A new Big Brother Watch investigation found British police recorded at least 62,199 arrests for communications offences from 2021 through 2025, with dramatic differences in enforcement rates between police forces across the country.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
British police made at least 62,199 arrests for communications offences during a five-year period, averaging roughly 34 arrests per day, according to a new civil liberties investigation warning that enforcement of the country’s speech-related laws varies sharply depending on where people live.
The Big Brother Watch report, published Sept. 7, examined arrests under Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and Section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023 between Jan. 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2025.
Read the full report:
Britains-Free-Speech-Problem-070926
The 62,199 figure is a minimum rather than a complete national total. Big Brother Watch sent Freedom of Information requests to all 45 territorial police forces in the United Kingdom and received complete arrest data from 38. Some forces supplied incomplete records, while others declined to provide figures or had information still outstanding. The organization estimated that if missing jurisdictions arrested people at the national average rate, the five-year total would rise to approximately 73,000.
The study found particularly large regional differences.
Cumbria recorded 25.69 communications-offence arrests per 10,000 residents between 2021 and 2025, followed by Northamptonshire at 23.35, the City of London at 20.51, Essex at 19.57 and Durham at 17.00. At the other end of the scale, Staffordshire recorded 0.58 arrests per 10,000 residents, Surrey 1.70, Northumbria 1.87, Dorset 2.18 and Humberside 4.13.
Big Brother Watch argued that differences of that magnitude cannot readily be explained by normal regional variations alone and said broadly written communications laws may be interpreted and enforced differently from one jurisdiction to another.
“If individuals face substantially different risks of arrest depending on where they live, the principle of equal treatment under the law is called into question,” the group said.
The disparity was also evident in charging decisions. The report recorded 18,520 people charged with communications offences during the five years examined. Cumbria had the highest per-capita charging rate at approximately 8.3 people per 10,000 residents, about 2.7 times the national average, according to the research.
Big Brother Watch said the gap between arrests and charges raises questions about how readily arrest powers are being used, noting that an arrest itself can have lasting consequences even when prosecutors never bring a case.
“The process of being arrested is punitive and a temporary restriction on liberty that can have lasting effects,” the report stated.
The research separately identified 12,292 convictions for the three communications offences in England and Wales over the same period. The authors cautioned that the conviction figures cannot be treated as the final stage of the same arrest-to-conviction pipeline because they come from different datasets, cases take time to reach court and Scotland and Northern Ireland are excluded from the conviction figures.
Free Speech Union founder Lord Toby Young wrote in the Mail on Sunday that police resources were being directed too heavily toward online expression.
“Why are the authorities spending so much time policing our tweets when they could be policing our streets?
“Shoplifting, mobile phone theft and sexual offences are all on the rise, yet the police seem increasingly obsessed with catching thought criminals. The sheer number of people being arrested for online offences, even though only one in five end up being convicted, cannot help but have a chilling effect on free speech.
“People up and down the country daren’t say what they think about a whole range of issues for fear they’ll get a knock on their door at four in the morning by a couple of plainclothes officers wearing rainbow lanyards.”
Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo called for the government to conduct an independent review of laws and police practices affecting expression.
“There is mounting concern among the public that speech policing is out of control in Britain and it’s long overdue that the government takes action.
“Andy Burnham must now launch a free speech reset and order an independent review of our laws and police training around speech, in order to fix this Orwellian mess.
“Thousands of people are being arrested for controversial speech, online jokes and non-violent protest. People have even been arrested for holding blank pieces of paper, and urged to take ‘online thinking skills’ courses by police. Enough is enough.”
Big Brother Watch describes the findings as part of a broader problem involving online regulation, protest restrictions and policing practices. Its report calls for an independent national review of laws affecting freedom of expression and argues that successive governments have created an increasingly complicated framework governing speech.
The figures do not mean that all 62,199 arrests involved merely offensive jokes or controversial political opinions; communications offences can encompass a range of conduct prohibited by the statutes examined. The report’s central finding, however, is that tens of thousands of people have been arrested under those laws and that enforcement varies dramatically among British police forces, prompting the group to question whether the country’s existing legal framework provides sufficiently consistent protections for freedom of expression.
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