Chief Constable Simon Cole, the police lead for the government’s Prevent programme, the government’s counter-terrorism drive, voiced concerns in May that upcoming legislation could lead to people being criminalised simply for expressing unpopular views.
In an interview with The Guardian, Mr Cole said the government’s plans may not be enforceable and could make police officers judges of ‘what people can and cannot say’. He argued that we have to ‘have some limits about what you can say, but they need to be as broad as they possibly can be’. Cole added: ‘Unless you can define what extremism is very clearly, then it’s going to be really challenging to enforce. We don’t want to be the thought police.’
