Lord Herbert of South Downs (Con)

My Lords, I draw attention to my declaration in the register of interests that I am chair of the College of Policing. As I said at Second Reading, we need to remember that there were benign reasons for the introduction of this regime over three decades ago; what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said in this regard was helpful. The purpose was to ensure that the police would pursue intelligence that could build a pattern of behaviour that would result in harm to an individual. That was the case not just in relation to the dreadful murder of Stephen Lawrence but subsequently in the case of Fiona Pilkington, where a repeated pattern of anti-social behaviour had been ignored. It was not criminal behaviour—it fell below that threshold—but it nevertheless resulted in a tragic loss of life. Nevertheless, as has been noted, there has been considerable change over that three decades, with the advent of social media, smartphones and a much more contested policy space in many of the areas relating to hate crimes or alleged hate crimes. There is the risk of a number of consequences. Those have been drawn attention to by noble Lords, but they include the chilling effect on free speech, the tying up of resources unnecessarily —I will come to that—and, I suggest, at least as serious, damage to the reputation of the police, if it is perceived that they are prioritising the wrong things and getting themselves involved in matters that they should not be.