Police forces should focus on tackling crime, not policing people’s tweets, Sir Keir Starmer said yesterday.
In an apparent climb down, the Prime Minister urged the police to ‘concentrate on what matters most to their communities’, rather than being drawn into investing resources in tackling so-called ‘non-crime hate incidents’.
Downing Street backed the police over the controversial practice last week, saying it was ‘important that the police can capture data relating to non-crime hate incidents where it is proportionate and necessary to do so to help prevent serious crimes which may later occur’.
The response triggered a backlash, with civil liberties groups branding the approach ‘Orwellian’ and accusing forces of trying to police ‘thought crime’.
Speaking to reporters while travelling to Rio de Janeiro yesterday, Sir Keir signalled that he wanted the police to focus on dealing with crime.
‘Firstly, obviously, this is a matter for the police themselves, police force by police force. So they can make their decisions and will obviously be held to account for those decisions,’ he said.
‘There is a review going on of this particular aspect but, you know, I think that as a general principle the police should concentrate on what matters most to their communities.’
A government source added: ‘You can take it from that that the PM wants the police to put tackling crime first.’
A non-crime hate incident is where no criminal offence has been committed but the person reporting it believes the incident to be motivated by hostility.
The issue hit the headlines after journalist Allison Pearson said officers had knocked on her door to tell her they were investigating one of her tweets.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch and former prime minister Boris Johnson are among those who have waded into the row about whether investigating ‘non-crime hate incidents’ is a good use of police time.
Yesterday, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said police should stick to investigating ‘genuine crimes’ rather than ‘policing thought’.
The former policing minister told GB News: ‘It is ridiculous that public figures, journalists, but actually members of the public as well are getting police attention for essentially expressing opinions.
‘The police should concentrate on crime, genuine crime, not on policing thought.’
He said that he was ‘concerned’ about the category of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ and said there should be an ‘extremely high bar’ for police to investigate anything that doesn’t meet the criminal threshold.
He added: ‘People, journalists in particular, but the public as well, should not be getting visits from the police in relation to expressing opinions.
‘And sometimes those opinions might be offensive, but we need to be very careful where that criminal line is drawn.’
He later told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that police are using hate laws wrongly 90per cent of the time.
Mr Philp’s intervention came as Roger Hirst, Essex Police’s Fire and Crime Commissioner, defended the force’s visit to Ms Pearson.
He said that while he didn’t want ‘thought police’, ‘we can’t go around ignoring crimes just because it’s politically sensitive.
‘And we perhaps need to just think about how our black and Asian communities are hearing this debate,’ he told LBC.
He was responding to comments by former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith who said police investigating non-crime hate incidents was ‘thought police territory’.
He added that it was an ‘absurdity’ while there weren’t enough officers to tackle shoplifters.