Sounds like they're making it out to be a budget issue as opposed to standing up for free speech.
Then again, there is no free speech in the UK. A lot of people are being arrested, charged with hate crimes, and convicted on said charges just for making edgy jokes on social media. The Count Dankula incident was just the tip of the iceberg.
The thing about free speech is...you either have it or you don't. There's no in between. If you can get arrested and be stripped of your civil liberties (or what few you have) because you made the wrong joke, expressed the wrong opinion or criticized the wrong ideology (trying to make misogyny a hate crime was ultimately an attempt to ban criticism of feminism) then you don't have freedom of speech.