More than 62,000 people have been arrested for "speech offences" over the last five years — including for social media posts

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

7 September 2026

It is clear that the UK is in the midst of a free speech crisis. A few weeks ago, a poll by the group Liberty revealed that more than half of Britons feel their free speech rights have become more restricted since Labour came to power in July 2024.

Now, there is yet more evidence of a serious problem with free speech in the UK. Big Brother Watch is to publish a new report this week that is enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone who values their right to speak freely.

Thanks to a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, Big Brother Watch has found that, over the last five years, 62,199 people have been arrested for 'speech offences', with 18,510 charged and 12,292 convicted.

This is not the sort of thing that should be happening in the UK — a purportedly proud, free, liberal, western democracy. It is a national embarrassment. Writing in the Daily Mail on Sunday, the Free Speech Union's General Secretary, Lord Young of Acton, asked why the authorities were spending so much time policing our tweets when they could be policing our streets.

Rather than addressing the rise in shoplifting, mobile phone theft, and sexual assault, the police are obsessing over 'offensive' comments posted online. How can the police feasibly continue to complain that they are underfunded and under-resourced when they are focusing on vexatious complaints and hurty words online? In 2023, ninety per cent of all crimes went unsolved, yet over the same five-year period more than 62,000 people were arrested for 'offensive' comments and messages online.

In 2024, Policy Exchange revealed that police forces across England and Wales spend a combined 60,000 hours a year investigating and recording non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) — many of them relating to hurty words online. While the Home Secretary has announced that NCHIs in their current form will be scrapped, their successor regime of 'anti-social behaviour incidents' could prove equally chilling. On top of that, the zealous enforcement of the Islamophobia definition — repackaged as 'anti-Muslim hostility' — is already being weaponised to silence those who dare to legitimately criticise, debate, challenge, or mock Islam. The Free Speech Union has also exposed through The Telegraph the sinister tactics and criteria used by the Forfeiture Committee to strip people of their honours over posts they make on social media that challenge progressive and prevailing orthodoxies.

The report cites a shocking example of this overzealous policing of free speech: a vulnerable young girl who was visited at home by West Midlands Police over an image of a teacher, accompanied by negative comments, that had been posted on TikTok. The police demanded that the girl hand over all of her devices and either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest — despite the fact that she had not created, shared, or commented on the post. In the end, although the police defended their handling of the case, no further action was taken.

"Shoplifting, mobile phone theft, and sexual offences are all on the rise, yet the police seem increasingly obsessed with catching thought criminals.

"The sheer number of people being arrested for online offences, even though only one in five ends up being convicted, cannot help but have a chilling effect on free speech.

"People up and down the country daren't say what they think about a whole range of issues for fear they'll get a knock on their door at four in the morning by a couple of plainclothes officers wearing rainbow lanyards," Lord Young of Acton has said.

The Free Speech Union has long raised concerns about the number of people being arrested for 'offensive' comments and messages on social media, and has helped countless members among our 48,500-strong membership who have had their collars felt by the police over social media posts. This includes Graham Linehan, the Irish comedian and co-creator of Father Ted, who was arrested as he landed at Heathrow Airport by five armed police officers over three lawful gender-critical posts on X.

Graham's case shocked the nation and attracted attention in the United States — even from President Trump and his team. It was a national embarrassment. The Metropolitan Police subsequently announced that it would no longer investigate non-crime hate incidents, publicly apologised to Graham, and paid him £25,000 in taxpayer-funded compensation.

Another truly shocking case was that of Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine, who were held for eleven hours on suspicion of harassment and malicious communications after complaining about their daughter's school in a parents' WhatsApp group. In the end, Hertfordshire Constabulary admitted the arrest was unlawful and paid £20,000 to the couple in compensation.

Speaking to The Sun about the shocking statistics, the Conservative MP and Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said: "Freedom of speech is a cornerstone of British democracy. People should not be arrested for a tweet or Facebook post, no matter how much you may disagree with it.

"Police shouldn't be wasting time on the internet. They should be catching real criminals."

Big Brother Watch has said that 'the elasticity of vaguely defined speech offences' in legislation such as the Online Safety Act has also led to wide divergences between arrest rates across the country. The Free Speech Union has long argued that there is a postcode lottery of free speech across the country, with some forces more zealous than others in their policing of speech.

It is clear that the directive to arrest people for social media posts, instead of focusing on real crimes — policing tweets, not the streets — comes from the top. According to the Big Brother Watch report, some police forces made fourteen times as many arrests per capita as neighbouring forces. Cumbria Police, for example, arrested 25.7 people per 10,000 over five years — around two-and-a-half times the national average — while neighbouring Northumbria arrested just 1.9 people per 10,000 over the same period.

Big Brother Watch is now calling on the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, to order an independent review of our laws and police training to restore Britain's free speech laws and culture. The Free Speech Union fully endorses this call.

"There is mounting concern among the public that speech policing is out of control in Britain, and it's long overdue that the government takes action.

"Andy Burnham must now launch a free speech reset and order an independent review of our laws and police training around speech, in order to fix this Orwellian mess.

"Thousands of people are being arrested for controversial speech, online jokes, and non-violent protest. People have even been arrested for holding blank pieces of paper, and urged to take 'online thinking skills' courses by police. Enough is enough," the Director of Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, has said.

This report further demonstrates the threat to free speech in this country. Andy Burnham must get a grip on this problem. Free speech in Britain is on life support.

Read more in The Mail.