliament through Section 7(1) of its Offences Against the State Act 1939, which forbids the obstruction or intimidation of any branch of government, including the legislature, from carrying out their functions. If we have anything to look at, it is among other foreign legislatures that are perhaps more zealous and solicitous in the protection of their well-being than we have seen in some quarters here in recent years.

Finally, there is the question of who is doing the demonstrations. As I said, I have been distressed by watching people on my side of the debate not behave properly. I remember watching Anna Soubry, whom I disagreed with on Brexit, being abused. But when one looks at recent history, one will find that we need to go back to a far more rigorous set of processes, where our needs are placed squarely—because of our public duties, not because of any private advantage—to ensure that we can discharge our responsibilities for as long as any of us choose to remain in this place.

Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Young of Acton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 15th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union.

The strongest argument for repealing the Malicious Communications Act and Section 127 of the Communications Act is that these laws were made during an analogue era and are clearly not fit for purpose during our current digital era. That is one reason why the Law Commission of England and Wales, in its 2021 report on which communications laws should be reformed, recommended that both the Malicious Communications Act and Section 127 of the Communications Act be repealed.

That has not happened, but a good illustration of just how unfit these two laws are was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox. The Times submitted FOI requests to all 43 police forces in England and Wales, asking them how many arrests were made in England and Wales in 2023 and in previous years for online offences under the Malicious Communications Act and Section 127 of the Communications Act. Of the 43 police forces, 37 responded to the FOI request. In just those 37 police forces, in 2023 12,183 people were arrested on suspicion of having committed just one of these two offences through something they had said online. That is a huge increase on the number of people arrested in 2018—just 5,502—on suspicion of committing these two offences for things they posted online. The figure more than quadrupled in a five-year period. That boils down to 33 people being arrested every day in 2023 on suspicion of having committed just one of these two offences under the Malicious Communications Act and Section 127 of the Communications Act.

That happened because of the explosion of speech which is supposedly offensive, annoying, distressing, alarming or indecent, et cetera, online on social media. This is something the framers of these laws could not possibly have anticipated, and it is causing the police to waste a colossal amount of time. In addition, the number of people who were charged—bear in mind that 12,183 people were arrested—was 1,119. The police are clearly being overzealous in responding to complaints about supposed offences under these two laws relating to things people have said online.

Another index of just how much time is being wasted is that many of the people who are not charged end up having the episode recorded as a non-crime hate incident. The Free Speech Union has estimated that, as best we can tell, something like a quarter of a million non-crime hate incidents have been recorded since the concept was introduced by the College of Policing in 2014—and that is in England and Wales alone. That is an average of around 65 a day.

One reason so many NCHIs are being recorded is that, when the police arrest someone under suspicion of having committed an offence under the Malicious Communications Act or Section 127 of the Communications Act and conclude that in fact no offence has been committed, the incident is recorded as an NCHI. As I have said before in this House, one of the penalties for having an NCHI recorded against your name is that it can show up in enhanced criminal record checks when you apply for a job as a teacher or a carer or try to volunteer for a charity such as the Samaritans. According to Policy Exchange, in a report published last year, police in the UK as a whole are spending 6,000 hours a year investigating episodes and incidents that turn out to be NCHIs and are recorded as such. That is a strong argument for repealing the Malicious Communications Act and Section 127 of the Communications Act.

I will give two examples, from the FSU’s case files, of just how absurd the police’s overzealous policing of social media has become. We went to bat for one of our members, Julian Foulkes, a former special constable in Kent. He said in a spat online with a pro-Palestinian activist that some of the pro-Palestinian marchers were once step away from heading to Heathrow and stopping people disembarking from flights from Israel. That person complained, as I understand it, and six police officers—six—turned up at Julian Foulkes’s home, arrested him, took him down to the station and would not release him until he had agreed to accept a caution. With our help, he got that caution expunged and went on to sue the police for wrongful arrest. He was given £20,000 in compensation and got an apology from the chief constable of the police force concerned. That is a good example of the kind of time-wasting that the police are being led into because of the difficulty of enforcing these analogue laws in a digital era.

