Disability Hate Crime

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green]

That is an important point and I am sure that it is one that the police will also take note of. Too often there is an attitude that nothing can be done because the victim is disabled and there is scepticism about what disabled victims say. One shocking case, quoted in Katharine Quarmby’s book “Scapegoat”, was that of a blind woman who had been sexually assaulted, but the response of the police was that it was not possible to proceed with the case because, of course, she had not seen her attacker.

In its report, “Hidden in plain sight”, the EHRC has proposed a number of important measures to help to improve the situation. First, there must be leadership and ownership of the issue across all public bodies. This is not an issue simply for one arm of government. It cuts across central Government Departments, local government, the criminal justice system, the education system, health, housing, care, transport, employment and so on. Therefore, a signal from the Minister today of the seriousness with which the Government regard the issue will be important. However, warm words will not be enough. Disabled people want to know how Ministers will ensure that the issue remains a priority for ministerial attention across Government; what structures exist within Whitehall to focus attention and drive action; what accountability mechanisms will be put in place; how public institutions that fail to take action will be compelled to do so; and how Ministers will work with local government to ensure ownership of the issue at local level.

Secondly, such an approach must be informed and supported by the systematic gathering and monitoring of data that spell out the scale and severity of the problem, and by analysis of that data to support and direct policy makers’ attention to where action is needed. We know that there is significant under-reporting of harassment and abuse of disabled people, and there is a need to improve the recording and reporting of disability hate crime.

Radar has responded to that problem through its “Stop Disability Hate Crime” project, which is working with disabled people’s organisations and the authorities to develop a national independent disability hate crime reporting centre, which will provide minimum standards for other such centres, and raise awareness of disability hate crime and incidents and how to report them. The project also maps the disability hate crime third-party reporting sites that already exist or are being established. Also, a survey has been undertaken to find out why disabled people do not want to report disability hate crime and what would make them more confident to do so.

The Radar project is an important initiative and I hope that the Government will look carefully at the lessons that emerge from it, and at ways of strengthening the capacity of third-party hate crime reporting centres as a valuable way of increasing the incidence of reporting. Of course, it will be important that such centres follow minimum standards, but I know that all right hon. and hon. Members will welcome Radar’s work in that area and look forward to its report, which is due to be published early next year.

Thirdly, practice at the front line is, of course, vital to ensure that action is taken swiftly to respond to and prevent harassment or criminal attacks on disabled people. That requires the engagement, attention and effort of a range of public institutions. Crucially, those public institutions must work in partnership with each other and with disabled people to develop and to implement the right strategies to tackle disability hate crime. That partnership working can enable early identification of the patterns of behaviour that we have been discussing today, which is essential if problems are not to escalate. Today those patterns are too often missed, or cases are dealt with in isolation. As a result, the response of the authorities can be fragmented, inadequate or too slow.

In its 2009 report on the security of disabled people, the EHRC pointed out that a range of public authorities were not playing any preventive role: housing associations, social care providers, health care providers, the voluntary and community sector and local authorities. Too often, there is an inadequate response to incidents even when they are reported. That must change. Although there has been some progress in the response of the criminal justice agencies, action across the piece is needed and it is in that context that the Government’s action plan will be so important.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate and bringing this matter to the Chamber today. Society is always measured by how it treats those who are less well-off, and that is true of individuals as well as of society as a whole. She has discussed a campaign that she hopes the Government will support. Does she feel that that campaign should not only be an England and Wales campaign but a campaign that goes to Scotland and Northern Ireland, too? If so, perhaps the catalyst to make that happen will come from this Chamber today. I ask the Minister to consider that point too in her response to the debate.

[Kate Green]

That is also an important point, and if there is good practice from which we can learn we will want to learn it in every part of the United Kingdom.

The Government’s action plan will need to include action on developing a better understanding of the motivations of perpetrators of disability hate crime, and of the interventions that are effective in changing such behaviour. It must be a priority to develop appropriate interventions that can be made in schools, which have already been mentioned, in the criminal justice system, through family and community programmes, and in other settings. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what analysis and action the Government are considering with regard to those interventions.

The action plan must also address the need for proper training of front-line professionals who may be required to recognise and respond to issues of disability-related harassment. Such training must include training in communication skills and understanding and recognising signals of abuse. I hope that the Minister will be specific today about the steps that the Government are taking to make progress on those matters and I look forward to hearing her response.

Before I conclude, I want to highlight one especially vulnerable group of victims—those people with learning disabilities who have experienced sexual violence or abuse. All too often in those cases, the perpetrator is a partner, a family member or a carer, so the attack is compounded by an abuse of intimacy and a breach of the victim’s trust.

A shockingly high proportion of women with learning disabilities have experienced sexual abuse. The problems that other victims of disability hate crime experience are magnified for these women by their not being believed, by professionals not knowing how to address the issue, and by abuse continuing and escalating over a long period, which happens all too often.

During the summer, I attended a conference with a group of learning disabled women to discuss the measures that are needed to address that form of abuse. The conference was jointly organised by the rape crisis centre in my own borough of Trafford, Salford university and Change, an organisation that is run by and for learning disabled people.

The learning disabled women present at the conference, who themselves were victims of sexual abuse, were absolutely clear about the action that is needed. I should say that they were also prepared to acknowledge that there have been improvements in parts of the criminal justice system, including better awareness among the police, greater understanding of their circumstances and their needs by the Crown Prosecution Service, and greater responsiveness from the courts. However, they also highlighted the need for specialist advice and support to be much more widely available. They spoke about a lack of access to health services and other support services, which happened for a number of reasons: sometimes because of discrimination, sometimes because of a lack of communication skills, and sometimes because they and other learning disabled women were not empowered to express their needs. They repeated that there was a need for training for front-line professionals, which they strongly suggested should be delivered by learning disabled women themselves. They identified an additional barrier that they faced, which was dealing with workers who did not have the confidence to deal with them as learning disabled women.

Women often want to use mainstream services where they can, but feel that the staff are often not equipped to support them. In her role as Minister with responsibility for disabled people, I hope that the hon. Lady takes these points up urgently with colleagues in the relevant Departments, and urges them to engage directly with learning disabled women in formulating Government policy.

I want to put on record my gratitude to the disabled people and their families who have taken the time to describe to me the deeply distressing, shocking and vicious attacks they have experienced, and how the system has sometimes let them down. I also want to thank the families of Keith Philpott and Gary Skelly, members of the Disability Hate Crime Network, Simon Green and Stephen Brookes, and the women I met at Change. Their stories of abuse, violence and in some cases death, have brought home to me that there remains a dark and primitive side to our attitudes to disabled people, which still too often manifests itself in harassment and criminal behaviour that simply cannot be tolerated in any civilised society. I am pleased that we are debating the issue this morning. It must not remain hidden in plain sight.