Casey Report

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right, and I have no doubt that Dame Louise Casey accepts that as well. It runs through her report that there are dangers of stereotyping. The noble Baroness was right to mention Muslim “communities”, because there are many different shades of Muslim belief and it would be wrong to treat them as homogeneous. There are dangers of stereotyping. Dame Louise Casey makes some very good points about the fact that the great majority of people do feel integrated into our society, specifically those of the Muslim religion—I have fallen into my own trap and categorised them together—who feel 91% integrated into Britain according to a recent poll. There are very good examples of them helping other communities; Dame Louise Casey cites, for example, Muslim youths from Bradford going to help in Carlisle when we had the floods late last year and early this year, and there are many examples like that. There are very broad lessons there about successful integration. The challenge is to ensure that the remaining few are fully integrated into our society.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that Dame Louise Casey is to be congratulated on her forthright attack on the political correctness that inhibits us from discussing things that should be discussed, particularly religion, which itself is a complex mix of ethical imperatives, culture—often very dated and negative culture—ritual and superstition? We should be free to discuss those things; it would help greatly. At the same time, I regret that Dame Louise Casey has again pandered to the Abrahamic communities. Hate crime is discussed and commented on without any reference to the other non-Abrahamic communities that suffer, and in particular the Sikhs.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right about the value of Dame Louise Casey’s report. Anybody who knows Dame Louise at all will know how robust she is, and she has said some very valuable things that the Government will go away and consider. As I indicated in repeating the Statement, the report has taken 18 months to put together. Dame Louise conducted more than 800 meetings and considered more than 200 pieces of written evidence. So it is right that we go away and take lessons from all that. The noble Lord referred to hate crime, which of course was touched upon on Friday in a very valuable debate about core British values initiated by the most reverend Primate, which also has great relevance to Dame Louise’s report. It is certainly true that hate crime is not limited to one particular community. As the noble Lord rightly said, it exists across the board. The only thing I would say is that any hate crime is a crime against all of us. That is the important lesson to take away.