A Labour MP has labelled the police investigation into Allison Pearson over a social media post as “Stasi-like”. Graham Stringer, the MP for Blackley and Middleton South, said the police should be focusing on fighting crime rather than intimidating journalists and threatening press freedom. The Telegraph has the story.
Mr Stringer, a former leader of Manchester city council, said: “We are in a critical phase where we have to protect the things that most of us have taken for granted about freedom of the press and freedom of speech.”
His comments come 12 days after police officers called at Ms Pearson’s home at 9.40am on Remembrance Sunday to tell her she was under investigation for allegedly stirring up racial hatred in a social media post on X a year ago.
They invited her to a voluntary interview but allegedly refused to tell her any details about which post was being investigated or who had made the complaint against her.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, Mr Stringer asked Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister: “Is she as concerned as I am about the Stasi-like interview that was given to Allison Pearson, The Daily Telegraph journalist, a week last Sunday?
“And does she agree with me that the Essex police force and other police forces would be better trying to deal with shoplifting, burglaries and other crimes, rather than intimidating journalists?”
Ms Rayner said “free speech and our press” was “part of our democracy”, adding: “But also in direct response to his question, of course police are independent and it’s a live investigation, and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on that.
“But I do believe that we should have a free press – it’s part of our democracy – and we should have free speech. But with that comes responsibility of those that do it.”
Speaking to The Telegraph after the exchange, Mr Stringer said the police action over Pearson appeared to be part of a pattern of restrictions being placed on journalists and politicians.
He cited recent cases, highlighted by The Telegraph, including that of Julie Bindel, a prominent feminist writer, who was visited by two police officers at her home on a Sunday afternoon after one of her posts was reported by a “transgender man” from the Netherlands.
Tom Hunt, a former Tory MP, also revealed at the weekend how a non-crime hate incident (NCHI) was recorded against his name following a complaint from a Labour activist.
Mr Stringer said: “We are being squeezed down as to what we can say. There’s a feeling that journalists and politicians have to be worried about what they write or say and it is threatening.
“Some of it is self-imposed. I think we should say loudly and clearly that people can say what they like so long as it is not inciting violence of some sort.”
Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, demanded tighter rules on police recording non-crime hate incidents by raising the bar for recording them so they were only logged if there was a “real and imminent risk of criminality”.
This would increase the threshold even higher than the tighter level he set in government last year. Those guidelines stipulate that officers are only allowed to record a non-crime hate incident if it is “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and where there is a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.
However, since then, the number of non-crime hate incidents recorded by police have increased despite the crackdown. It also emerged last week that children have been among thousands of people investigated by police for non-crime hate incidents in the past year.
They included a nine-year-old who called a primary school classmate a “retard” and two secondary schoolgirls who said that another pupil smelled “like fish”.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, has committed to making it easier to report non-crime hate incidents related to anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
Last week, a Downing Street spokesman said: “The Home Office is looking at how to do this whilst also balancing the fundamental right of free speech, and ensuring that the police can spend their time dealing with the issues that matter most to our communities.”
Worth reading in full.
