- Peers have voted to abolish non-crime hate incidents, nearly five months after the Metropolitan Police announced it would cease investigating them.
- The proposal, put forward by Lord Toby Young of Acton as an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, was backed by 227 votes to 221.
- Non-crime hate incidents are defined as acts motivated by hostility towards individuals based on protected characteristics, which do not constitute a criminal offence.
- The amendment seeks to ban police from processing personal data for these incidents, require forces to purge existing records below a certain threshold, and prevent their release in Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks.
- Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, expressed strong concerns, arguing that such incidents can escalate from verbal abuse to violence and that tracking them is crucial for prevention.
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