Disobliging tweets are ‘not the business of police,’ insists Home Secretary

Speaking with Nick Ferrari at Breakfast, Shabana Mahmood said that she "does not believe that being disobliging, provocative, taking a strong position, defending women’s rights - as I would want to do, is something police should be involving themselves in."

"My view is that police should be protecting our streets and not going after perfectly legal tweets It is possible to commit a crime online, so they must, obviously, go where the evidence takes them," she insisted.

"There are perfectly legal tweets that might be provocative, might be taking a side in the so-called ‘culture war’ - but that is not the job of the police."

Her comments follow the scrapping of so-called Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI), with police set to enforce more of a "common sense" focussed approach.

It comes after children as young as nine were found to have been investigated by police under the legislation, according to reports.

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Describing the implementation of NCHI's, the Home Secretary told LBC that the concept was a "well-intentioned attempt, over many years, to try and gather intelligence on those who have troublesome behaviour."

"Someone who might want to go after someone because they hate them, for being Jewish or whatever."

Speaking on the subject of racially aggravated hate crimes and the boundaries separating NCHIs, Ms Mahmood told Nick that it is "a boundary that is subject to the review and is being worked on."

"In the general run of things, perfectly legal - albeit disobliging tweets, provocative tweets, that is not the business of the police."

It follows incidents including the imprisonment of Lucy Connelly - the wife of a Tory Councillor who was jailed for 31 months for calling on the public to "set fire" to hotels housing asylum seekers in the wake of the Southport attack.

Describing how a longstanding review was commissioned into the benefits of NCHIs, the Home Secretary highlighted that reports often see police "being drawn into a culture war and political disagreements."

"Look, people make complaints and people make reports and then the police have to exercise judgement as to whether they investigate.

"So, it started off well-intentioned, but it’s grown to a point where police themselves recognise that they’re basically being drawn into a culture war and political disagreements.

"There was already a review going on which will complete soon. We can’t do things the way we were doing them - but the question is: what’s the framework that you bring in instead?