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The Free Speech Union also questioned why West Yorkshire police had recorded the episode as a “non-crime hate incident”, which it said contradicted national guidance because it appeared to be a trivial matter.
Toby Young, general secretary of the union, sought an assurance that no data had been recorded about the four boys involved or, if it had, to request its immediate deletion. As the school said there had been no “malicious intent”, the recording was inconsistent with rules set by the College of Policing, the national standards body, Young wrote.
Young wrote: “We are hard pressed to imagine a sequence of events more likely to chill public debate and freedom of expression than recording this episode as a ‘hate incident’ and attaching that data to the children’s records, in spite of the absence of any malicious intent.”
Fiona Hamilton and Ben Ellery, The Times, 1st March 2023.
