No 10 backs Rowling as she dares police to arrest her over trans tweets
SNP fails to provide force with enough funding and 6,000 officers are still to complete two-hour course
RISHI SUNAK has backed JK Rowling after she challenged Scottish police to use the SNP’S new hate crime laws to arrest her over her views on transgender issues.
The Harry Potter author had said she was looking forward to being arrested after describing a series of transgender women as men on the day the new law came into force.
An SNP minister had earlier admitted that Rowling could be investigated under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act – which creates a new offence of “stirring up of hatred” for “misgendering” trans people.
However, the Prime Minister gave his support to Rowling, saying that the Conservatives would always protect free speech. He said: “People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it.”
Yesterday, Rowling posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people and pointedly described them all as women. They included the “double rapist” Isla Bryson, whom she mockingly referred to as a “lovely Scottish lass”, and the TV personality India Willoughby.
At the end of the list, Rowling tweeted: “April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren’t women at all, but men, every last one of them.” She said: “Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal. I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new Act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”
Rowling used the hashtag #Arrestme. Rowling also said that the MSPS who voted for the new hate crime laws had “placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls”.
She added: “The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.”
Humza Yousaf, the First Minister, oversaw the passage of the legislation at Holyrood in 2021, when he was justice secretary in Nicola Sturgeon’s government. The Act was supported by almost all SNP and Labour MSPS.
When the Act came into force yesterday, Police Scotland said that a third of officers had still not completed their training regarding the new law.
The force did not reveal how many reports of crime it had received on the first day of the Act.
The legislation creates a criminal offence of “stirring up of hatred”, expanding on a similar offence based on racist abuse that has been on the statute book for decades. The legislation extends this to other grounds on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity. Someone convicted of stirring up hate could face a fine and a prison term of up to seven years.
An amendment to add sex to the list of protected characteristics was voted down, despite cross-party MSPS raising concerns about why women were excluded. Concerns have also been expressed that the legislation’s definition of a hate crime is too ambiguous, potentially leading to a “chilling” effect on freedom of speech and a torrent of vexatious complaints being made to police. In particular, Rowling’s allies have suggested that trans activists have her “in their sights”.
Rowling said Scottish women had been pressured by the SNP Government and the police to “deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable”. The policy of
MORE than a third of Scotland’s police officers have not received training on Humza Yousaf ’s “confusing” new hate crime law, it has emerged amid warnings of a deluge of cases.
The Scottish Police Federation, which represents rank-and-file officers, said they had been allocated only a “cheap” two-hour training course that was not sufficient.
David Kennedy, its general secretary, said 6,000 of Police Scotland’s 16,000 officers had not even completed that yet and admitted he had not either.
Mr Kennedy warned the legislation will mean a huge increase in workload for the force, with families, neighbours and work colleagues being “drawn into a criminal law environment”.
He argued the Snp-green government at Holyrood had failed to provide the force with the funding it required to train officers properly if it wanted to pass such legislation.
A person commits an offence if they communicate material, or behave in a manner “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive”, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics.
But concerns have been expressed that the legislation’s definition of a hate crime is too ambiguous, leading to a torrent of vexatious complaints being made to police.
Asked whether officers were ready for the Act being enforced, Mr Kennedy told BBC Radio Scotland: “Some officers might feel prepared but we’ve raised concerns because it’s only been a twohour online package that officers have been given.
“There’s been various other webinars that Police Scotland have put on but they are not mandatory and we now know I think approximately 6,000 officers are still to go through the online training.
“And we’ve been complaining for several years now about the online training and the lack of face-to-face training that’s required.”
He said officers received two days of face-to-face training after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry but “they haven’t had anything like this for this new law”.
Attacking SNP ministers, he said: “Government have to, if they are going to pass these new laws, they have to provide the finances for the police officers to be trained properly so they can enact these new laws and they haven’t done that.”
Officers in Scotland have also warned the new law could risk reducing the number of bobbies on the beat.
Mr Kennedy said there would be “hours of work” for every complaint, leaving less time for officers to be visible in their communities.
Asked if the additional hate crime workload would cut bobbies on the beat, he said: “It could do as officers will be attending other calls to do with hate crime – they won’t be out and about. There’s very few out and about anyway becuase numbers are so stretched.
“The Chief Constable said the North East pilot (of not investigating ‘minor’ crimes) would increase patrols but I don’t see how that would work with the Hate Crime Act. You are robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Mr Kennedy said the Scottish Government had provided no extra money or officers for the police to enforce the Act, accusing them of having “not done any of the things that we actually require to make it a success”.
“It’s going to bring difficult situations where members of the same family, neighbours, work colleagues, politicians, journalists, anyone you can think of is going to be drawn into a criminal law environment,” he said.
“And that would never have confronted us before. The role of the police is we have to apply the law, and it’s going to be an extremely difficult time. I think it’s going to be confusing and fraught with difficulty.”
Asked if the legislation could be “weaponised” by activists, he said: “Absolutely, you only need to go on X [formerly Twitter] to see. I think there’ll be groups lined up waiting to make complaints about certain individuals.”
Pressed over whether the new law risked angering both sides in controversial debates, he told the programme: “That will cause havoc with trust in police in Scotland, it certainly will reduce that.”
He contrasted Police Scotland’s pledge to investigate every hate crime complaint with a recent announcement that some “minor” offences will no longer be fully investigated.
Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservatives’ justice spokesman, said: “Front-line officers and Police Scotland will pay the price for Humza Yousaf ’s hate crime law while he arrogantly thinks he knows best.
“They will be forced to consider every complaint, no matter how petty or groundless, while telling people they don’t have the resources to investigate real crimes.
“The SNP, with Labour backing, passed this law three years ago, so it’s staggering that thousands of officers have still not been trained.”
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