Hate Crime

Baroness Hussein-Ece Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I applaud the courageous words of my noble friend and her statement that she will not be intimidated. She will know better than I do that many of the Muslim community are being intimidated by this leaflet when it arrives; they do not know where it came from or how the sender got their address. That is why there is a serious police investigation to find the source of the leaflets, and I urge anybody who receives one to report it and, as my noble friend suggested, to contact Tell MAMA.

The Government condemn the content of these letters. As I said in the Statement, it is abhorrent and has no place in a decent society. I know that the Prime Minister, who as Home Secretary took a number of initiatives in partnership with my noble friend, will want to reflect on the exchanges in the other place yesterday and today to see whether we can build on some of the other initiatives that my noble friend referred to and whether there is further action that we can take in order to counter hate crime in this country today.

[Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)]

My Lords, I also thank the noble Lord for his response and pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, for all the work that she did. This is deeply tragic and upsetting, and it is clear that it is part of a larger campaign to vilify, divide and terrorise Muslim communities in this country. It is something that we must never give in to. I certainly will not be bowed by threats. I have had death threats purely because I come from Muslim heritage; I was told on social media that my head would be chopped off and put on a spike outside Parliament, and the police were involved. But I will not give in, and I am sure that many people will not. However, there are very vulnerable people in our community.

I say also that the media have to take responsibility for the constant drip-drip of vilification in their headlines and the finger-pointing at Muslims generally that we have seen gradually reaching fever pitch in this country. Programmes give time to peddlers of hate crimes. There are lurid headlines and finger-pointing, which I mentioned. Indeed, the Minister had to correct a Member of this House and point out that the sort of language that we are hearing from politicians has no place in this society.

I have one question. The Government mentioned the Prevent strategy. Do the people who take part in it have the expertise to deal with far-right extremism of this kind? We know that the strategy deals with Islamophobia, but do they have that kind of experience? How confident is he?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The hate crime action plan that I referred to a moment ago is going to be refreshed this year, and we will take on board the points that she and other noble Lords have made. I will make one final point: yesterday there was a Commonwealth service in Westminster Abbey, where all faiths were represented and a script from every religion was read out. That is the sort of country that we are and should remain, and we should put the issues that the noble Baroness and others have referred to in the perspective of this broader picture.