Honours recipients deemed to have posted 'offensive' comments could be stripped of awards, according to official guidance

HONOURS recipients deemed to have posted ‘offensive’ comments online could be stripped of their awards, according to official guidance.The forfeiture committee, which sits in secret and considers complaints made against honours holders, can now consider ‘hate incidents’ as rationale for action.These can be where ‘the victim or anyone else thinks [the incident] was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on one of five prescribed characteristics - disability, race, religion, transgender identity or sexual orientation’.It raises the spectre of people being stripped of honours from MBEs to knighthoods for comments deemed to have caused offence – even if their remark does not breach any laws.Lord Young of Acton, founder and general secretary of the Free Speech Union, warned the move could make potential recipients ‘think twice’ about accepting an honour in the future.Details of the guidance emerged as a report by campaign group Big Brother Watch found more than 60,000 people have been arrested over the past five years for 'communications offences' – many of which were social media posts.Lord Young said: ‘[If] people know their honours could be withdrawn if they say something politically contentious that the committee disagrees with, even if it's a perfectly legal, mainstream view, anyone Right of centre will think twice about accepting one in future."The guidance to the forfeiture committee, reported by The Sunday Telegraph, states: ‘The overriding consideration for the committee should be the question: 'Have the actions or inactions of the individual brought the honours system into disrepute?'’ Homelessness campaigner Nick Buckley MBE revealed the existence of the guidance after a Freedom of Information requestIt adds: ‘A post on Twitter [now X] by a high-profile recipient, under an open account with hundreds of thousands of followers, would probably be judged more serious than the same post tweeted by an individual with a locked account that is not publicly accessible, and a small number of followers.’The guidance may apply to ‘hate incidents’, which ‘cannot be prosecuted’ - where comments ‘do not amount to criminal conduct’.The Free Speech Union (FSU) called criteria for withdrawing awards ‘far too broad’.Details of the new guidance was revealed by homeless campaigner Nick Buckley, who was awarded an MBE in recognition of years of charity work.The committee investigated Mr Buckley and considered removing his MBE for social media comments it considered ‘beyond political comment’, which had allegedly ‘brought the honours system into disrepute’.Among controversies involving Mr Buckley - who stood as an independent against Andy Burnham in the 2021 Great Manchester mayoral elections – were posts on X about boxer Anthony Joshua last year.In 2020, Buckley was removed then reinstated by the board of Mancunian Way, the homelessness charity he founded, after calling the Black Lives Matter movement 'neo-Marxist'. Lucy Connolly, whose offensive social media post led to her being jailed, is among the 60,000 people arrested over 'communications offences' in the last five yearsMr Buckley, who was allowed to retain his award, found out about the guidance after making a Freedom of Information request.In a letter demanding the guidance by made public, Mr Buckley wrote: ‘Without a transparent policy, all honour-holders will be in a position where they feel unable to express their beliefs without jeopardising their honour.’The Cabinet Office declined to comment.Separately, a report by Big Brother Watch – to be published this week – reveals the extent of arrests for ‘communications offences’, some as trivial as viewing disparaging TikTok videos.It discloses that at least 62,199 people in the UK have been arrested over the past half-decade, with 18,510 being charged and 12,292 convicted.Campaigners say that although a proportion of the arrests will be justifiable - such as intervention to stop threatening messages from abusive partners in domestic violence cases - the scope of the laws has spawned a rash of over-zealous policing.The report cites the case of West Midlands Police visiting the home of a vulnerable teenage girl to accuse her over a TikTok post containing a teacher's image with negative comments.They demanded that the girl hand over all her devices and either attend a voluntary interview or face arrest - even though she had not created, shared or commented on the video.In another high-profile case, Lucy Connolly was jailed for 31 months after calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set on fire in the wake of the Southport murders in July 2024.Toby Young, director of the Free Speech Union, told The Mail on Sunday: '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.’Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said: 'Andy Burnham must order an independent review of our laws and police training around speech, in order to fix this Orwellian mess.’