Dinner table chat? It’ll be a police matter
YESTERDAY, the Scottish parliament debated the Hate Crime Bill, which will be passed today. Like all Scottish Conservatives, I will vote against the Bill because, despite being as heavily amended and diluted as any legislation I can recall in Holyrood, it remains a real threat to our rights and liberties – in particular, to the right to privacy.
This is because family dinner conversations, within the privacy of our own homes, will for the first time be subject to policing for hate crime.
Yesterday, three Conservative amendments to put this right were voted down by the SNP and its allies.
As such, hate crime is the new named persons – just the latest Nationalist assault on our basic rights.
One of the mysteries in all this is why the SNP is so opposed to the idea that private and family life deserves to be respected. Interfering with this is a habit of the SNP I’ve never understood.
The Conservatives tried to stop this Bill last September but we were outvoted.
Ever since, it has been clear that the legislation was going to pass, despite vocal and reasoned Tory opposition. In the autumn, the Bill came to the justice committee for several months of detailed, line-by-line scrutiny.
As that committee’s convener, I devoted myself to trying to rescue the Bill. In particular, I strove to bring it into line with our human rights protections.
As a retiring MSP (I am not seeking re-election in May) I have voiced many criticisms of Holyrood. But in this instance it did its job.
The Hate Crime Bill is now much changed – and much improved – from the lousy measure it was some months ago. This is most importantly the case as regards free speech.
When this Bill was introduced into the parliament last year it was a direct threat to free speech.
Anyone could have been locked up for stirring up hatred even if they had no intention of doing so. Theatres putting on productions in which, for example, certain practices were ridiculed could have faced criminal sanction.
The mere possession of material could have brought the police knocking at the door, causing a range of faith groups real fear that their religious teachings would become illegal.
BUT over the course of the Bill’s passage through parliament, all of these dangerous provisions were dropped. As enacted, stirring up hatred will be a hate crime only if all of the following occur.
First, the accused must intend to stir up hatred. Second, the accused must have used speech (or other behaviour) that a reasonable person would consider threatening or abusive. Third, the law now provides that mere discussion or criticism of matters relating to the protected characteristics is not to be taken as threatening or abusive.
Finally, the law states that just because someone feels offended, shocked or disturbed by what is said, it does not mean that the criminal threshold has been crossed.
This is all as it should be (how much better had the Bill got this right from the beginning).
When it comes to the protection of privacy, however, the Bill remains deeply problematic. Conservative amendments last month and again yesterday tried to bring the Bill into line with the way in which the criminal law should respect the right to private and family life.
But we were thwarted. Yesterday I moved an amendment that would have protected wholly private family conversations that had no public element.
Such conversations should not attract the attention of Police Scotland or prosecutors. But, very regrettably, the SNP and its allies see matters differently.
I don’t want to live in a Scotland where people are free to threaten or abuse one another, intending to stir up hatred.
But when legislating in this (or any other) area, parliament must ensure its legislation respects and does not infringe our human rights.
The Hate Crime Bill, despite all its changes, still fails to meet that test.