The concept first surfaced in guidance published by the College of Policing in 2014 and within five years 119,934 non-crime hate incidents had been recorded by 34 police forces in England and Wales, according to FoI requests submitted by the Telegraph. Nine police forces didn't respond, but if we assume they were logging NCHIs on the same scale, it's likely that more than a quarter of a million have been recorded to date. Little wonder the police won't send anyone round to your house if you report a burglary. They're too busy investigating people accused of wrongthink.
So this new guidance - in reality, a statutory code of practice that requires the approval of both houses of parliament - is long overdue. Free-speech campaigners like me have been lobbying Conservative home secretaries about NCHIs for years, not least because they're used as a weapon by political activists and religious zealots to silence their critics. A carefully worded complaint accusing your antagonist of being motivated by 'hostility' towards you on the basis of a 'protected' characteristic, e.g. your race, religion or sexual orientation, will result in a summons to the local police station. But Suella, God bless her, is the first one to sit up and listen. She recognises that meting out this punishment to anyone who challenges woke dogma is having a chilling effect. 'We need a common sense approach that better protects freedom of speech,' she wrote in the Times.
Comment: The petty and immature 'ban Russia from sports' has been going on since 2016.