Disabled People: Abuse
House of Lords

Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour)

To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they plan to take to prevent abuse directed at disabled people in receipt of benefits.

Lord Freud (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Welfare Reform), Work and Pensions; Conservative)

We are working with the police and other partners to encourage more victims to come forward and report hate crime. We seconded a member of the Office for Disability Issues staff to Disability Rights UK to help take forward, the Let's Stop Hate Crime Project. We are considering the recommendations made by the Equality and Human Rights Commission inquiry into disability related harassment and continue to work with them on their Manifesto for Change. We have amended the legal aid and sentencing Bill to raise the minimum sentence length for murders motivated by hatred of disabled people to 30 years.

The Government are committed to ensuring that all disabled people are able to live their lives free from fear of targeted hostility or harassment, regardless of whether they are in receipt of benefit or not. We are determined to tackle negative attitudes and to improve opportunities for disabled people to fulfil their potential.

We are working in partnership with disabled people to develop a new cross-government disability strategy. We published a discussion document Fulfilling Potential on 1 December 2011, which seeks practical suggestions in three main areas: realising aspirations, individual control and changing attitudes and behaviours. The latter area is particularly important as promoting positive attitudes and behaviours towards disabled people is fundamental to achieving the full participation of disabled people in society. We aim to publish the final strategy in the spring.

We are also developing a new Hate Crime Action Plan that will aim to capture the current and emerging issues across all forms of hate crime, including disability hate crime, and set out actions focused on prevention, support and improving the response to hate crime.

The Government are also taking a range of other actions to encourage positive images of disabled people. For example, we are maximising the opportunities given by the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.