Home Secretary faces legal action over hate crime policing

Free speech campaigner Harry Miller is seeking a judicial review on the way hate crimes are recorded.

Mr Miller, who has an alleged hate crime against his name, argues that the current system requires officers to “dismiss objective evidence in favour of a perception of hurt feelings”.

In 2021, the former policeman successfully challenged College of Policing guidance on non-crime hate incidents after his details were logged over a ‘transphobic’ tweet. Last month, the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council announced that NCHIs are to be scrapped, but this does not affect the recording of hate crimes.

‘Skewed’

Mr Miller warned that Home Office hate crime guidance puts everyone “at risk of being criminalised by both the local police force and the state”.

He added: “It gives the police a government licence to bypass even the most elementary burden of proof, and to criminally pursue and record entirely innocent individuals.

“With this court action, we aim to put right this blindingly obvious wrong on behalf of all who fall within the scope of British jurisprudence.”

Representing the applicant, Conrathe Gardner LLP said: “The Home Office rules are clearly skewed in favour of victims and need to be withdrawn and rewritten. As they currently stand, they are unlawful.”

NCHIs

Controversial non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) are set to be scrapped under “common sense” proposals that will be presented to the Home Secretary this month.

Following a review, the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council have concluded that recording “information about non-crime incidents on a crime system is not the right solution”.

Chairman of the College of Policing, Lord Herbert of South Downs, told The Daily Telegraph: “NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system. There will be no recording of anything like it on crime databases.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “It was quite clear that the whole regime needed looking at, that there was a perception that the police were being drawn into matters that they shouldn’t have been. I don’t think the police service wanted to be drawn into them. They don’t want to be policing tweets.”