'There is a fundamental threat to free speech,' says Jacob Rees-Mogg

It is extraordinary that of all the crimes that are on the rise - knife crime, robbery, theft, drugs - the police are pursuing the rather Orwellian named phenomenon of "non-crime."

Indeed, "non-crime" is the one activity the police should not be pursuing. After all, it's not crime.

It's the type of activity we ought to recognise that is allowed in a free society. But as Allison Pearson revealed on GB News yesterday, the police have been pursuing non-crime hate incidents, like Allison's case.

Sources have indicated that the investigation is now being treated as criminal rather than non-criminal, which is even more alarming.

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The investigation of non-crime hate incidents is a fundamental threat to free speech, as people fear to say what they think in case the police turn up at their front door. A 2016 speech by then-Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, which proposed making it harder to employ foreign workers, was reported as a non-crime hate incident.

Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament, Murdo Fraser, had a non-crime hate incident recorded by the Scottish Police for the non-crime of saying choosing to identify as non-binary is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat.

Perhaps you should have said as a identifying as a bagpipe. Other cases include a man saying I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish.

A woman who claimed her cat was a Methodist. Surely all cats are Cat-holic anyway?

You may think that a non-crime hate incident is innocuous, especially if no charge is brought forward.

That does remain to be seen in Allison Pearson's case, but in some cases they may come up on enhanced DBS checks.

This could cost someone his livelihood for saying something that it is legal to say. Perhaps even more importantly, this phenomenon will ultimately hurt those who have the least voice, the least powerful in society,

If the police have been so indiscriminate as to record them against public figures like Amber Rudd, who can answer back, one can only imagine the number of people who have had them who cannot answer back.

The Free Speech Union has estimated a quarter of a million cases have been recorded in England and Wales.

People with public profiles can fight against these absurdities.

People who aren't known to the public are powerless and left with a potentially career defining blot on their record, all through the crime of not committing a crime.