The Home Secretary should avoid burdening police forces with investigating thought crimes - Andrew Vine

But should the people expressing opinions that make somebody else wince have the police knocking at their door and end up on a database that defines them as spouting hatred, but not to an extent that leaves them liable to prosecution?

No, they shouldn’t. Nasty as the views they are expressing might be, there should be the latitude for them to say what others believe ought to be unsayable.

But that might be about to change. The Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, is considering reversing a decision made by the previous government that eased the duty on police to monitor hate-crime incidents.

Since last summer, officers have only recorded a “non-crime hate incident” if they believe it is motivated by intentional hostility and where there is a risk of it escalating into a criminal offence.

Ms Cooper should leave well alone. If she goes down the path of making the police investigate every complaint, as they did before the rules were changed, they’ll be bogged down in a massively time-wasting exercise that diverts them from far more urgent matters.

And Ms Cooper will find herself bogged down in an argument about where free speech begins and ends that might possibly drag the government into court, as in 2020, when a retired police officer won a ruling that his human rights had been breached by a visit from Humberside Police.

Harry Miller, from Lincolnshire, was interviewed by officers at his workplace after a member of the public complained about his tweets relating to transgender rights. The officers said they were there to “check his thinking”.

That line could have come straight out of Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its offence of “thought crime”.

Mr Miller had committed no criminal offence, but found himself recorded on a police database for a “non-crime” incident.

It is an illiberal and sinister categorisation of somebody as reprehensible and a potential threat even though they haven’t come anywhere near the threshold for prosecution.

You may disagree vehemently with Mr Miller’s viewpoint, but he has every right to express it.

Attempting to police people’s thoughts blurs the important distinction between those expressing strong opinions and people who are a genuine threat to others.

If Ms Cooper needs any persuading to leave matters as they are, she only has to look to Scotland to see what an appalling tangle it all ends up in.

The SNP’s new hate crime law, introduced last year, saw police bombarded with thousands of vexatious complaints about tweets and remarks that took up huge amounts of officers’ time. The absurdity of it all was highlighted by Harry Potter author J K Rowling, who tweeted about transgender issues and challenged the police to arrest her.

It may be unpalatable for some, but the absolute right to cause offence really matters to a free society. There are now, and always have been, MPs in the two major parties whose opinions are actively offensive to opponents. Should they be silenced? Of course not.

Existing laws work perfectly well at distinguishing between those shouting their mouths off and those who are a danger.

The hundreds of people in prison after last month’s riots are testament to that, particularly one nasty piece of work from Leeds who became the first man jailed for stirring up racial hatred online, with a Facebook post urging attacks on a hotel housing asylum seekers.

That’s the category of person who should be getting a knock on the door from police, not one expressing views about the general issue of asylum seekers, even in immoderate terms.

There’s another equally important reason why the Home Secretary should avoid burdening police forces with a whole new round of investigating thought crimes. They’ve got much better things to be getting on with.

Two days before it emerged Ms Cooper was considering changes, it was revealed that the police in most areas of the country are doing far too little to tackle shoplifters, despite the number of offences soaring to record levels.

If we’re talking about something being offensive, then a crime wave sweeping the high street with not enough action to stop it undoubtedly qualifies.

Forget the loudmouths, Home Secretary. Nobody takes any notice of them anyway. Get the police to chase real criminals instead.