Humza Yousaf is pressing ahead with the SNP’s ‘dangerous’ hate crime laws despite fears they attack free speech.
The First Minister has been accused of rushing through legislation without proper scrutiny after it was confirmed yesterday the laws will come into force from April 1.
Critics say the ‘flawed’ legislation could lead to people being prosecuted for comments made in their own homes, and overburden a police force already facing a financial crisis.
Figures released last year by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service showed a 2 per cent drop in hate crimes in Scotland in 2022-23.
Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Russell Findlay said: ‘Humza Yousaf appears to have been blowing out hot air when he offered to meet those with serious concerns about his dangerous law.
‘He needs to explain why he assured parliament that he would proactively engage with campaigners, only to then ignore them for three years.’
Tory MSP Russell Findlay accused Humza Yousaf of ‘blowing out hot air’ over his assurances regarding the ‘dangerous law’
Mr Findlay also questioned how Police Scotland will enforce the new Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, when it has committed to writing off 24,000 minor crimes a year. He pointed out the ‘belated enforcement’ of the Act ‘comes days after Police Scotland admitted they won’t investigate a range of other crimes’.
The new legislation creates a criminal offence of stirring up hatred against protected groups, expanding on a similar offence based on race that has been on the statute books for decades, as well as consolidating different pieces of hate crime legislation. Under the Act, offences are considered ‘aggravated’ – which could influence sentencing – if they involve prejudice on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or variations in sex characteristics.
The Hate Crime Bill won the backing of a majority of MSPs in March 2021, despite concerns that the whole section on stirring up hatred was ‘fundamentally flawed’.
But, despite gaining Royal Assent in April 2021, the legislation has not come into force because Police Scotland said it needed time for ‘training, guidance and communications planning’.
Critics said it was too ambiguous and impossible to police properly.
Policy analysis group Murray Blackburn MacKenzie (MBM), for example, had sought reassurance that women would not be targeted for stating people cannot biologically transition from male to female and vice versa.
But MBM said yesterday: ‘It is now clear that as well as breaking its promise to involve women with concerns about the Act in discussions soon after it was passed, the Scottish Government went on to devise a public information campaign without giving those women any opportunity for input – and of course that campaign, like earlier ones, has nothing to say about hatred of women.’
One of MBM’s founders, Lucy Hunter Blackburn, accused the SNP Government on X yesterday of ‘arrogant dishonesty’.
Publicly available correspondence shows that on four different occasions from 2021 until the end of December 2022, MBM asked when its contributions would be accepted by ministers.
Following assurances that plans were delayed or not confirmed yet, officials then conceded the notes had already been finalised.
Community safety minister Siobhian Brown said the law ‘will give greater protections … and helps to form the basis of understanding about the type of behaviour that is not acceptable in our society’.