The second example is Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, the parents of two daughters, who were arrested, again by six police officers, in front of their youngest daughter because of things they had said in a WhatsApp group that parents at their daughter’s school were members of and something they had said in an email to the head teacher of their daughter’s school. It is incredible that the police thought that six police officers were needed to take these parents into custody. Julian Foulkes was under suspicion of having committed an offence under the Malicious Communications Act. In their case, they were under suspicion of having committed an offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act. Again, in due course, no further action was taken. We helped them sue the police for wrongful arrest and they too were given compensation of £20,000.

Be in no doubt that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan are correct when they say that the process is the punishment. Even though no action was taken and no prosecutions were made in those two cases, Julian Foulkes and those parents were caused huge anxiety and distress by what they went through before the police decided to take no further action. That is a strong case for following the Law Commission of England and Wales’s advice and repealing the Malicious Communications Act and Section 127 of the Communications Act.

Briefly, I absolutely agree with the proposal in the amendment to remove the word “insulting” from the sections of the Public Order Act in which it remains. Noble Lords will not need reminding that the word “insulting” was removed from some sections of the Public Order Act, specifically Section 5 and related provisions, by the Crime and Courts Act 2013, following a campaign by Rowan Atkinson and others which pointed out how absurd it was to criminalise insulting. In one case, a young man was arrested for insulting a police officer’s horse, as noble Lords may recall. It was an effective campaign and it resulted in the word “insulting” being removed from Section 5, but it remains in many other parts of the Public Order Act. To my mind, the same arguments forcefully made by Rowan Atkinson and others at the time for removing the word “insulting” from Section 5 equally apply to the other sections of the Public Order Act where it remains. Just as we do not have a right not to be offended, we do not have a right not to be insulted.

I close with a quote from JS Mill, which I believe is from On Liberty. Mill warned that the criminal proscription of uncivil language is intrinsically likely to protect the holders of received opinion at the expense of dissidents. He wrote:

“With regard to what is commonly meant by intemperate discussion, namely invective, sarcasm, personality, and the like”—


we could add the word “insulting” to that list—

“the denunciation of these weapons would deserve more sympathy if it were ever proposed to interdict them equally to both sides; but it is only desired to restrain the employment of them against the prevailing opinion: against the unprevailing they may not only be used without general disapproval, but will be likely to obtain for him who uses them the praise of honest zeal and righteous indignation”.

[Lord Strasburger (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on his courage in raising these issues. I am going to say little more than that, other than that I was instrumental in getting a sentence added to the code of conduct for members of the Liberal Democrats, which says that no one has the right to not be offended.

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[Baroness Hunt of Bethnal Green (CB)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. It is a really important question, and I will try to remember to keep speaking in the third person, because I do want to just talk.

Has the proliferation of legislation helped prevent hate crime? During the past two decades we often saw increases, and we would question whether those increases were a product of increased hate crime, or an increased awareness of the legislation that led people to report. I am aware that, being of my generation, I am reluctant to report. There is a part of me that thinks, “You had it coming, and you should probably have taken your tie off for that walk down that street. You brought it on yourself”, added to which I do not want to waste police time. There is a conditioning that goes on with minority communities, and it takes some changing in how we think about these things to give communities permission to say that they did not have it coming, they do not deserve it, and that they have the right to talk to the police about those incidents.

I welcome the increase in reporting. Nevertheless, there has been an overreliance on using some of this legislation for incidents that should not constitute a hate crime. What happens when those cases are brought and those complaints are made, and how they are investigated, absolutely requires examination and thought. However, that does not justify the wholesale removal of hate crime legislation, which is a disproportionate response to the problem that has been identified.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. I also declare my interest as a director of the Free Speech Union. I will make three arguments against the statutory hate crime regime, and against embedding the concept of hate crime in British law. As we have heard, and as we are all aware, the concept of hate crime is inextricably bound up with protected characteristics. A hate crime is either the stirring up of hatred against the bearers of certain protected characteristics, or it is a crime that becomes a hate crime because the perpetrator is motivated by hostility towards one or more of the protected characteristics of the victim.

The number of protected characteristics in this statutory framework, however, varies from law to law. Hate crime law, on the face of it, is for that reason slightly confusing and incoherent. There are three protected characteristics in the stirring-up offences in the Public Order Act, five are referenced in the aggravated offences regime, seven in the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, and nine in the Equality Act. How can we rationalise this anomaly? The solution of successive Governments has been constantly to add new protected characteristics to the statute book. I dare say it is possible that, in due course, amendments will be made to the Crime and Policing Bill to add yet more protected characteristics to the criminal law.

