Disabled Children: Online and Verbal Abuse

Baroness Thomas of Winchester Excerpts

Wednesday 18th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank the noble Baroness for her Question. She is absolutely right to raise it. To mete out hate crime against children must be among the worst types of hate crime of all, because they are defenceless. She will have noticed the Home Secretary’s announcement last week that, having provided more than £450,000 to the Metropolitan Police towards the development of an online hate crime unit, we are now developing a national hate crime hub online. We are also working with industry to tackle hate crime. The police are well aware and working with the CPS on understanding why the number of referrals and prosecutions is perhaps not as high as we might have expected. The volume of reporting tells us that people are becoming less reticent to come forward to report what is frightening crime against their children.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, disability is apparently not listed on Twitter as a specific category, unlike race or religion. Despite reassurances given to Trailblazers earlier this year, it is still not listed. Will the Minister take this up with Twitter as a matter of urgency, as some of the tweets one sees are quite shocking?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I agree with the noble Baroness: not only are they quite shocking, some of them are pretty disgusting. I was unaware that disability was not listed on Twitter, although it certainly is a strand of hate crime. I can tell her that the Home Secretary has been in deep discussion with some of our CSPs, including Google, Twitter and Facebook, and I will certainly raise that back at the department, because I was unaware of it.