A broad coalition of organisations and individuals is looking on the Scottish government to stall implementation of its latest Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which comes into force on 1 April.
The latest law makes it against the law to ‘fire up hatred’ against certain groups, but serious concerns have been raised concerning the impact on free speech and civil liberties.
The Free to Disagree campaign group is urging the Scottish government to “halt and rethink” the controversial latest laws.
It has raised concerns about how latest and “poorly understood” ‘stirring up hatred’ offences will sit alongside existing policy requiring the police to analyze and log ‘non-crime hate incidents’.
“There is an actual risk of wrongful police investigations at far too low a threshold,” it said.
Free to Disagree is a broad umbrella group compromising former Deputy SNP Leader, Jim Sillars, The Christian Institute, The National Secular Society, The Peter Tatchell Foundation and the Adam Smith Institute amongst others.
The group has also criticised Police Scotland’s creation of ‘Third Party Reporting Centres’ where people can report alleged hate crimes. Among the centres are a sex shop and the headquarters of LGBT Youth Scotland.
Police Scotland has pledged to analyze every hate crime grievance it receives despite saying recently that it will not investigate every ‘low level’ crime.
A spokesperson for Free To Disagree said, “It is obvious that there are still serious issues with this laws, particularly regarding police and public understanding of the brand new law. If a law shouldn’t be clearly understood by the people implementing it, and the individuals who stand to be punished under it, it would fail.Â
“Free to Disagree has all the time warned that the brand new approach is unworkable and we would urge the federal government to re-examine.”
The laws, which was spearheaded by First Minister Humza Yousaf when he was Justice Secretary, has attracted criticism far and wide, with Twitter owner Elon Musk calling it “an example of why it’s so necessary to preserve freedom of speech”.Â
Harry Potter writer JK Rowling has called the law “ludicrous” and said she is going to not remove trans-critical posts from her X, formerly Twitter, account before 1 April.Â
“If you genuinely imagine I’d delete posts calling a person a person, in order to not be prosecuted under this ludicrous law, stand by for the mother of all April Fools’ jokes,” she said.Â
On Monday, a spokesperson for Downing Street criticised the laws and said there have been no plans to introduce similar measures south of the border.
The spokesperson told the Daily Mail: “I would not need to comment or speculate about individual cases, however the Prime Minister himself believes in free speech.
“For example, he has been very clear on what the definition of a lady is, and that biological sex matters, and he doesn’t consider that that ought to be controversial.
“For the federal government’s part, we might never and are usually not introducing any similar sort of laws here in England. And we would be very aware of the potential for chilling effects on free speech.”
Martin Davie is a lay Anglican theologian and Associate Tutor in Doctrine at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
