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The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing the debate; I am profoundly grateful to him. He and others who have taken part will know that the issue of disability hate crime has been close to my heart not just as Solicitor General but as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament, and indeed as a parent, for a number of years.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) made particularly apposite remarks about the fact that many people in our society just do not know somebody with a disability. That lack of understanding and awareness lies at the heart of some of the attitudes that we see towards disability. It is too big a picture to be laid at the feet of any particular Government or of an alleged ideological approach to austerity, which I utterly reject. It is a long-term societal issue, and only in recent years have all of us, irrespective of party, started to wake up to it and put ourselves in the shoes of individuals with disabilities.
I reiterate the Government’s co-ordinated and cross-departmental approach to the issue. I am particularly delighted to welcome the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, whose presence at this Westminster Hall debate eloquently represents her commitment to the issue. We have met about it, and we will continue to meet and, more importantly, to take co-ordinated action to ensure that all relevant parts of Government do everything they can to tackle this scourge, because scourge it is.
I am equally grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who did so much as Minister for Disabled People to advance the cause, paying attention to the sort of detail that he has raised today. I hope to be able to answer his questions, and indeed those of the hon. Member for Bootle. I will seek to do so in the course of my remarks.
As I said, it is important to put ourselves in the shoes of a person with disability. That person faces three things. First, they sometimes lack the awareness that they have been or continue to be the victim of a crime, because for so many people with disabilities it has become normal and part of their way of life—it is just something that they accept. We know that is not good enough. Secondly, when that lack of awareness ends and a person starts to understand that they are a victim, what do they do? Who will listen to them and help them to report the crime? Thirdly, when that crime is reported, how do the authorities deal with it? Those are the three stages of the problem that need to be understood. It is clear that we need to do more to support people with disabilities at every stage.
I am grateful to the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for South Down (Ms Ritchie) for raising the Northern Ireland experience. We have discussed before the Leonard Cheshire initiative, which puts advocacy at the heart of the project. Advocacy for people with disabilities will be the key to unlocking many of the issues that have come up, and we are seeing that approach taken widely in parts of England, Wales and Scotland. In my own area, Swindon, I am lucky to have the Swindon Advocacy Movement, an organisation that empowers people with disability to understand their rights and entitlements and helps them if they have been the victim of crime or abuse. It is all about a move away from doing things to or for people with disabilities and towards helping people with disabilities to help themselves and empowering them to become part of mainstream society.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran was right to remind us that only 20 years ago, before the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which was passed by a Conservative Government—I am proud of that—people with disabilities were facing a kind of Jim Crow situation. They were not able to access mainstream life and were being excluded—not only physically excluded from premises, but excluded, in a societal way, from mainstream life.
Therein lies one of the problems. One of the perceptions we need to challenge at all times relates to what disability means to people with a disability themselves. We sometimes use the word “vulnerable” a bit carelessly; there is an assumption that just because somebody has a disability then they are automatically vulnerable is not helpful to them. I think a person with a disability would say to us that there are times when they end up in situations that make them more vulnerable than others, but that does not mean that they are vulnerable at all times. Once one starts to make that sort of cosy assumption, the wrong sort of conclusions are reached. For example, people start to ask questions about why people with disabilities go out in public. Why do they go nightclubbing or shopping? Why do they do all these things that put them in danger? That is the wrong approach.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
I agree entirely with the point that the Solicitor General is making. Nevertheless, does he accept that there can be situations in which vulnerable people are taken advantage of by confidence tricksters? We should focus on that as well.
The Solicitor General
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that point. I welcome him warmly to his position and congratulate him on attaining it. It is a pleasure to work with him. He is quite right to talk about “mate crime”. Perhaps such examples highlight one of the deficiencies and inadequacies of using a phrase such as “hate crime” to describe the full panoply of crimes committed against people with disabilities. Mate crime is an insidious way in which perpetrators gain the confidence of often isolated and sometimes rather lonely people, perhaps with a learning disability such as autism, or another disability, and, using the trust they have built up, proceed to abuse it, very often in the form of financial crime, such as fraud, or worse—violence and sexual crime are also covered by the definition of mate crime. That is worse than confidence tricksters; it is an abuse of trust. In my mind, that makes the crime even more serious.
