Ex-Met Police chief urges ministers to 'look closely' at report calling for end of non-crime hate incidents

A erstwhile Metropolitan Police commissioner has urged ministers to "look closely" astatine a thinktank study calling for non-crime hatred incidents to beryllium abolished.

Lord Bernard Hogan-Howe served arsenic the main of the UK's largest constabulary unit from 2011 to 2017.

He has backed a caller study from the thinktank Policy Exchange, released connected Monday, that calls non-crime hatred incidents (NCHI) a "distraction" from policing priorities.

A NCHI, arsenic defined by the government, is: "An incidental oregon alleged incidental which involves oregon is alleged to impact an enactment by a idiosyncratic ('the subject') which is perceived by a idiosyncratic different than the taxable to beryllium motivated - wholly oregon partially - by hostility oregon prejudice towards persons with a peculiar characteristic."

It comes aft an probe into Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson was dropped.

She claimed the probe was primitively for a NCHI but an Essex Police spokesperson antecedently told Sky News it was ever being treated arsenic an probe into an alleged transgression offence of inciting radical hatred.

On the caller report, Lord Hogan-Howe said: "The archetypal intent astir Non-Crime Hate Incidents was well-intentioned - to effort and spot incidents that mightiness pb to racist attacks and transgression successful the future."

But helium added that determination had been "little statement astir their efficacy".

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He continued: "Whether thing is simply a transgression is an nonsubjective statutory test. Whether thing is simply a Non-Crime Hate Incident is simply a subjective trial based connected guidance - producing inconsistent outcomes.

"Parliament alternatively than the College of Policing has to determine whether the constabulary should beryllium investigating radical for Non-Crime Hate Incidents and however they are recorded.

"I would impulse ministers to look intimately astatine this Policy Exchange study to pass the way they mean to take."