Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Rix (Crossbench). It was answered on Wednesday, 3 June 2009.

Disabled People: Violence

Question: My Lords, is the Minister aware that in 2007 to 2008 there were approximately 7,000 prosecutions for racially motivated crime and yet only 141 prosecutions for disability hate crime? Does this mean that disability hate crime is much less of a problem, or is it simply that the CPS and the police are failing to take it as seriously as other hate crime?

Answer: My Lords, I hesitate to say that they do not take it as seriously as other hate crimes; I think that they do. One thing that is absolutely true is that we have not collected the statistics as well or as accurately as we should. We are now resolving that. It was done on an intelligence basis through ACPO. I do not think that the numbers of crimes that were seen as hate crimes against the disabled accurately reflected the full scale of what was happening. I will give an example, because some of these incidents are so horrible. Steven Hoskin, who had learning disabilities, was assaulted by three individuals, who made him wear a dog collar, fed him an overdose of painkillers and forced him to fall off a viaduct to his death. These are the sort of appalling things that are done. It is absolutely right that we should focus on this and the statistics do not show the scale of it. We are getting to grips with those statistics and we absolutely must do more about it.

Secondary information