Police to stop probing 'non-crime hate' as ministers say focus must shift to real offences
Under current rules, police forces are expected to look into acts which appear to be motivated by hostility towards people with certain characteristics including race, religion, disability or gender, that fall short of being crimes
Non-crime hate incidents will officially be scrapped in five months after the Metropolitan Police announced it would stop investigating them.
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Under current rules, police forces are expected to look into acts which appear to be motivated by hostility towards people with certain characteristics including race, religion, disability or gender, that fall short of being crimes.
Unclear guidance has led to officers being called to people’s homes over "insults and routine arguments", the Government said.
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London’s Met Police last year announced it would no longer investigate the incidents after it dropped a probe into social media posts about transgender issues by Father Ted creator Graham Linehan.
There will be no automatic wiping of the incidents from people’s records after the decision, LBC understands.
Scrapping non-crime hate incidents will give officers more time to focus on their day-to-day policing, ministers hope.
The move, which comes after a College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council review, will see a tighter definition of what constitutes an incident requiring police involvement.
Fewer reports will automatically trigger a police record under the plans, with officers and call handlers recording information only where there is a clear risk of harm.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: "Under these reforms, forces will no longer be policing perfectly legal tweets.
"Instead, they will be doing what they do best: patrolling our streets, catching criminals, and keeping communities safe.”
But responding to the announcement, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the policy would make no difference to police time.
"This is simply a rebrand of non-crime hate incidents with a more restrictive triage process," he said.
"Reports are still logged, personal data still recorded, and disclosure rules are unchanged. Officers and staff will still be tied up monitoring incidents that do not meet the criminal threshold, at a cost in time and resources.
"People want the police focused on catching criminals and keeping streets safe. Conservatives have been consistently clear the police should get back to basics and non-crime hate incidents should be scrapped to free up police time."
Non-crime hate incidents were introduced after the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and an inquiry into his death, setting up a system for reporting and recording racist incidents and crimes.
During a Lords debate earlier this month, his mother and Labour peer Baroness Doreen Lawrence of Clarendon said insults can lead to violence.
She urged peers to consider "what implication" abandoning the system could have.
"It depends on how you see non-crime hate and it depends on who’s at the receiving end of that," she said.
"Now for me, it led to the murder of my son.
“Now, individuals who think they’ve got the right to walk around and talk about, especially, young black men in a certain way, what starts off as just verbal, it leads to violence.”
She added: "How do you move forward if it moves from verbal into violence and you have no way of tracking back where it started from?"
Stephen’s father Neville Lawrence said the decision was going back on Lord Macpherson’s inquiry following his son’s death.
He told the Daily Mirror: “A lot of people are going to get really angry and maybe turn to violence. There are supposed to be laws to make sure people can live decent lives.
“If the police aren’t going to record these incidents then who are?”
Irish comedy writer Linehan was arrested at Heathrow Airport last year on suspicion of inciting violence over three posts he had made on X.
His arrest sparked debate, with Conservative politicians and Harry Potter author JK Rowling among those voicing their outrage.
Following Linehan’s arrest, Met Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said officers were in “an impossible position” when dealing with statements made online.
Speaking about the Home Secretary’s move, Assistant Chief Constable Tom Harding, director at the College of Policing, said: “Non-crime hate incidents are being replaced with a system that better serves both the public and modern-day policing.
“We have clearly established the current approach does not meet the expectations of either.
“Today we are setting out a fundamentally different way of handling reports so that officers can focus efforts on their core duties of preventing crime and protecting communities, while making clear that lawful free speech is not a police matter.
“Recording of non-crime hate incidents represents a very small proportion of overall police demand and while well intentioned, there has been a disproportionate use of the process which has eroded public trust.”