Another nail in Hate Crime Bill’s coffin

Bad law part of SNP dysfunction, says Government’s OWN adviser

HATE CRIME BILL FACES OVERHAUL Yesterday’s Daily Mail

to scrap the legislation. However, Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf admitted there are ‘legitimate concerns’ and pledged to find ‘compromise’ with critics of the Bill.

Law chiefs, senior police officers, sheriffs and journalists have condemned the proposed legislation as being badly drafted and a threat to public debate.

Writing in the Courier newspaper, Mr Bell said: ‘Yet another piece of SNP legislation illconceived, badly drafted and ultimately unloved. If Bills were children, the Scottish Government would have filled an orphanage by now.’

He said that even Mr Yousaf ‘doesn’t really think the Hate Crime Bill is essential in its existing form’.

Mr Bell added: ‘This gap between desire and delivery, idea and outcome, is a big problem for the SNP. They wanted to tackle sectarian hatred, but the Offensive Behaviour and Threatening Communications Act of 2012 had all the clarity of a Rorschach inkblot.

‘Looking after children better is hugely desirable, but the Named Person Bill was toxic. Good intentions undone by bad politics and lamentable drafting. All governments withdraw or amend some of their own legislation. It’s good to know when you are wrong.

‘The SNP have withdrawn, struck down or failed at too many policy initiatives. From the Local Income Tax Bill onwards, this is more than democratic correction. It is a sign of profound dysfunction.’

He said the SNP’s Bills were ‘not born of moral passion or a lifetime’s pursuit’ but instead ‘they pop up circumstantially, get drafted in a hurry, become the focus of the Government’s story until no longer popular, then fall away never to be mentioned again’.

Mr Bell said ‘something is going very wrong’ when ‘so many good intentions get snarled up in bad language and law’. He blamed ‘group-think’ in the dominant SNP, ‘a political class easy with failure’ and parliamentary scrutiny that was ‘not rigorous enough’.

He added: ‘There is no more aspirational policy than independence. But the party advocating it has repeatedly demonstrated it’s not very good at drafting things; it doesn’t have a handle on detail.’

He said the SNP needs ‘better policy and better people’.

Scottish Conservative Justice spokesman Liam Kerr said: ‘even former Scottish Government advisers can see this legislation is deeply flawed.

‘The SNP Government needs to swallow its pride and admit it got it wrong.’