I am grateful to my right hon. and hon. Friends and Opposition Members for having raised some of the important figures and statistics relating to the increase in the number of reported disability hate crimes and, indeed, prosecutions for those offences. There has also been an increase in the use of the sentence uplifts that are available to judges under section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, from just over 5% of cases in 2014-15 to 11% of cases in 2015-16. We are coming from a low base, but that is going in the right direction.
The hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) asked about the recording of applications in which there has not been an uplift. I hear what he says, but the difficulty is that the Crown Prosecution Service is currently recording a vast number of indices through the flagging system, and it is difficult for every area of the CPS to record information with precision and then translate it in a way that makes it readily available to people like me. I hear what he says and will certainly ask whether it would be feasible, but I have to put that caveat on his request. It is clear to me that having more data is always useful, but it is then a question of how they are to be used and understood. We need to step back from that to a more fundamental position on training and awareness.
Jim Shannon
I indicated in my contribution that the figure for prosecutions was down in the past year, and asked whether that was because the police were not giving the issue the focus and priority that they should. If the Minister can answer that now, that would be good, but if not I am happy to wait for a response. Is disability hate crime a priority for the police?
The Solicitor General
I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance he seeks. On as many of the questions he asked as possible, I shall outline the measures that are being taken. The mandated package of training—to which I think he referred in a question to me in the main Chamber some months ago—has been delivered through a classroom-based approach, as opposed to using the internet. That is very important. It was a mandated package, so it had to be delivered to all prosecutors, and it was delivered between September last year and January this year. In particular, it incorporated the victim’s perspective and provided support on identifying evidence of hostility in order to obtain those important recorded sentencing uplifts.
I parenthesise a moment by reminding Members that section 146 is not the end of the story when it comes to how judges should sentence for offences with a disability element. There are guidelines that allow judges to look at the situation or vulnerability of the victim and their characteristics and take that into account when assessing the overall length of sentence. That message, too, has gone out loudly and clearly to all those involved in the prosecution of crime.
Members should reflect on where we hit a difficulty—perhaps we can debate this in future—which is on how to approach sentencing when it comes to people with invisible, not hidden, disability. I think in particular of learning disability and autism. Far too often, the perpetrator is able to say, “Well, I didn’t know he was autistic.” That puts the judge in a very difficult position, because they then do not have evidence of either hostility or some sort of motivational offence, or that the perpetrator even knew about the victim’s characteristics. We are getting into the debate about the eggshell skull theory, with which the hon. Member for Torfaen will be familiar, but it is a debate we need to have when it comes to how adequately we protect and support people with invisible disabilities.
I turn to the other questions that Members asked. I am glad to say that the hate crime assurance scheme is happening, and that live files are being tracked as a result. That is helping to support the quality of casework, with real-time scrutiny as cases progress.
As we have seen, that scheme is having results with an increased number of sentencing uplifts being applied. It also checks all finalised hate crime cases, so that we can identify best practice and any lessons that can be learned. In other words, and to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Torfaen, the failed applications are being looked at and that is a vital part of how we can improve our approach.
Members are aware, of course, of the 13-week consultation published by the Crown Prosecution Service in October, which sets out the approach taken by the CPS to such crimes. A plain English version of that consultation is available too, which is particularly important for people with disabilities themselves, so that they can have their voice heard. Also, the legal guidance for prosecutors will be updated and published at the same time as the consultation response, so work is ongoing.
The statement that has been provided by the CPS has been developed with the involvement of interested groups and community representatives, who have highlighted the social model of disability. That model suggests that the prejudice, discrimination and social exclusion experienced by many disabled people is not the inevitable result of their condition but instead stems from the various barriers that they experience daily and that hon. Members have talked about in this debate. That social model is the basis on which the CPS understands, dismantles and reduces the effects of those barriers, as far as we are able to, leading to improved safety and security, access to mainstream life and indeed work, where appropriate, for people with disabilities.
