Scotland’s hate crime law will force police to make cuts, warn senior officers

The Scottish hate crime law will force police to make cuts, senior officers have warned as staff work overtime to deal with the volume of complaints. 

The chairman of the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) has warned that the police service will be forced to “not do something” because of the demand being placed on officers.

Police Scotland has been inundated with more than 6,000 complaints since the law took effect on April 1, and control room staff have been paid overtime as they struggle to handle the volume.

David Threadgold, the SPF chairman, told The Scotsman: “At some point in the next financial year, the police service will not do something because of the demand that it’s being placed under now. That will have an impact later on in the year – there’s no doubt about it.”

The SPF has previously warned that the overtime costs incurred as a result of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act would result in a bill of “hundreds of thousands” of pounds for the taxpayer.

Calum Steele, who was general secretary of the SPF until last year, said Police Scotland was “negligently unprepared” for the consequences of the new legislation, which was now putting pressure on staff.

Within the first 48 hours of the law coming into effect, Police Scotland had been inundated with 3,000 calls, which officers must work through individually, separating genuine complaints from those Humza Yousaf has termed “vexatious”.

The First Minister himself was the subject of numerous complaints over a 2020 speech in which he pointed out that most senior government and judicial positions in Scotland were white.

He faced renewed opposition ahead of the most recent legislation taking effect, with JK Rowling raising concerns that the law would make describing a transgender person’s biological sex a potentially criminal offence.

The author said she would not refrain from voicing her gender-critical views, which maintain that biological sex cannot be changed because someone identifies as the opposite gender, and would be willing to be arrested. Police Scotland stated that Rowling’s comments were not criminal.

Speaking on Saturday, Mr Yousaf accused “bad actors” of spreading “misinformation” about the legislation and its scope.

Responding to critics of the new law, such as Rowling, he said:  “I would tell them to stop spreading disinformation. It is not going to help anybody. This is a piece of legislation that was passed by every single political party in Scotland, minus the Conservatives.

“There’s deliberate misinformation being peddled by some bad actors across Scotland – it’s hardly surprising the opposition seeks to do that. What we’ve got is a piece of legislation that in the actual Act itself, explicitly in black and white, protects freedom of expression, freedom of speech.

“At the same time, it makes sure that it protects people from hatred being stirred up against them, and that is really important when we have far too many incidents of hatred that can be because of their age, disability, sexuality or religion.”

A women’s rights march has been planned to “test” the new law, with Kellie-Jay Keen, a gender-critical campaigner, set to bring her Let Women Speak rally to Edinburgh on Saturday.

Ms Keen, an outspoken critic of the view that people can change their gender by self-identification said: “I am pretty sure most of the women coming are going to do some nice chants in unison, which will definitely test the law so we will see what they [the police] do.”