Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye Office,

joined as ever by Ian Hislop, Adam McQueen and Helen Lewis.

We're here to talk about the events of the last weeks,

and who knows, maybe the next weeks too.

And one event that Helen, you've been looking into recently,

is a change in the laws in Scotland.

I won't say any more than that.

Okay, well this is obviously blown up on the first of April when the law came into force,

but it was actually passed in 2021.

It's called the Hate Crime and Public Order Bill.

And essentially the aim of it was to consolidate all existing hate crime legislation

into one easy to swallow package, as it were.

But the controversial thing that it did, which was extremely

controversial even as it went through the Scottish Parliament, was

introduced this new offense of stirring up hatred. Now even then it got

watered down. There was original proposal was that libraries and book shops

would have been able to be prosecuted for selling offensive or loaning offense material.

So things like that got watered down. But all the way through there were concerns that this was a very

illiberal law and sure enough now it's finally

come into force those concerns have come up again. What is stirring up? Well it's

...