Part of Justice – in the House of Commons at on 8 December 2020.
Alex Chalk
Assistant Whip, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice
All hate crimes, including where motivated by homophobia, are unacceptable. The courts already have powers to treat hostility based on sexual orientation as a factor that aggravates the seriousness of an offence. However, hate crime Laws in England and Wales are complex and are spread across different statutes. That is why the Government gave a commitment to carry out a comprehensive review of hate crime legislation. That review is currently under way.
Laws are the rules by which a country is governed. Britain has a long history of law making and the laws of this country can be divided into three types:- 1) Statute Laws are the laws that have been made by Parliament. 2) Case Law is law that has been established from cases tried in the courts - the laws arise from test cases. The result of the test case creates a precedent on which future cases are judged. 3) Common Law is a part of English Law, which has not come from Parliament. It consists of rules of law which have developed from customs or judgements made in courts over hundreds of years. For example until 1861 Parliament had never passed a law saying that murder was an offence. From the earliest times courts had judged that murder was a crime so there was no need to make a law.
