CPS and Disability Hate Crime

Debate between Seema Kennedy and Mark Harper

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) on securing the debate. It is timely because, as he will know, the CPS is currently consulting on its policy for prosecuting disability hate crime. I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General will ensure that the Hansard record of this debate is forwarded to the CPS as input to the consultation, so that it can hear the views of hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber and from all parts of the United Kingdom.

Most of what the hon. Member for Bootle said I can agree with. I might take him to task on just one little bit towards the end of his remarks, but generally he set out the case very well and there was a great deal of consensus. I certainly support him in his contention about the nature of the people who carry out disability hate crime. He is absolutely right: they are thugs, cowards and bullies. I want to see the strongest possible response not just from the police and those who support people with disabilities, but from the CPS, so that people know that if they bring those cases forward and the police collect the evidence, there will be a robust prosecution response.

The hon. Gentleman cited the figures. The heartening thing is that in the most recent data, from this July, the CPS demonstrated that it had prosecuted a record number of hate crimes. We can always be either depressed or optimistic about this sort of data. It is always depressing to see the number of hate crimes going up, or those being prosecuted going up, because it can be said that the problem is getting worse. However, on the basis that certainly in the area of disability hate crime, and hate crime generally, it is accepted that more of it occurs than is tackled, the right way to read the statistics is that we are seeing more of the problem, capturing more of the problem and tackling more of the problem. In a funny sort of way, a set of statistics that shows more referrals to the police, more referrals to the CPS, more prosecutions and more convictions is actually good news, because it shows an increase not in the hate crime but in the ability of the system to tackle it. However, I understand from those who know this field best that a big gap still exists between the problem and the ability of the system to tackle it.

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention a 41% increase in hate crime prosecutions, compared with the previous year, and the highest proportion of sentence uplifts, which is very welcome. Four in five hate crimes in general result in a conviction, so that should give victims confidence that if they report a hate crime, it will be properly looked at and properly prosecuted and there is a very good chance that the cowards, bullies and thugs that the hon. Gentleman referred to will be properly dealt with.

The hon. Gentleman quoted the Director of Public Prosecutions, who has sent a very clear message that hate crime will not be ignored but will be taken seriously by Crown prosecutors. That is worth repeating.

It is also worth saying that—to be fair to the hon. Gentleman, he did recognise this—the coalition Government had, and this Conservative Government have, a plan to tackle hate crime. The hon. Gentleman was not as enthusiastic as I will be, but he did welcome that plan. It will always be capable of improvement, and I have some questions for the Solicitor General about areas that I and some organisations think could be improved, but having a plan is very good.

The action plan that was published this July deals with prevention, with how we respond to the problem, with reporting, with supporting victims and with understanding the problem by being better at collecting the data and setting out the issues.

[Seema Kennedy]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that awareness by a victim that they are actually the subject of a hate crime is very important, because in some of these cases the criminal is not a stranger? Does he also agree that campaigns—such as the one by the Lancashire police and crime commissioner, “Say No To Hate”—which raise awareness, are good for everyone because victims have more awareness that they have actually been subject to a hate crime?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I will say more later about disability hate crime, particularly against people with learning disabilities. In that respect, raising awareness of what is a hate crime, whether someone has been a victim of it and what they should do as a result is particularly important, and I join my hon. Friend in commending the efforts of her law enforcement bodies locally.

To pick up the point made by the hon. Member for Bootle about prevention, the CPS has produced a resource pack for schools and teachers on hate crime. I do not know what reach that has had into schools and colleges. Perhaps the Solicitor General could say a little about the extent to which that resource pack has got into schools. Does the CPS have any data about the take-up—the extent to which teachers are using the resource pack in their classrooms? It is clearly very helpful, because if children can be educated about treating people with disabilities properly but also, importantly, looking out for other children with disabilities, that will help the younger people whom the hon. Gentleman talked about. It will help them as they grow up and will improve the ability of society to deal with these problems.

Could the Solicitor General also say something on this progress measure? The CPS has an action plan for dealing with disability hate crime specifically. As the hon. Member for Bootle said, it did a review of training and guidance. That package was delivered across the CPS between last September and this January. I accept, therefore, that it is fairly early days—we have had only nine or 10 months of that training package having been delivered—but I will echo the question asked by the hon. Gentleman about whether we have yet seen any behavioural change in the CPS and any improvement in the way the CPS deals with this sort of crime.

Importantly, the training looked at the victim’s perspective. It looked at increasing sentence uplifts and at prosecutors being more effective at dealing with that, which was particularly helpful. It looked at the guidelines for prosecuting disability hate crime and at the support that some disabled people might need. It looked at the special measures that might have to be incorporated into the courtroom to enable them to give evidence, such as an interpreter or the use of video interviewing methods. Again, it may be too early to have seen huge change there, but it would be helpful if the Solicitor General could say something about that.

The final point that the guidance dealt with is exactly the point that my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) just raised. It had some myth-busters, if I can put it like that, to dispel some of the erroneous assumptions that people have about prosecuting disability hate crimes. For example, it made it clear that even if the offender is a carer or family member, it is still a crime. It also made it clear that even if the victim did not have an easily identifiable impairment, which is exactly the point that the hon. Gentleman made, it is still a crime and should be prosecuted.

