‘Non-crime hate incidents’ are a threat to free speech

There’s more than meets the eye to today’s story of a leaked Home Office report calling for police to be encouraged to file ever more reports of non-crime hate incidents (NCIHs). The word “report,” suggesting work by scrupulously impartial civil servants, seems a strange description of what looks like a pretty blatantly political document, which at one point castigates suggestions of two-tier policing as a “right-wing extremist narrative.” But while that comment has grabbed most of the headlines, we should not ignore the worrying suggestion that police officers could come under pressure to record more NCHIs.

The counter-extremism review suggests there should be a reversal to the Tory government’s move to limit the recording of NCHIs. Ministers, including the security minister Dan Jarvis, have backed expanding the use of NCHIs for incidents of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.