Free speech fears over hate crime crackdown
▪ Warning over law to tackle anti-trans slurs ▪ But ‘protection’ for right to say you can’t change sex
FREE speech campaigners last night sounded the alarm over plans for a sweeping extension of hate crime laws.
The Law Commission set out proposals including measures that would lead to tougher sentences for stirring up hatred against transgender people.
The Government’s official advisers on legal reform also proposed granting special protection from prosecution for those who express ‘gender critical’ views, such as feminists voicing doubts that a man can change his sex to female.
But despite that concession, critics warned the drive towards ever-more proscriptive hate crime laws was damaging to free speech, with one saying the proposals risked a form of ‘state fascism’.
Under the Law Commission’s proposals, ‘stirring up hatred’ under the Public Order Act 1986 should be extended to cover ‘transgender and gender diverse’ people, as well as the disabled. Judges
‘People are fearful of expressing views’
should be given the power to hand longer sentences to offenders who target transgender people in crimes such as assault, its 545-page report added.
But it rejected the idea of adding sex and gender to the so-called ‘protected characteristics’ under the law, which allow crimes against those groups to be treated more seriously by the courts.
As a result, the proposals mean some offences against transgender people could attract longer jail terms than those aimed at biological women.
It comes after repeated attacks on Harry Potter author JK Rowling for expressing concerns that women’s rights are being eroded by trans activists.
And in October philosopher Professor Kathleen Stock resigned from her academic post at the University of Sussex after being accused of ‘transphobia’.
Dr David Green, chief executive of the Civitas think-tank, said: ‘The Law Commission’s proposals will do nothing to protect Kathleen Stock or JK Rowling.
‘The law in a free society should allow people to know whether they will be arrested or not. We are creating more and more areas where people can never quite be sure of that. The outcome is that people are fearful of expressing their views.
‘The law does not belong in the realm of opinion, unless those speakers stray into an incitement of violence.’ Harry Miller, of the free speech pressure group Fair Cop, who was investigated by police for retweeting an allegedly transphobic limerick, said: ‘The law is moving from protecting the individual towards protecting and regulating ideologies, and that is a form of state fascism.
‘The Law Commission has said that gender critical views should be exempt but that is the wrong way to look at it. We should never need permission to criticise an ideology. That permission should be taken for granted.’
Professor Penney Lewis, criminal law commissioner at the Law Commission, said: ‘Hate crime has a terrible impact on victims and it’s unacceptable that the current levels of protection are so inconsistent.
‘Our recommendations would improve protections for victims while ensuring the right of freedom of expression is safeguarded.’
The report also said discussion of immigration should be excluded from race hate laws. It stressed the importance of open debate over policy on ‘immigration, citizenship and asylum’.
Some campaigners had argued that ‘migration and asylum status’ should be included in hate crime measures.
The Law Commission’s proposals will now be considered by ministers, who will decide whether to implement them.
STIRRING up hatred against anyone is wicked. If it tips over into incitement to violence it is also a crime.
If this hatred is on the grounds of race, religion, disability or sexual orientation, that is an aggravating factor, and the guilty receive stiffer penalties.
Similarly, abusive and intimidatory language is unacceptable in civilised society. And if the language is so aggressive that it constitutes threatening behaviour, that too is against the law.
But drawing the line between the threatening and the merely offensive has always been a thorny problem. In this country, freedom to offend has always been a key plank of free speech.
The comedian who tells tasteless jokes or the feminist who believes only women have wombs are entitled to hold and express their views – however disagreeable some may find them. That’s what being a free country is all about.
So Law Commission proposals to extend the definition of hate crime to people who ‘stir up hostility’ on the basis of sex or gender, while well intentioned, are problematic to those who care about freedom of expression.
The commission says its recommendations would not ‘criminalise offensive comments’, but who makes that judgment?
Presumably deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner would not be arrested for publicly denouncing Tory MPs as ‘scum’, but could a male Tory MP be for saying the same about her because she is a woman?
And would those transgender activists who relentlessly harassed a feminist lecturer and tried to get her sacked for saying that sex was a biological fact face prosecution? Or do their rights take priority over hers?
The Mail does not seek to underplay the harm and distress caused by those who stir up hatred. Everyone deserves the full protection of the law, regardless of gender, race, creed or sexual orientation. And they have a right to feel safe.
But freedom of speech is a precious and indivisible commodity. It must not be sacrificed on the altar of identity politics.