Meeting of the Parliament 17 April 2024
I will come on to that, but the cabinet secretary did not point out that there is no dwelling defence, which I will also come on to.
Even before the act was enforced, my colleague Murdo Fraser was reported to the police. His alleged crime was to make a light-hearted quip about Scottish National Party policy relating to people who say that they are non-binary. The complaint and the investigation were kept secret from him. He had no idea that the police had then recorded that as a non-crime hate incident. Police Scotland’s response to Murdo Fraser has been confused and confusing, and the justice secretary’s response to his question yesterday cast no light.
During yesterday’s proceedings, the justice secretary also made allegations about misinformation. There has been misinformation, but, from what I have seen and heard, it has come from the SNP Government and its agencies. The law states that the hate crime threshold is met if something would be deemed by a reasonable person to be “threatening or abusive”. My party tried without success to amend that to say “threatening and abusive”, which is a crucial distinction and would be a higher bar for prosecution. However, an SNP minister took to the airwaves to incorrectly state that the law says “threatening and abusive”. Yesterday, the cabinet secretary added to her Government’s catalogue of misinformation by telling Parliament that the threshold is now “threatening and/or abusive”, and she did so while railing against misinformation. I presume that that was through ignorance and not intent, but it misrepresents that critical point.
Then we have Police Scotland’s extraordinary output. Its website tells the public that a hate crime is
“Any crime which is perceived by the victim, or any other person, as being motivated, wholly or partly, by malice, ill will or prejudice against a social group.”
That is simply untrue. Something does not become a crime just because someone perceives it to be a crime. Such flagrant misinformation fuels public confusion. Moreover, it is fuelling the flood of complaints. The police website targets working-class white men, in effect telling them to watch their mouths. I ask whether Police Scotland, in citing so-called white male entitlement, has committed a hate crime.
Then, of course, we have the hate monster—a ridiculous cartoon character that would surely be deemed too silly for the scriptwriters of “Scot Squad”. Let us not forget the sinister Government billboards on the issue or that that campaign cost taxpayers at least £400,000 and generated even more nonsense complaints.
Should we be surprised by the creeping criminalisation of freedom of expression in Scotland? I am not, because that has been the direction of travel for years. As far back as 2016, Police Scotland told the public to consider whether their social media comments were “kind” or “necessary”. If they were not, Police Scotland warned that a visit from officers could be expected. Of course people should be kind, but who on earth decides what is “necessary”? What has any of this got to do with the police?
The law was not enforced for three full years because Police Scotland knew that the legislation was seriously problematic and that it would be inundated with complaints. It knew that the legislation would be weaponised, and that is exactly what is happening.
Humza Yousaf claims that there is a “rising tide” of hate crime in Scotland, contrary to the evidence. His Government is urging Scots to report hate crime while peddling misinformation about the definition of hate crime.