Disabled People: Disability Hate Crime

Debate between Lord Rix and Baroness Browning

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rix]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to help the police and other agencies to respond more effectively to disability hate crime.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Browning)]

My Lords, hate crime, including that targeting a person’s perceived disability, is an issue that the Government take very seriously. That is why the coalition’s programme for government included a commitment to improve the recording of such crimes. We are also working with the police and others to increase the reporting of hate crimes against disabled people and on ways of identifying repeat victims more quickly.

[Lord Rix]

I thank the Minister for that response, which follows what Paul Burstow, the Minister for Care Services, told us last week at the launch of the Mencap initiative with regard to hate crime. But is she aware that, ever since the Welfare Reform Bill was tabled, certain inflammatory reports have appeared in a number of media alleging that people on disability benefits are scroungers and layabouts? Does she agree that such inflammatory language can lead only to more disability hate crime? What can the Government do to ameliorate this matter?

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, the noble Lord, whose record in this area, particularly his long and distinguished association with Mencap, is respected throughout the House, raises an important point. Grouping people with disabilities together in a generic way is of itself a problem. Beyond that, it is important that as a society we start to recognise disabilities right across the spectrum, particularly those that the noble Lord has been such a good advocate for—those relating to learning difficulties and communication disorders where often the disability itself is not evident on first sight or first meeting. The noble Lord will know that I have taken a close interest in autism for the past 40 years and I have often described the disability as an iceberg—a third above the surface and two-thirds below. That two-thirds below the surface of the disability is as important as what people see on first sight.