IT is entirely possible that the Scottish Parliament has passed a law which has caused more controversy than the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act, but I have not heard of it.

Practically since it came into force, and indeed even before it was passed in 2012, the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act – I’ll call it OBTA for short – has caused disagreement and made a lot of otherwise sensible people spout a load of tosh.

I’ll declare an interest – I supported the legislation when it was going through Parliament, not least because I personally got a phone call from a senior Strathclyde police officer to formally warn me of possible danger because I helped Neil Lennon to write his memoirs. I can assure you Neil is happy down south and, funnily enough, he does not miss the sectarian attempts to bomb and murder him.

I am not entirely happy with the Act, now. It was indeed rushed through Parliament. But what else could be done?

As a member of the SNP I supported action against bigots, but I knew OBTA was never going to be enough. After all, the problem of religious bigotry in Scotland is about 550 years old, and sectarianism in football itself is getting on for a century.

So to think, as some of its proponents did, that you could legislate bigotry out of Scotland overnight was a pipe dream. Yet something had to be done, because even though plenty of effort was being put in to education about the wrongs of hate crime at football, the incidences of bigoted and sectarian behaviour were not decreasing.

Well they are now. Hidden among the statistics recently released by the Scottish Government about the workings of OBTA was a little gem of information – across all classes of hate crime, including those now reported under OBTA, last year there was a three per cent decrease in charges in relation to religious hatred which are now at the lowest level since 2007-08. There was also a 9 per cent decrease in charges in relation to race, now at their lowest level since 2003-04. There was a 5 per cent decrease in charges in relation to sexual orientation, the first time there has been such a decrease since legislation was introduced in 2010. Sadly, there were 177 charges reported in relation to disability in 2014-15, a 20 per cent increase, which one campaigner I know opined as being due to the fact that disabled people are getting to know their rights and are not going to take the hatred any more – good for them.

The football-related statistics were even more encouraging. In 2014-15, there were 193 charges of offensive behaviour at regulated football matches. That is a 6 per cent decrease on last year, and means that there was a 28 per cent reduction in such charges from the first to the second full year of operation of the Act.

Even better for football was the fact that there were only 89 charges inside stadiums in 2014-15, compared to 109 charges in 2013-14, and 165 in 2012-13. Spot the trend?

Overall, the number of convictions since OBTA came in to force is just 38, which to me proves that the courts have rigorously enforced the greatest of all qualities of Scottish justice – that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

The conclusion can only be that, despite all the criticism, OBTA has had a good effect, and I am delighted that hate crime overall is on the wane.

You could argue that Rangers’ ignominious descent to the lower reaches of Scottish football has meant only one Old Firm game in the past three years, and that certainly helps the statistics, but the fact is that fewer people are being charged with such offences and that means the would-be perpetrators are getting the message.

There are still people who go to football to be offensive. I actually don’t mind Rangers fans waving No leaflets and I just scratch my head when I hear Celtic fans singing about the historic IRA when the IRA hardly sing about its past any more. Nor do I consider these Celtic fans to be Plastic Paddies, just merely misguided about their club’s history – they should ask why Celtic in the 1890s associated itself with the non-violent struggle for international justice of the great Michael Davitt, rather than the men of violence in Ireland.

What I found really offensive was Jim Murphy’s pathetic call for repeal of OBTA, and the Scottish branch office of the Labour Party is still determined to abolish it and replace it with a law that they haven’t actually given details of. Celtic FC, too, are just plain wrong to oppose OBTA, not least because football’s rules state that “the promotion or announcement of political or religious messages or any other political or religious actions, inside or in the immediate vicinity of the stadium, by any means, is strictly prohibited before, during and after matches,” as Fifa says.

Proof that Murphy and all his cohorts don’t know the Scottish public’s mind came on the same day as the statistics were issued, when a YouGov poll revealed that 83 per cent of Scots supported legislation to tackle offensive behaviour at football and 80 per cent of those polled directly supported OBTA.

It seems that the people of Scotland overwhelmingly want action taken against those who would be offensive at football matches. The law needs to be reviewed, and is being so now – it must be more specific about what constitutes “offensive” – but while some idiots continue to break the law and therefore act like criminals, unfortunately they need to be criminalised.