Greg Mulholland – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2015-11-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle disability hate crime.

Karen Bradley

The Government takes all forms of hate crime very seriously. Crime that is motivated by hostility or hatred towards the victim is particularly corrosive and can have devastating consequences for victims and their families. We are committed to working with communities in order to keep them safe.

We have announced that we will publish a new hate crime action plan next year. This will include a number of actions aimed at reducing the number of hate crimes committed against disabled people, and also improving the response to these crimes when they occur.

I, and other ministers, attended a roundtable on disability hate crime in October. This gave me the opportunity to speak to a range of people, including representatives of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, researchers and service users. A key part of our action plan will include understanding the issues behind hate crime, and this was an important first step towards this. Officials are taking forward actions from this meeting.

The Government is currently speaking to a number of organisations and individuals to inform the next steps in developing this action plan. This includes work with the Fulfilling Potential Forum, which is led by the Office for Disability Issues within DWP and is made up of around 40 disability charities, including disabled people’s user led organisations.