Conservative and Reform UK politicians are fuelling “hysteria and anger” over immigration, with criminal trials put at risk of collapse, former ministers and police have warned.
Protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers have spread across the country in recent weeks, while debate about immigration – including instances of misinformation – has intensified.
At a Reform press conference on Monday, a man awaiting trial was referred to as “the criminal” by a Reform council leader despite not yet being convicted of any crime. Questioned on whether contempt laws had been broken, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, said it was “good” that the council leader had become “slightly emotional”.
Amid growing pressure, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said on Tuesday that she had asked for a change in official guidance to permit police to release the ethnicity or immigration status of criminal suspects.
Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative attorney general, told the Guardian he was concerned about the “fuelling of hysteria by politicians” and said some were breaking the law by commenting on future trials in serious cases such as rape and abduction. Certain politicians “seem to have thrown the rulebook in the bonfire”, he said.
Britain’s former top counter-terrorism chief warned that comments from Farage and the Tory shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, risked “unwittingly” inciting violence, accusing them of copying Donald Trump’s techniques by hyping fears over immigration to try to win votes.
Neil Basu, a former assistant commissioner with the Metropolitan police, said it was “appealing to the worst kind of populist sentiment”. Asked if such rhetoric risks contributing to a risk of last summer’s violence, Basu said: “Yes … they should be very careful about the language they use. It is capable, demonstrably, of causing violence.”
The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, said it was time for the attorney general, Richard Hermer, to issue a formal warning to Farage about comments on live criminal cases.
“Farage and the Conservatives are … openly trying to tear down our justice system, just as the Maga movement has done in the US,” Davey said. “Irresponsible comments like these put prosecutions at risk and could let dangerous criminals walk free. The attorney general must step in and send a formal warning to Farage that contempt of court will not be tolerated.”
Others who appealed for a change in tone included the former justice secretaries Robert Buckland, David Gauke and Charlie Falconer, as well as the former chair of the justice select committee, Sir Bob Neill, who said they were worried about the febrile environment – though several said more transparency from police over the ethnicity of suspects was also now necessary to calm tensions.
The row over information withheld by police has been reignited after the 19-year-old Reform leader of Warwickshire county council, George Finch, said police were refusing to confirm details of two suspects charged after an alleged rape.
Among other examples cited by critics was data used by Jenrick that 40% of all of the sexual crimes were committed by foreign nationals last year. The number of convictions is significantly lower.
Grieve said he was extremely concerned about the consequence of the frenzied atmosphere on contempt of court laws, also citing the trial of two British Pakistani men over a police assault at Manchester airport. “With social media, contempt of court has gone out of the window,” he said.
“It seems to be that it’s a complete free for all, and for politicians who ought to know better to participate in this is actually scandalous. Certainly with some of the recent cases, politicians seem to have thrown the rulebook in the bonfire.”
Buckland said he had supported changes to make the nationality of offenders publicly available, but he was concerned about the potential for misinformation. “Politicians have a responsibility to use objective and tested data rather than distorted or incomplete information,” he said.
Neill, a former Tory MP, said he was in favour of more transparency but alarmed at the willingness of politicians to risk undermining the courts. “I’m afraid some people, including people in elected office, frankly do not understand the importance of the checks and balances in our system, which includes protecting the jury system,” he said.
The former Labour justice secretary Charlie Falconer said: “The opposition feel the need the whole time to get headlines by constantly describing things in an extremist way, all the time it’s saying, ‘society will be on the verge of collapse unless something is done,’” he said.
“The language is much, much worse than it ever was five years ago. There’s a more angry electorate, and there’s too many politicians willing to use lurid language.”
A Home Office source said it was vital that there was “greater clarity on how contempt of court laws work alongside social media and today’s communication environment”, but stopped short of issuing warnings to politicians.
Hermer has so far declined to intervene to warn politicians on the risks of potentially collapsing criminal trials.
In a sign of how far misinformation has spread, polling from YouGov found the British public “dramatically overestimate” the number of illegal migrants to the UK. Almost half of Britons – 47% – think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally rather than legally, including about a third who believe it is “much higher”.
There are varied estimates of the numbers of those living in the UK without formal status, which is difficult to calculate, but the Migration Observatory’s most recent figures said it was up to 1.3 million. But legal migration is far higher – about 10.7 million people in the UK were born in a different country.
Attitudes to migration have significantly hardened. About 45% of Britons say they would support “admitting no more new migrants, and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave”.
Rights groups including Amnesty International have cautioned against releasing suspects’ ethnicities, accusing the government of “choosing to pour fuel on the fire of dangerous narratives, instead of taking action to address racism and hostility”.
Cooper said the government had asked the Law Commission to review the guidance six months ago and expected it to conclude in the autumn. “We do think the guidance needs to change,” she said, adding that it was already the case that where police deemed it necessary more information on nationality was released.
