Kemi Badenoch has said people need to stop “wasting police time on trivial incidents” after officers visited a journalist at her home over a year-old tweet.
The Conservative Party leader said such incidents are “like children reporting each other” and that Sir Keir Starmer should review laws around them to show he believes in free speech.
Allison Pearson, a Telegraph columnist, said police knocked on her door on Remembrance Sunday and informed her she was being investigated for alleged incitement of racial hatred over a post online that has since been deleted.
“There has been a long-running problem with people not taking free speech seriously,” Mrs Badenoch told The Telegraph.
She added: “We shouldn’t have journalists getting visited by the police for expressing opinions. That’s absolutely wrong, we need to look at the laws around non-crime hate incidents.”
“Keir Starmer says he is someone who believes in these things. Now he needs to actually show that he does believe it. All we’ve seen from him is the opposite.”
Ms Pearson said she initially thought she heard the policemen at her door say they were investigating a “non-crime hate incident”.
Essex Police dispute this and said the officers, who had made attempts to contact Ms Pearson before the visit, were clear the alleged offence was inciting racial hatred.
Mrs Badenoch said: “We need to stop this behaviour of people wasting police time on trivial incidents because they don’t like something, as if they’re in a nursery.
“It’s like children reporting each other. And I think that in certain cases, the police do it because they’re afraid that if they don’t do it, they will also be accused of not taking these issues seriously.
“So I don’t like criticising the everyday police who are carrying these things out. I know some of them have got the wrong ideas. It is about what message the leadership is sending.”
Essex Police said the officers went to an address in Saffron Walden on Sunday to invite Ms Pearson to attend a voluntary interview as part of their investigation.
A spokesman said: “We’re investigating a report which was passed to us by another force.
“The report relates to a social media post which was subsequently removed.
“An investigation is now being carried out under Section 17 of the Public Order Act.”
Ms Pearson said she was told the investigation was about a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
She said the officers were unable to give her details of the post in question or identify her accuser, which they said was due to laws governing procedure.
“This was the most extraordinary overreach and state intrusion into my private life and I don’t think I did anything wrong and I think their response was outrageous,” Ms Pearson said.
She said she had no recollection of what she posted but that if it was a year ago, it could have been linked to the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel or pro-Palestine marches shortly afterwards.
