Disabled People: Disability Hate Crime

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Browning]

My Lords, my noble friend hits on something very important and we should make hate crime against people who are disabled a priority. What is sometimes euphemistically referred to as anti-social behaviour or low-level crime has a cumulative effect, as we saw particularly in the tragic case of Fiona Pilkington. Also, when people commit hate actions, whether they are verbal or physical, that is criminal; it is not low level, it is not just an anti-social euphemism, it is criminal and should be treated as such.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, in October last year three men who tortured a young man with Asperger’s syndrome were prosecuted for actual bodily harm. Over a three-day period they kicked and stamped on his head, repeatedly beat his chest, smacked him with a tennis racquet, threw him down an embankment, pelted him with dog faeces, rubbed his limbs with sandpaper and then forced him to drink so much vodka and gin that he passed out. Their sentence was 80 hours of community service. The National Autistic Society thinks that was an extremely lenient sentence. I agree. Would the Minister therefore be prepared to facilitate a meeting between the Justice Secretary, the National Autistic Society, myself and others so we can go into this matter?