Legal challenge to hate crime recording rules given go-ahead

A free speech campaigner has been granted permission to challenge Home Office rules on hate crimes.

Harry Miller argues that the current system for recording such offences requires officers to “dismiss objective evidence in favour of a perception of hurt feelings”.

In 2023, a hate crime was logged against his name without a police investigation or an opportunity for him to defend himself against the allegations.

‘Sinister system’

Welcoming the decision, Mr Miller said: “I have had a serious criminal offence of stalking recorded against me by Lincolnshire Police – but the police did not approach me, question me, or investigate me in any way for this offence.”

He continued: “Their argument is that I presented no credible evidence to suggest the offence had not taken place. This, of course, is a straw man, given they never asked me about it.”

The former police officer quipped: “I presented no credible evidence that I was not involved in the Brink’s-Mat gold robbery, either, so it is entirely possible I’ve been recorded for that, too.”

Miller is being represented by Conrathe Gardner LLP, and a spokesperson for the firm said: “People assume that they are innocent until proven guilty – but that’s not how the Home Office Crime Recording Rules work.

“It’s absurd — and terrifying — that members of the public can have serious crimes recorded against them without any police investigation. Why has the Home Secretary chosen to defend this sinister system?”

Review

In October last year, the founder and General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, argued that Britain should re-examine its ‘hate crime’ laws to help tackle its “free-speech crisis”.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Lord Young illustrated his concerns with reference to comedian Graham Linehan’s arrest by five armed police officers at Heathrow for a social media post claimed to be ‘stirring up hatred against trans-identifying men’.

He branded such examples as “tantamount to criminalising certain thoughts, with courts tasked with peering into the minds of defendants to discover what they were thinking while committing a crime”.

The Peer added: “Instead of stirring up hatred against people with ‘protected characteristics’ being an offence, would it not be simpler – and fairer – to just make inciting violence a crime, regardless of who’s being targeted?”