The direction of travel is clear: the number of protected characteristics is constantly expanding, and various lobby groups are constantly petitioning parliamentarians to add ever more protected characteristics to the statute book. The end point of this process will be that every characteristic is protected; but if every characteristic is protected, then no particular characteristic will enjoy special protection and we will, in effect, be back to where we started pre-1965, before the concept of hate crime raised its head in British law.

My first argument is that, in the interests of saving us all a great deal of time and effort, can we not just short-circuit the process of getting to the point where every characteristic is protected by stripping out the concept of hate crime and protected characteristics from British law and returning to the pre-1965 status quo?

My second argument has been touched upon by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, which is that the concept of hate crime is at odds with the sacrosanct principle of equality before the law. Why should bearers of protected characteristics enjoy more robust legal protections than non-bearers? Why is a criminal offence motivated by hostility towards a victim’s transgender identity punished more severely than exactly the same crime motivated by the victim’s sex? Sex is not a protected characteristic, apart from in the Equality Act. This two-tier justice—this sense that some people, because they happen to belong to protected groups, enjoy additional legal protections—fosters grievance, breeds resentment and undermines public trust in the law and in the police in particular. In 1981, around 87% of Britons reported having confidence in the police. By 2022, that had fallen to about 67%, a substantial long-term decline. I would suggest that one of the reasons for declining public trust in the police is this sense that some groups are better protected than others because of the hate crime, protected characteristic regime.

My third argument, which is probably the strongest argument, is that the aggravated offences regime introduces the concept of thought crime into British law. We need to distinguish between mens rea and the particular thought someone is having towards the victim while committing a particular crime. I do not think, when assessing the seriousness of an offence, you could exclude motive. It would be absurd not to take motive into account, but that is different from punishing a crime more severely if a person is experiencing a particular emotion—hostility, hatred—towards a particular group that the victim of the crime belongs to. Mens rea is universal and does not discriminate, but hate crime does. It says that if you are having particular thoughts about the victim when you commit the crime—importantly, not hatred in general, but hatred based on their possession of one or more protected characteristics—you should be punished more severely.

Not only is this criminalisation of certain thoughts a hallmark of a totalitarian society, but, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan pointed out, it is very hard to prove. It is very hard for a court to determine whether the person accused of the crime had the verboten thoughts while committing the crime. To paraphrase Queen Elizabeth I, we cannot open a window and see into men’s souls.

I am perfectly aware that an amendment stripping the concept of hate crime from British law has little chance of winning a Division in this House, so let me close with some more modest proposals. Do not add any more protected characteristics to the list of aggravators. Extend Section 29J of the Public Order Act, which protects various forms of criticism of religion and makes it more difficult for people to be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred. You can criticise a religion, even quite robustly, thanks to Section 29J and not be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred.

One useful improvement to the hate crime statutory regime would be to extend Section 29J to the other stirring-up offences. For example, the Free Speech Union paid for the legal defence of a former Royal Marine called Jamie Michael. He robustly criticised illegal immigrants in a Facebook video and, as a consequence, he was prosecuted for intending to stir up racial hatred. It took a jury in Merthyr Tydfil all of 17 minutes to unanimously acquit him of that offence. He should never have been prosecuted. We need a protection in the Public Order Act whereby, if you make robust criticisms, even of legal migration, you should not be vulnerable to a charge of stirring up racial hatred.

Finally, an anomaly in the stirring-up offences is that you can be prosecuted for stirring up racial hatred if the effect of your words or behaviour is likely to stir up racial hatred, even if that is not your intention—whereas you can be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred or hatred on the basis of sexual orientation only if you intended to do that. That is an anomaly, and my recommendation would be that a two-limb test has to be satisfied before one of the stirring-up offences can be made out. To successfully prosecute someone, it should be incumbent on the Crown to show not only that what they said or did was likely to stir up hatred against the protected group in question but that they intended to as well. That would bring British law to a certain extent into line with the Brandenburg test in the US first amendment, whereby you can be prosecuted only if your words or actions are not only likely to but were intended to cause imminent lawless action.