Last month, the CPS also published two guides on the recognition and reporting of hate crimes for individuals and agencies who might be the first to hear about a hate incident. Those guides are intended to increase public confidence and in turn improve reporting levels, so that they more accurately reflect the experience that we know people have in their communities.
We have already discussed such third-party reporting, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) gave an example of it. I was delighted to meet the organisation she referred to when I visited CPS Manchester earlier this year. Indeed, I pay tribute to such organisations, including the one in my constituency that I mentioned earlier, and to campaigners such as Stephen Brookes MBE, who is from Blackpool and who has long championed the issue of third-party reporting, showing that where it is done well it really makes a difference for people with disabilities. My message to hon. Members, therefore, is that if, for whatever reason, they do not have third-party reporting in their community, they should ask why and see whether such provision can be improved.
The hon. Member for Bootle also asked about senior management. I am happy to tell him that I will be in Liverpool next week, at the CPS senior management conference, and he can bet his bottom dollar that I will raise the issue of disability hate crime in his home town. It is important that that is not a one-off but another example of how law officers, the Director of Public Prosecutions and senior leaders can set a good example.
On judicial meetings and the links that we have with the judiciary and the DPP, the issues that we are discussing are raised on a regular and systematic basis. Although sentencing is, of course, an independent function, we can ensure that the policy context is fully understood by those responsible for sentencing.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean mentioned education, and the Government have allocated—as part of our hate crime action plan—important funding to help to equip teachers to have what can sometimes be difficult but important conversations with young people, by funding programmes through organisations such as the Anne Frank Trust UK and Streetwise. Again, the training that teachers receive through those programmes will be classroom-based and of real use.
My right hon. Friend also mentioned social media. The Government are clear: whether online or offline, crime is crime and the CPS and the police will follow the evidence wherever it leads and however difficult it is to follow it. An unfortunate perception has arisen that, somehow, something online is more difficult to trace. I just do not accept that; there is a clear evidence chain there. All of us know that removing things from the internet is not as easy as it might seem—thank goodness, in the context of such offending—and the message must go out loud and clear that online abusers will be detected and prosecuted, wherever it is appropriate to do so.
I will deal with the points that have been made about the Law Commission. Its report is an important one, which I have read and considered myself. I am happy to say that, although the Government have not come to a fixed conclusion about the extension of the aggravated offences to cover all five protected characteristics, that matter is still very much under review. As a prosecutor myself in my former life, and having used such offences since they were introduced in the late 1990s, I know that they had a transformational effect and therefore I understand their power. In the meantime, however, it is very much a question of the police, the CPS and all agencies using the powers that they have more effectively.
Hon. Members mentioned the cross-Government hate crime action plan, which includes a proper emphasis on increasing awareness of and support for victims. It is clear that if a person with a disability feels that they will be taken seriously and listened to, they are more likely to come forward.
I go back to the point I made at the beginning of my speech about the importance of perception from the viewpoint of another person. We want to increase the reporting of hate crime by improving the reporting process itself, for disabled people and for people with other protected characteristics.
The CPS has played an important part in contributing to that hate crime action plan. It has made a number of commitments, which will be delivered by 2020, and I will continue—as a law officer—to work with the CPS, to ensure that perpetrators are punished and to publicise successful prosecutions, because that will create confidence among the members of a community that when hate crime is reported, action will be taken.
New guidance will be produced by the CPS—
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the Solicitor General’s 20-minute speech, but Members will be aware that it is now a courtesy to allow the mover of the motion to wind up the debate.
The Solicitor General
I am very grateful to you, Mr Bone, for that clarification. I will conclude by saying that for far too long people with disabilities have accepted being treated as second-class citizens. That is why I commend the work of the CPS in tackling the scourge of hate crime and I again thank the hon. Member for Bootle for raising this important issue.