A speech about foreign workers made by the Home Secretary – an enthusiastic supporter of harsher “hate speech” laws – has been investigated and recorded as a “hate incident” by police.
Speaking at the Conservative Party Conference last October, Amber Rudd called for firms to record how many foreign workers they employ to help ensure they are “not taking jobs British people could do”.
Earlier in the year, in July, Mrs. Rudd had launched a new “hate crime” action plan, including a drive to punish offenders more harshly by ordering prosecutors to press for tougher sentences in court.
“Those who practise hatred send out a message that it’s okay to abuse and attack others because of their nationality, ethnicity or religious background”, she said at the time.
Mrs. Rudd has also supported the policy of blanket recording of all hate incidents, originally set out in 2014 by the College of Policing.
Now, her punitive plan seems to be working, as an outraged and offended member of the public reported her for hate speech.
Joshua Silver, a physics professor at the University of Oxford, contacted the police after watching her speech, as he “felt politicians have been using hate speech to turn Britons against foreigners, and I thought that is probably not lawful”, he explained to The Times.
West Midlands Police have now written to the professor stating that the inquiry is concluded and the matter “has been recorded in line with the National Police Chiefs’ Council manual as a non-crime hate incident”.
No evidence of criminality is needed to report a “hate crime”, and once it is filed the police are compelled to investigate.
New guidelines from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) reaffirmed this, insisting that “reporting… is subjective and is based on the perception of the victim”.
“In order to treat a crime as a hate crime for the purposes of investigation, there is no need for evidence to prove the aggravating element,” the guidelines add.
The number of “hate crimes” recorded by the police has grown annually for several years. Six years ago, there were 42,255. In 2014/15, there were 52,528.
Many reports are now filed in minutes via the police’s True Vision website, which was used by anti-Brexit campaigners to fabricate a “hate crime epidemic” after the referendum.
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