UK Government Watch

Scotland's disgraceful new hate crime law has come into force that will undoubtedly restrict free speech and give power to those wih a scores to settle regardless of the merits of their claims.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 creates a new crime of stirring up hatred relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. The maximum penalty is a prison sentence of seven years. A person commits an offence if they communicate material, or behave in a manner, that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive, with the intention of stirring up hatred based on the protected characteristics.

The bar for this offence is lower than for the other protected characteristics, as it also includes insulting behaviour, and as the prosecution need only prove that stirring up hatred was likely rather than intended.

As well as the offence of stirring up hatred, the Hate Crime Act also consolidates the existing law on crimes which are aggravated by prejudice. These are where an offender demonstrates malice or ill-will towards their victim based on a protected characteristic, which can be taken into account by a sheriff or judge with a longer sentence or a higher fine than would otherwise have been the case. This is the first time that age has been included in the list of protected characteristics for aggravated offences, a move welcomed by some campaign groups.

Adam Tomkins, professor of public law at Glasgow University, and a former Conservative MSP, voted against the bill because it could see someone convicted of stirring up hatred for a comment they make in private in their own home, not just in public, and I just don't think that's where the criminal law belongs.

Susan Smith of For Women Scotland fears those who are investigated under the new law will have their lives upended.  She told BBC News:

The tests are quite woolly and we don't know how people are going to interpret this. We do anticipate that there will be a lot of malicious complaints, a lot of rather trivial complaints and potentially people who are investigated will see their lives upended. I imagine there will be many complaints, for example, made against JK Rowling.

Ch Supt Rob Hay of the Association of Scottish Police Superintendents (ASPS), which represents senior officers, said there was the potential for a huge uplift in complaints about social media posts. And as is so often the case, the police have sided with complainers and have pledged to investigate every hate crime complaint it receives.

BBC News understands that these will be assessed by a dedicated team within Police Scotland including a number of hate crime advisers to assist officers in determining what, if any, action to take.

Abusers, trolls, and predators online now face a fleet of tough new jailable offences from Wednesday 31 January, as offences for cyberflashing, sending death threats, and epilepsy-trolling are written into the statute book after the Online Safety Act gained Royal Assent.

These new criminal offences will protect people from a wide range of abuse and harm online, including threatening messages, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images known as revenge porn, and sending fake news that aims to cause non-trivial physical or psychological harm.

Dubbed Zach's law, a new offence will also mean online trolls that send or show flashing images electronically with the intention of causing harm to people with epilepsy will be held accountable for their actions and face prison.

Following the campaigning of Love Island star Georgia Harrison, bitter ex-partners and other abusers who share, or threaten to share, intimate images on or offline without the consent of those depicted will face jail time under new offences from today.

Those found guilty of the base offence of sharing an intimate image could be in prison for up to 6 months, or 2 years if it is proven the perpetrator also intended to cause distress, alarm or humiliation, or shared the image to obtain sexual gratification.

Cyberflashing on dating apps, AirDrop and other platforms will also result in perpetrators facing up to two years behind bars where it is done to gain sexual gratification, or to cause alarm, distress or humiliation.

Sending death threats or threatening serious harm online will also carry a jail sentence of up to five years under a new threatening communications offence that will completely outlaw appalling threats made online that would be illegal if said in person.

A new false communications offence will bring internet trolls to justice by outlawing the intentional sending of false information that could cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to users online. This new offence will bolster the government's strong commitment to clamping down on dangerous disinformation and election interference online.

In the wake of sickening content, often targeted at children, that encourages users to self-harm, a new offence will mean the individuals that post content encouraging or assisting serious self-harm could face up to 5 years behind bars.

While much of the Online Safety Act's protections are intended to hold tech companies and social media platforms to account for the content hosted on their sites, these new offences will apply directly to the individuals sending threatening or menacing messages and bring justice directly to them.

Some of the offences that commence from today will be further bolstered too, when the wide-ranging Criminal Justice Bill completes its passage through Parliament.

The UK Government's Department for Science, Innovation, Technology and Censorship has called for evidence to inform the final recommendations of its 'Independent' Pornography Review. The government writes:

The government wants to ensure that any legislation and regulation operates appropriately for all pornographic content, and that the criminal justice system have the tools they need to respond to online illegal pornographic material, and exploitation and abuse in the industry.

The Independent Pornography Review involves a comprehensive assessment of the legislation, regulation and enforcement of online and offline pornographic content, and is overseen by Independent Lead Reviewer Baroness Gabby Bertin.

The review will take an evidence-based approach to develop a range of recommendations on how to best to achieve the review's objectives:

• understand the prevalence and harmful impact of illegal pornography online, and the impact on viewers of other forms of legal pornography, including emerging themes like AI-generated pornography, and the impact on viewer's attitudes to violence against women and girls;

• assess the public's awareness and understanding of existing regulation and legislation of pornography;

• consider the current rules in place to regulate the pornography industry, comparing online and offline laws;

• determine if law enforcers and the justice system are responding to illegal pornography sufficiently, and if change is needed;

• find out how prevalent human trafficking and exploitation is in the industry, before recommending how to identify and tackle this;

• use this knowledge to set out what more can be done to provide those who need it with guidance on the potential harmful impact of pornography.

To ensure the review's final recommendations are robust, it is important that a broad range of views and evidence are considered. This call for evidence invites:

• members of the public

• the government

• subject matter experts

• organisations

to contribute to the review.

The call for evidence closes on 7 March 2024.