Summary

This is the evidence the Legal Advisory Council of the FSU has submitted to the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee about the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. It is already an offence under Scottish law to stir up racial hatred, but this proposed legislation will extend this so it applies to “stirring up hatred” against people on the basis of their religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity or variations in sexual characteristics, where “stirring up hatred” is defined as behaving in “a threatening, abusive or insulting manner” to a member of one of these groups, either with the intent to stir up hatred or where that is the likely outcome.

This definition of “hate crime” is far too broad and will enable groups claiming to speak for people in these protected categories to lobby the authorities to prosecute anyone who challenges their ideology on the grounds that doing so is likely to stir up hatred. Under this new law, not only will those who challenge identitarian dogma be vulnerable to prosecution, but anyone who possesses “inflammatory material” will be too, as will theatre producers who put on plays expressing these forbidden ideas and the actors who perform in them. If the Bill passes, Scotland will become the most aggressive regulator of speech in the United Kingdom and one of the most belligerent in Europe. And it could easily become the basis of a similar law in England and Wales.

Several members of the Legal Advisory Council contributed to this document, with Andrew Tettenborn, Professor of Commercial Law at Swansea University, pulling the contributions together.