Member

One core presumption of non-crime hate incidents is that certain types of speech presage much worse, often violent incidents. Actually, the notion of escalation was used against the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that I spoke on last week, as though the public are just one hateful word or opinion away from launching a racist pogrom and must be stopped by early intervention or recorded, because if they have said that, they are bound to be the type of person to go and kick the hell out of someone. That is insulting and wrong and is a misunderstanding of speech. That kind of early-warning notion that is incorporated into the potential intelligence of non-crime hate incidents does not amount to much more than surveillance of society for no crimes.