Yousaf ’s hate crime laws drive cost taxpayers almost £400,000

ALMOST £400,000 in taxpayers’ money was spent on promoting the SNP’s new hate crime laws.

The Hate Hurts advertising campaign, which focused on the pain words could cause, urged Scottish people to make complaints to police.

The law is widely seen to have backfired after Police Scotland was swamped with 7,152 complaints in the first week of the legislation coming into force, with just 240 being assessed as actual crimes.

The Scottish Government spent £389,689 on its Hate Hurts campaign, which ran last month over 21 days in the run-up to the laws coming into force on April Fool’s Day.

Sharon Dowey, deputy justice spokesman for the Scottish Tories, said: “The huge sum of public money lavished by the SNP on promoting Humza Yousaf ’s shambolic hate crime law will rightly stick in the craw of Scotland’s police officers. Police Scotland could desperately use that £400,000 as they plough through the mountain of extra work generated by SNP ministers encouraging the public to report incidents – and which we’re told is leading to a huge overtime bill. It also makes a mockery of SNP ministers’ apparent shock at the number of vexatious complaints being made to police.

“They ran a nationwide publicity drive, at taxpayers’ expense, urging people to report hate incidents to the police, and now have the cheek to wring their hands at the volume of them.”

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which was passed by MSPs in March 2021, creates a new offence of stirring up hatred against protected characteristics, including age, disability, religion, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Police officers have said that members of the public have used the new laws to swamp them with vexatious complaints, often to fuel personal or political vendettas.

The Hate Hurts campaign included posters and a television advert in which the lead character said: “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words make me feel hated just for being me.”

David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said: “That £400,000 would have been better spent being given to Police Scotland.

“To spend £400,000 on this and give nothing to Police Scotland is ironic.”

The Scottish Government has been approached for comment.