Henry Smith
Main Page: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)Department Debates - View all Henry Smith's debates with the Attorney General
(9 years ago)
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Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
2. What steps the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to improve the conviction rate for hate crimes against disabled people.
The Solicitor General (Robert Buckland)
The Crown Prosecution Service recently revised its disability hate crime legal guidance for prosecutors. As part of its ongoing commitment to achieving meaningful improvement in disability hate crime prosecutions, it has mandated that disability hate crime training for all prosecutors should be completed by the end of the year.
Henry Smith
What contacts have been made between disability interest groups and governmental agencies to foster a better approach to the addressing of hate crime?
The Solicitor General
I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that, along with my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Disabled People and the Minister for Preventing Abuse and Exploitation, I recently set up and took part in a ministerial round table with Government agencies and the third sector to deal with precisely that issue. We gave particular attention to issues such as victim support, the quality of reporting, and confidence among members of the disability community about the way in which the criminal justice system treats them.