Former SNP minister accuses Yousaf of botching hate crime laws

A former SNP cabinet minister has accused Humza Yousaf’s government of botching the introduction of hate crime laws as a poll indicated they are supported by just one in five Scots.

Jeane Freeman, who was health secretary when the controversial laws were passed three years ago, claimed the scale of the backlash had shocked ministers and criticised the government for not effectively explaining the scope of the legislation to the public.

She said that excluding women from the laws, which offer new protections to males who identify as women and crossdressers, had been a blunder that exposed a lack of “political nouse”.

Her stinging intervention came as it emerged that Police Scotland had been swamped with 8,000 hate crime complaints since the new laws were introduced just a week ago. These do not include a “small number” of hate crime reports which were made during Sunday’s Rangers vs Celtic Old Firm game.

Meanwhile, a new poll found that just 21 per cent of Scots wanted to retain the legislation, with more than twice as many, 45 per cent, believing it should be abolished. Almost one in three SNP voters (31 per cent) are among those who believe the law should be repealed.

Ahead of the legislation coming into force, the SNP government and Police Scotland launched a controversial campaign urging members of the public to report instances of “hate” and emphasising the hurt feelings words could cause.

SNP politicians also repeatedly refused to clearly clarify to what extent “misgendering” a trans person, meaning to refer to them as a member of their biological sex rather than self-proclaimed gender identity, would become illegal.

Deliberately provocative

Police took no action against the author JK Rowling when she called a series of high-profile trans women men in a deliberately provocative social media post on the first day that the legislation came into force.

Ms Freeman, who stepped down from Holyrood at the 2021 election, said she had “huge frustration” at how the introduction of the new laws had gone.

While she accused the media and some commentators of spreading “misinformation” she also criticised the government’s handling of the issue.

“My impression is that the furore, nonsense and genuine concerns, because it’s been a mix, that we’ve seen over the last week has caught the Scottish Government by surprise,” she told BBC Radio Scotland.

“I really do not think it is beyond the wit to plan for and prepare, that this particular piece of legislation, coming at this particular point in the electoral cycle, will be used if you leave loopholes in it, and don’t set out clearly what it does and doesn’t do, by those who oppose your political stance overall as a government.”

Ms Freeman said the refusal to include misogyny in the legislation had been one such “loophole” which was “wide open to be exploited” by opponents and insisted she had argued against the omission at the time.

The Hate Crime Bill was steered through Holyrood by Humza Yousaf while Nicola Sturgeon was First Minister in March 2021, but enforcement began last week.

“I have two sets of conflicting frustrations,” Ms Freeman, who voted for the law, added. “One, about how this has been handled, prepared for and presented, and the other being how it has been mishandled and misinformed in a lot of the presentation and comment.

“I’m getting a bit tired of reading stuff that says ‘we consulted with stakeholders’. That’s great. But that’s not the same as wider consultation. It’s not beyond the wit of any government to do that well and do it properly.”

Protecting women

Russell Findlay, justice spokesman for the Scottish Tories, said Ms Freeman was correct to say the law should have protected women but that “people might wonder why she still voted for it.”

He added: “Her scathing attack on the incompetence of her former SNP government colleagues is welcome but will be cold comfort for women’s rights campaigners and police officers who are left having to deal with the deluge of complaints.”

The new poll, showing only one in five voters wanted to retain the law, was carried out by the polling firm FindOutNow, after being commissioned by Alex Salmond’s Alba Party.

When undecided Scots were removed from the figures, 68 per cent wanted the new law to be scrapped, just days after its introduction.

When the legislation was passing through Holyrood, Police Scotland said that it expected the number of new offences reported would be “likely to be minimal and could be accommodated within the [force’s] normal day-to-day activities”.

However, David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, which represents officers, said the new law had been “a disaster and  officers are swamped under a deluge of complaints.”

Meanwhile, Jack McConnell, the former Labour First Minister, described the new laws as “unworkable”.

Writing in the Sunday Mail, he said officers would be left to deal with many “simply spurious” complaints amid tight police budgets.

“The arguments between feminist and transgender campaigners – excluding crimes against women from the act has inflamed the situation with many women feeling their concerns are ignored,” he wrote.

“This is exactly what good legislation should seek to avoid.”

The Scottish Government has been approached for comment.