Member

I do not accept that we need this additional malleable concept, one that has drifted far beyond what Parliament intended to keep the public safe. Indeed, the Minister noted that these provisions were introduced under Mrs Thatcher’s Government in 1986. That is precisely the point: language has not stood still. In the decades since, academic and political activism has increasingly elevated “hurt feelings” into a right not be offended. Too often, police and prosecutors under pressure take allegations of alarm far too seriously. Words like “alarm”, and sometimes even “distress”, now risk being interpreted through a modern lens that is much more censorious than Parliament ever intended.