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Written Question

Hate Crime: Disability

Tuesday 14th May 2024

Asked by: Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to recommendation 90(c) of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' Report on follow-up to the inquiry concerning the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, advance unedited version published on 22 March 2024, if he will take steps to ensure that protections for disabled people under hate crime laws are nationally consistent.

Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)

Hate crime is a devolved matter in Scotland and Northern Ireland and falls within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Executive respectively.

In England and Wales, we have a robust legislative framework to respond to all forms of hate crime, including disability hate crime. Whilst the police are operationally independent and work in line with the College of Policing’s operational guidance to respond to hate crime, we expect the police to fully investigate these abhorrent offences and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure perpetrators are brought to justice.

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Written Question

Hate Crime: Disability

Wednesday 20th March 2024

Asked by: Baroness Merron (Labour - Life peer)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to promoting awareness of the grounds for reporting appearance-related abuse or harassment as a disability-related hate crime, including on public transport.

Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

We have a robust legislative framework to respond to hate crimes which target disability. We expect the police to fully investigate these appalling offences and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure perpetrators are brought to justice.

The Government is pleased to see the overall reduction in police-recorded hate crime in the year ending March 2023, including a 1% reduction in disability hate crime compared with the previous year. However, any instance is one too many and we remain absolutely committed to ensuring these appalling offences are stamped out.

We do not have a specific category of “appearance-related abuse” in the current legal framework, however criminal offences can be prosecuted as hate crimes when immediately, before, during or after the offence was committed the offender demonstrated hostility towards the victim based upon the victim’s actual or perceived disability, or where the offence was motivated by such hostility.

Our absolute priority is to get more police onto our streets, cut crime, protect the public and bring more criminals to justice. We are supporting the police by providing them with the resources they need. We delivered our commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by March 2023 and there are now over 149,000 officers in England and Wales, which is higher than the previous peak in March 2010 before the Police Uplift Programme.

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Written Question

Hate Crime: Transphobia

Tuesday 27th February 2024

Asked by: Elliot Colburn (Conservative - Carshalton and Wallington)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help tackle transphobic hate crimes.

Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)

Our absolute priority is to get more police onto our streets, cut crime, protect the public and bring more criminals to justice. We are supporting the police by providing them with the resources they need. Part of this necessitates police recruitment and training. We delivered our commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by March 2023 and there are over 149,000 officers England and Wales, which is higher than the previous peak in March 2010 before the Police Uplift Programme.

The Government continues to fund True Vision, an online hate crime reporting portal designed so that victims of all forms of hate crime do not have to visit a police station to report. We also fund the National Online Hate Crime Hub, a central capability designed to provide expert advice to support individual local police forces in dealing with online hate crime.

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