Hating people is not a crime and the police should stick to enforcing the law rather than trying to create offences that do not exist, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary has warned.

In a stinging rebuke, Sir Tom Winsor said there was no such thing as “thought crime” and he reminded senior police officers it was not their job to declare someone’s hatred of another as an offence.

A number of police forces now treat misogyny and transphobia as hate crimes reflecting increasing public concern about such behaviour.

The trend was led by Sue Fish, the former Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police, who declared misogyny a hate crime in 2014, pledging to treat wolf-whistling and cat-calling as harassment.

But in his final State of Policing Annual Assessment, before standing down as HMIC later this month, Sir Tom said it was parliament’s job and not the police’s to create law.

He said: “It is not appropriate for senior police officers, serving or retired, to assert the right of the police to declare anything criminal, least of all what people might think.

“They have no legal power to create criminal offences in their police areas or anywhere else. It is important no-one is misled, the police enforce the law they do not create it.”

‘It is not illegal to think anything’

Sir Tom said with many competing demands, the police had to prioritise what offences they chose to investigate and he acknowledged they could not investigate every crime.

He said: “The public, through their elected representatives, must decide how much risk and harm they are prepared to accept, and whether they will pay more for higher levels of public safety.”

But at the same time, he said it was vital the police did not drift into investigating thought crimes and hate offences that were not against the law.

He explained: “We do not have thought crime in this country, it is not illegal to think anything. If you take those thoughts and you translate them into an offence then that, of course, can be an aggravating factor and should be reflected in sentencing decisions.”

He went on: “From time to time, one turns on the radio and hears retired chief constables declaring certain things to be crimes which are not crimes and I think it is necessary for me, as Chief Inspector of Constabulary, to make it perfectly clear that the police’s job is to enforce the law, they do not create the law.

“So for a former chief constable or any police officer to say ‘in my police area such and such being a thought is a crime’ is completely unsustainable… just thinking something is not a crime and should never be a crime.”