By Bill Heaney
If calling someone an Orange bastard or Fenian scum isn’t a hate crime then I don’t know what is — and neither do the police.
Lots of other people are ignorant of the law in this regard, and politicians are now trying to define exactly when the police should feel your collar for cursing in a manner such as this.
Labour MSP Pauline McNeill said today that action must be taken now on the SNP government’s “flawed and incomplete” Hate Crime Law, which has stirred up such a fuss around Holyrood.
Pauline says that since being implemented two weeks ago, the SNP government’s Hate Crime Act has unravelled “due to poor implementation and a disastrous failure to communicate the meaning and use of the bill to the public”.
With only two hours of on-line training being offered to Police Scotland officers in advance of the law being introduced, the SNP government has completely failed to support Scotland’s police officers who have faced thousands of calls and reports regarding the law.
As Ally McCoist almost said a large number of the 48,000 crowd at Ibrox for the recent Rangers v Celtic match were quite likely to have been breaking the law.
Astonishingly, he said that he would too until he realised he had put his size nines in it and the police would be waiting with the snitchers ready to put on him at the gates of his soccer alma mater.
Unsurprisingly, he called off when someone wiser told him going to the game might be very bad idea.
With a bit of bad luck, he could have quickly become a test case in the courts.
Serious concerns have been raised over the potential impact on human rights by this new law and the practice of recording of non-criminal hate incidents in Scotland.
Scottish Labour is now demanding that hate incident reporting be urgently reviewed to ensure there is transparency and it complies with human right law. This is especially important following the publication of the code of practice for England and Wales.
But while Police Scotland have demanded support and the public have required clarity, the SNP government has buried its head in the sand with ministers repeatedly contradicting themselves on the meaning of the law and thousands of pounds are being wasted on the misguided ‘Hate Monster’ campaign.
Pauline McNeill says: “The complete failure of the SNP government to tackle the issues surrounding the law has led to the Tories’ cynically using the chaos caused by the SNP to attempt to torpedo the entire bill.
“Today, Scottish Labour is demanding post-legislative scrutiny to tackle the several issues surrounding the implementation of the bill.”
The Labour grievance extends beyond the usual stuff.
The MSP is demanding that the government to use the powers it has to add sex as an aggravator of hate crime “as Scottish Labour has long supported”.
Scottish Labour justice spokesperson Pauline McNeill said: “The implementation of this bill by the SNP has been a disaster from start to finish.
“The SNP had an opportunity to show that this Act could be sensibly and correctly implemented, but instead they have ended up with disastrous messaging such as the Hate Monster campaign while completely failing to resource Police Scotland.
“Two weeks on and the public are none the wiser over what this bill means, and people are no more protected than before.
“That’s why today Scottish Labour is demanding immediate action to include the protected characteristic of sex as a hate crime aggravator to the bill, to properly resource Police Scotland and for a new and comprehensive communication strategy to explain what it is that the bill means for the people of Scotland.
“Separately, there must be a review of the recording of hate incident reporting to make sure it is compliant with human rights law and prevents the recording of vexatious complaints.
“We cannot allow the catastrophic incompetence of the SNP to allow the Tories to cynically exploit their failure and prevent hate crime legislation from being enacted.”