Baroness Brinton (LD)

The noble Lord said that he did not rely on Lucy Connolly in his earlier argument; he is now trying to rely on that case here. I am trying to make the point that it is more complex than he made out in his earlier contribution. I would like to make some progress, if I may. The previous Government’s LGBT survey in 2018 showed that fewer than one in 10 LGBT people reported hate crimes or incidents. The noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, has explained one of the reasons for that. The other reason, I know from friends who have also experienced this sort of hate crime, is they do not believe that the police will do anything. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that that is one of the reasons why there is concern about the police: too often, people who are targeted in this way feel that they do not get the help that they need. As has been described, there is no single piece of hate crime legislation. It includes aggravated assault, which the noble Lord, Lord Young, was particularly concerned about. The point about hate crime is that it is not just the individual; the protected characteristic means that they and their community are also affected by it. We have spent many hours on previous groups on this Bill discussing the absolute abhorrence of antisemitism. If actions in Israel can cause people in the UK to start attacking members of our Jewish community, either verbally or against a person or their property, then that is absolutely unacceptable. That is one of the reasons why I would never want hate crimes to be removed. Research by Professor Mark Walters of Sussex University shows that hate crimes do not affect just those individuals targeted; he describes them as having a “ripple effect” through their wider communities. Some people will avoid certain routes and places, and others will not leave home at all, particularly in our Jewish communities at the moment, but the same is true in certain areas for our Muslim communities. If laws about hate crime are weakened or repealed, it would send an appalling message to these communities of faith, as well as to LGBT and disabled people. Do the supporters of the amendment really no longer regard it as important that the state recognises the communities that have protected characteristics—their vulnerability—as warranting distinct legal recognition and criminalisation?