So, accepting that this controversial proposal that my two colleagues have bravely made is unlikely to ever win enough support in this House as presently constituted to win a Division, I urge the Committee to consider those more modest reforms.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, for setting out his arguments for abolishing hate crimes. He started with the issue of freedom of speech again—I absolutely understand that that is where he and those supporting him are coming from—and, interestingly, he cited the case of Lucy Connolly. I thought it might be helpful to remind the Committee of part of Article 10 in our Human Rights Act 1998, which says:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of expression”—


we are shorthanding that to “speech”—but it goes on to say:

“The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary”.


I have carefully quoted all of it, but I will focus on the part that relates to what she was convicted for.

Coming back to our debate on the previous group, the problem is that there is a lot of concern about big figurehead cases when, actually, the law, the judge and the jury—actually there was no jury because Connolly pleaded guilty—were clear that she was inciting racial hatred. She pleaded guilty of saying threatening and abusive material, which is interesting given what we debated on the last group. She said:

“set fire to all the”—

effing—

“hotels full of the bastards”.

She said that at exactly the time that people were on the streets, some of whom were trying to set fire to the hotels. The tweet was viewed 310,000 times before it was deleted, and the judge specifically cited that in his summary at the end of the case.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for accepting my intervention. I just wanted to point out that the noble Baroness did not quote Lucy Connolly’s tweet in full. She added the caveat “for all I care”, which suggested not that she was intending to encourage people to burn down asylum hotels but that she was indifferent as to whether they did so.

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[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Let what the noble Baroness has said stand. I am making the point that disability, transgender identity—in my view—sexual orientation and race are things that you have and that are part of you. If the offences proposed for removal are removed by this House, that would send a signal to society that we are happy for people to stir up hatred on the grounds of those characteristics. That is not acceptable to me and I hope the noble Lord recognises that I cannot accept those amendments today, although I accept the way they have been put.

[Lord Young of Acton (Con)]

Surely the signal that scrapping hate crime from British law would send is not that we do not care about vulnerable groups but that we think they should enjoy the same legal protections as everyone else, and that everyone should be equal in the eyes of the law.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

That is a view, but not one that I share. There are protections in the Public Order Act 1986 against stirring up hatred on racial or religious grounds because, yes, I am equal under the law if I have that hatred against me, but that hatred may be generated because I happen to have a racial or religious characteristic that is subject to attack. So, we are not equal under the law, because if I did not have that racial or religious characteristic I would not have been attacked. For me, that is therefore an aggravating factor and a reason why we should maintain those offences.

I go back to what I was saying a moment ago. This would remove offences of stirring up hatred under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. It would abolish racial and religiously aggravated offences under the Crime and Disorder Act and delete aggravating factors of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender identity from the Sentencing Code. At the very time when Jewish people are being attacked for being Jewish and transgender people are being attacked for being transgender, that is not acceptable. I am not saying that either noble Lord wishes to encourage or support that type of activity—I recognise from the measured way in which they put their arguments that they do not. They have an honestly held opinion that removing that legislation would be of benefit to society. I happen to disagree and I am trying to put the reason why. If there is clear water between us, that is the nature of political life. I am not imputing any characteristics to the noble Lord for bringing this measure forward.

However, the effect of this would be to compromise the ability of the courts to reflect the greater harm—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt of Bethnal Green, said—to undermine deterrence and clarity for police and prosecutors and to signal that those crimes are no more serious when they are motivated by hostility toward protected characteristics, contrary to long-standing principle. It would also risk eroding public confidence, particularly among people with those protected characteristics. The underreporting that the noble Baroness mentioned would absolutely nosedive if these provisions were taken away, because people would think that society had not put that down as a benchmark by which people should be judged. I am therefore afraid that I cannot accept the amendment.

I must also give notice to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, who made a very helpful plea that we should not bring forward further protected characteristics. I regret to inform him that, on Report, I will be very proud to stand here and move an amendment which puts transgender and disability as protected characteristics, in line with the manifesto on which my party stood and won an election in July 2024. We will be bringing forward amendments in the Crime and Policing Bill on Report to give effect to this change. We can have that debate openly and honestly, but I say to the Committee that society has some basic principles of respect that it should enshrine in law. The legislation that the noble Lord is seeking to remove would undermine that principle and I will not support it.