I wanted to raise a bit of a specialist point with the Solicitor General, who will know that I have recently taken over as chair of the all-party group on learning disability. The secretariat for the group is provided by Mencap, which supports the 1.4 million people with learning disabilities across the UK. Again, Mencap has welcomed what the Government have done on dealing with disability hate crime, but it has a number of questions. It supports the Dimensions campaign, “I’m with Sam”, which the hon. Member for Bootle mentioned, but I want to ask the Solicitor General about a number of issues in particular that it has raised.

How easy is it for people, particularly with a learning disability, to use the system? In my understanding, accessible information and support is not always available to guide them through it. I draw the Solicitor General’s attention to a resource that has been produced in Gloucestershire by students from the National Star College, working with Gloucestershire constabulary, to raise awareness of disability hate crime. That video sets out what disability hate crime is, how people can recognise it and how they can report it and have it dealt with. Much as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble said, that sort of local resource is being taken seriously by my county council, which provides excellent support for people with learning disabilities, and by the police and crime commissioner and Gloucestershire constabulary. All those bodies sending out that powerful message is very helpful. A little bit from the Solicitor General on accessible information would be welcome.

As the hon. Member for Bootle said, Mencap is also interested in looking at using the data better so we can see whether any types of disability hate crime are a particular problem—that might be learning disabilities or people with autism, for example—or whether it is a problem more generally.

The Dimensions campaign asked for a legal change so that online hate crime against people with disabilities is specifically made a crime. I am interested in the Solicitor General’s view on that because, in my understanding, if someone behaves in a certain way online, it is still a crime. It may be more or less difficult to get evidence, but if someone does something that is a crime, the fact that that behaviour happens in the online space does not mean it is not a crime, so I do not know whether it is necessary to change the law specifically to criminalise behaviour online, which is one of the asks in the campaign. It might be helpful if the Solicitor General is very clear in his response that some of the abuse and intolerance that we see online, which the hon. Member for Bootle referred to, is a crime and can be prosecuted. An advantage of online crime in one sense is that it provides a helpful audit trail for police and prosecutors, but I understand that dealing with that is very resource-intensive. It might be helpful if the Solicitor General set out a bit about what is going on there.

I shall make a couple of other points before I finish. The Law Commission has carried out a review into sentencing in this area and has looked at whether the “stirring up offences”, if I may call them that—those that apply currently to race, for example—should be extended to disability. It has concluded that they should not be, but it has made two specific recommendations about sentencing. It said that there should be new guidance from the Sentencing Council about the sentence uplift provisions that are available in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. It has also said that when an offender is convicted of a disability hate crime and the sentence uplift is used, the offender’s record on the police national computer should be updated, so that there is a record of that. My understanding is that the Government have not yet responded to those recommendations. I know the Home Office has said that it is keeping them under review and I wonder whether the Solicitor General can provide the House with an update on that before he finishes.

I have a couple of final questions for the Solicitor General. When he was responding in the House of Commons to oral questions, he said that he attended a round table at the national College of Policing in September last year specifically on hate crime and disability hate crime, in particular. It was about sharing best practice across police forces and, of course, the national College of Policing does an excellent job in trying to spread best practice and raise policing standards generally. Will he update the House on any progress that has flowed from that round table, and does he have any further plans in that regard?

Finally, let me turn to the one area of disagreement I had with the hon. Member for Bootle. We agree on the way in which people with disabilities are sometimes reported by the media, but as we have an independent media, politicians are not responsible for what they do. We can suggest to them that they are not being very responsible, but it is not our job to tell them what to print. I do not agree with him, however, about the impact of the Government’s policies on supporting disabled people. I should declare an interest, Mr Bone: before the general election, between July 2014 and March 2015, I was the Minister for Disabled People. The Department’s entire focus—whether it was through our Disability Confident campaign or trying to deliver more help and support for disabled people—was on trying to get disabled people into work where they can. I had a recent debate in Westminster Hall about looking at more opportunities, post-Brexit, for disabled people to get into work. A huge number of people with learning disabilities, for example, could work if they are given the opportunity. They do not get that opportunity. We have seen 350,000 more people with disabilities being given the opportunity to work, so as far as the Government’s messages are concerned—that is what politicians are responsible for; I cannot be responsible for what the media print—they are very clear: they are about providing more opportunity and more help and support.

In the past couple of weeks, a Green Paper was published by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions about the help and support that should be available for getting more disabled people into work where they can work and about increasing the support for disabled people who are not able to work. The messages from the Government have actually been very supportive and I do not think any increase in disability hate crime could fairly be attributed to the policies of the Department for Work and Pensions. The points made by the hon. Member for Bootle may be more advisedly directed to the media, and I hope that they also listen to the debate and behave accordingly.

This has been a very valuable debate and it is an important subject to get on to the agenda. I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it and I look forward to the Solicitor General’s response.