Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:00 pm on 27 February 2008.

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Photo of Lord Fowler Lord Fowler Conservative 5:00, 27 February 2008

In the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, I move Amendment No. 103 which is as self-evident as Amendment No. 102A, and I know will be accepted by the Government in that respect.

The amendment introduces a new clause and is supported by the National AIDS Trust and the Terrence Higgins Trust, of which I am a trustee. In recent years the Government have legislated to deter hate crime. Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 requires courts to treat as an aggravating factor in sentencing the fact that the crime was motivated by, or the perpetrator demonstrated, hostility based on the disability of the victim. This was an important legislative provision because it clearly signalled the unacceptability of disability-related and sexual orientation-related hate crime in our society and established the importance of the issue for the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts. But the problem is that the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was enacted before the changes in disability discrimination law in the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 were introduced. The definition of "disability" in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is that of "physical or mental impairment". The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 extended the definition of "disability" to include people with HIV effectively from the moment of diagnosis, irrespective of whether the illness had progressed to the point where physical impairment had occurred.

There were important reasons to extend disability discrimination law in this way. On the whole the discrimination experienced by people living with HIV has little to do with the degree or visibility of impairment but simply with the fact that there has been infection, and with that has come related social stigma. This is as true of hate crime as it is of other less extreme forms of discrimination. The Criminal Justice Act does not therefore at present provide for HIV-related hostility to be an aggravating factor in sentencing in the majority of cases. That is because—and this is a good thing—a high percentage of people living with HIV today respond well to anti-retroviral treatment and do not experience physical or mental impairment.

My case is therefore that this is a loophole in the law which simply needs tidying up. When the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 was introduced, the need to amend the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was overlooked. I make this point in what could otherwise be a rather dry and legalistic argument: it is not just a technical or minor matter. HIV-related hate crime is a real social evil in this country and the Government would be taking forward their commitment to tackling stigma and discrimination of this kind in supporting such an amendment.

The National AIDS Trust has provided me with two cases. The first is that of a 36 year-old man living in the Midlands on a housing estate. He had been diagnosed HIV positive for four years. After falling out with his long-term partner, his status and home address were exposed when a card appeared in a local shop window warning parents that he was "an AIDS carrier" and that they should keep their children away from him. A few days later, he came home from work to find two people in his flat. They beat him with chair legs, putting him in hospital for six days.

The second case is of a woman who lived in London. She was originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo and attended a group at a local centre for women from that country, particularly focused on childcare. As it happens, she made the mistake of making a comment about her status. The group consequently became hostile to her and one of the women there grabbed her youngest child and physically threw her out of the room, telling everyone there that she would give them AIDS. She was later threatened and, the night before she was moved to another area, two people pushed her door in and threw pieces of wood and dirt at her in front of her children, saying that she was dirty and should go back home to Africa to die of AIDS.

My point is that this is in no sense a theoretical issue, which is why the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, has tabled this amendment. People with HIV need to know that hate crime against them will be taken seriously, and that it will be recorded, monitored, investigated and prosecuted. A legal framework which ignores HIV-related hate crime seems unlikely to motivate an effective response from law enforcement authorities. It is worth noting that the current guidance on hate crime published by the Association of Chief Police Officers in 2005 makes no mention of HIV-related hate crime in its 104 pages.

I hope that the Government will recognise that there is a loophole here. I urge them to update this aspect of the law to the benefit of many people in this country. I beg to move.