After complaint from member of the public, police say they will not be investigating speech as a hate crime

A speech about foreign workers given by the home secretary, Amber Rudd, at the Tory party conference in October has been officially recorded as a hate incident, police have confirmed.



Rudd said in her speech that she wanted to make it harder for British companies to employ migrants and to ensure foreign workers “were not taking jobs British workers could do”.

The speech was followed by a background briefing by an aide who suggested firms could be required to publish lists of foreign workers. Rudd herself confirmed the next day that such lists were an option, but the idea was quickly dropped.

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Media coverage of the speech so alarmed an Oxford University physics professor, Joshua Silver, that he complained to the police. “I felt politicians have been using hate speech to turn Britons against foreigners, and I thought that is probably not lawful,” he told the Times.

His complaint was dealt with by West Midlands police as the Tory conference took place in Birmingham.

National police reporting rules introduced in 2014 and endorsed by Rudd herself require all complaints of hate crime incidents to be recorded “regardless of whether or not those making the complaint are the victim and irrespective of whether or not there is any evidence to identify the hate crime incident”.

West Midlands police have now written to the professor saying they have concluded an assessment of his complaint and they will not be investigating Rudd’s speech as a hate crime. “The matter has been recorded in line with the National Police Chiefs’ Council manual as a non-crime hate incident,” the force told the professor.

A Home Office spokesperson said: “This was not a hate crime. The home secretary has been crystal clear that hatred has absolutely no place in a Britain that works for everyone. She’s made countering hate one of her key priorities; indeed, one of the first public interventions she made was to launch the hate crime action plan.”

The policy of blanket recording of all complaints of hate crime incidents was drawn up by the College of Policing in 2014 with the justification that increased reporting would help police to tackle hate crime more effectively.