It's called devolution, and what it means, of course, is that administrations, be it in Scotland or Wales, or local mayors will take whatever national government does and take it even further.
And in this context, today saw coming into law the Hate Crime and Public Order Act Scotland 2021.
Now, we've had hate crime legislation in a sense since 1986. What's the object of it been? Well, to stop incitement, to stop language that might encourage behaviour that would genuinely be dangerous. That's always been the bar.
My worry with this legislation is it contains words like 'likely' is what you've said 'likely' to perhaps cause somebody to be seriously hurt, whether that's physically or emotionally. And we've even lowered the bar so much, that terms that are insulting could be drawn within this legislation.
Nigel Farage reacts to Scotland's new hate crime legislation
GB News
By the way, the maximum penalty if you break this law is an unbelievable seven years in prison. I'm not quite sure what this means for JK Rowling, who says quite clearly that trans women are not real women.
Will she be one of the first victims of this? I simply don't know.
Whilst we do want to live in a society that is civil to each other, and whilst I think we all understand that incitement is genuinely dangerous and wrong at every level, here's my real worry about this legislation.
Let's say two people have a bust up, a fallout. It could be in business, it could be within a family, it could be an argument in a pub, and somebody can go and make a complaint to say that you've said something absolutely outrageous, deeply unpleasant, without any evidence whatsoever.
That goes on to a police file. The police look at it and say there is a lack of evidence, and yet that will be recorded on your police file as a non crime hate incident.
And even though you've done nothing wrong whatsoever, you're just the victim of a vexatious attack that is going to be on your file forever. And that to me is a very dangerous, slippery slope.
Do you agree with me? Am I getting perhaps too paranoid about it? Tell me I'm wrong. Is this dangerous?
