Review hate laws to protect free speech, says Kemi Badenoch

Tory leader challenges Starmer over non-crime hate incidents after police investigation into Telegraph journalist

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Hate crime laws must be reviewed to protect free speech, Kemi Badenoch has said, after police launched an investigation into a Telegraph journalist over a tweet.
The Conservative leader said it was “absolutely wrong” for the police to visit any journalist’s home simply because they had expressed an opinion.
She challenged Sir Keir Starmer to show he believed in free speech by examining the laws around so-called non-crime hate incidents.
Allison Pearson, the award-winning Telegraph writer, is under investigation by Essex Police for allegedly stirring up racial hatred with a social media post made in November last year. However, she has not been told who made the complaint against her or even which tweet is involved.
In her first newspaper interview since becoming leader, Mrs Badenoch said: “There has been a long-running problem with people not taking free speech seriously.”
She added: “We shouldn’t have journalists getting visited by the police for expressing opinions. That’s absolutely wrong, we need to look at the laws around non-crime hate incidents.”
“Keir Starmer says he is someone who believes in these things. Now he needs to actually show that he does believe it. All we’ve seen from him is the opposite.”
Pearson has said that officers told her they were planning to record a non-crime hate incident (NCHI) against her. These incidents do not meet the threshold for a crime, but police can record them regardless and they can appear on enhanced vetting checks.
Essex Police have since said that officers opened the investigation under section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986 relating to material allegedly “likely or intended to cause racial hatred”. The force said that the alleged offence was being treated as a criminal matter and not a non-crime hate incident.
Under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, “non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) are recorded by the police to collect information on ‘hate incidents’ that could escalate into more serious harm or indicate heightened community tensions, but which do not constitute a criminal offence”.
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, said the Government should consider scrapping police recording of NCHIs if they continued to be investigated in a way that wasted officers’ time and public money.
Lord Austin of Dudley, the crossbench peer and former Labour MP, has revealed how he was investigated by the police over a tweet in which he used the word Islamist in reference to the terror group Hamas. West Midlands Police told him they had investigated a complaint of Islamophobia, even though his use of the word Islamist was entirely correct.
Writing in The Telegraph, he says: “I was furious and think the public would be livid to find out the police are wasting time on rubbish like this when a tiny proportion of rapes or burglaries result in someone being charged.”
He has now tabled a question in the House of Lords asking the Government “what assessment they have made of the police’s recording of non-criminal hate incidents”.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has committed to making it easier to report NCHIs related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobic abuse. She argues that Mrs Braverman’s crackdown has prevented police monitoring non-crime abuse that could escalate into serious violence.
Downing Street said: “The Home Office is looking at how to do this whilst also balancing the fundamental right of free speech, and ensuring that the police can spend their time dealing with the issues that matter most to our communities.”
Pearson appears to have come under investigation after, in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests, she reposted a video showing two men holding a flag on a British street and flanked by a group of police officers.
The original author suggested that police had “picked a side” after the October 7 massacre, though unbeknown to Pearson the flag was not related to Gaza. Instead, it was held by supporters of a Pakistani political party.
She deleted the post after the mistake was pointed out.
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said “a recalibration is needed” of hate crime laws, while Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said: “It’s ludicrous that Essex Police are wasting precious resources on a deleted tweet from 12 months ago.
“Common sense has gone out the window. Police officers should be policing the streets, not tweets.”
Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, said: “This isn’t East Germany. Criticising the police isn’t a criminal offence.”
Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, who faced a 15-month police investigation into an alleged malicious communication that was subsequently dropped, said the experience had been terrifying, with police acting as if George Orwell’s novel 1984 was their “operational guidance”.
She was told on Thursday night that the case had been dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) but said such police investigations could have a chilling effect on free speech.
In an article for The Telegraph, she said: “Having the police threaten me with arrest, question me, string out an ‘investigation’ for over a year and then refer the case to the CPS was terrifying.”