Kemi Bedenoch's plan to scrap hate incidents dishonours Stephen Lawrence
The policy that emerged from the young Black man's murder was meant to stop hate before it escalates. Scrapping it doesn't fight crime, it fuels it.
If you thought the Conservatives might be ready to become a serious party, think again. Only the Tories could choose the anniversary of Stephen Lawrence’s murder, a landmark moment in this country’s reckoning with institutional racism, to unveil a policy that actively dismantles one of the key recommendations that followed the inquiry into the young man’s death.
Today, the Conservatives announced plans to scrap the recording of non-crime hate incidents [NCHIs], barring police from logging incidents involving prejudice. While these are not specific criminal offences, they are often warning signs: expressions of hostility towards people with protected characteristics such as race, religion, gender identity, and more.
Announcing the policy, Badenoch dismissed the recording of such incidents as “chasing ideology and grievance instead of justice”. She called it a waste of police time, despite the fact that it was a recommendation born directly from the inquiry into a racist murder that exposed decades of police failure.
On LBC this morning, Home Office minister Chris Philp denied the date was intentional. So which is it? Indescribably tone-deaf, or deliberately provocative? Either way, it tells you everything you need to know about the competence and values of the former governing party.
NCHIs exist for a reason. They were introduced to help police identify patterns of prejudice before they escalate into serious harm. They are a response to the institutional blind spots that failed Stephen Lawrence, his family, and a generation of Black Britons. Scrapping them under the banner of “free speech” and “common sense” isn’t about tackling crime. It’s about pretending hate doesn’t exist, grow, and spiral into violence.
Badenoch claims this will stop officers from “trawling social media” and get them “back to fighting real crime”. But hate doesn’t start with violence. It begins with slurs, threats, intimidation, often a pattern of hostility that precedes something far worse. Recording NCHIs allows police to spot those patterns early. If we wait until that hate spirals into something deadly, politicians have wilfully put marginalised groups at further risk. To call these incidents trivial is not just ignorant, it’s dangerous.
This is nothing more than a culture war stunt from a party in terminal decline, desperate to peel off lost Reform UK voters while the country crumbles. The Tories themselves have spoken in favour of NCHIs. As policing minister just two years ago, Philp stated: “If someone is targeted because of hostility or prejudice towards their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity, the incident can and should be recorded as a non-crime hate incident.”
The economy is flatlining, yet this party has produced no credible fiscal policy. Public services are collapsing, yet they have nothing to say about local authorities or the NHS. Trust in policing is evaporating, not because officers are logging hate incidents, but because of institutional misogyny, racism, and chronic underfunding. This is a party that cut police officers by half, but now blames “wokeness” for public safety concerns.
Badenoch, now fronting a party in freefall, has become the face of performative politics. Her message to marginalised communities is clear: if it’s not a crime, we don’t care, and if it is, don’t expect us to act in time.
This policy is a piece of political theatre; a dog-whistle to the right, designed to stoke resentment and bury the Conservatives’ abject failure. NCHIs don’t criminalise free speech, they prevent hate from metastasising into violence. Dismantling them is not “common sense”, it’s wilful ignorance, and it dishonours everything the Lawrence Inquiry stood for.
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