Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to promoting awareness of the grounds for reporting appearance-related abuse or harassment as a disability-related hate crime, including on public transport.

We have a robust legislative framework to respond to hate crimes which target disability. We expect the police to fully investigate these appalling offences and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure perpetrators are brought to justice.

The Government is pleased to see the overall reduction in police-recorded hate crime in the year ending March 2023, including a 1% reduction in disability hate crime compared with the previous year. However, any instance is one too many and we remain absolutely committed to ensuring these appalling offences are stamped out.

We do not have a specific category of “appearance-related abuse” in the current legal framework, however criminal offences can be prosecuted as hate crimes when immediately, before, during or after the offence was committed the offender demonstrated hostility towards the victim based upon the victim’s actual or perceived disability, or where the offence was motivated by such hostility.

Our absolute priority is to get more police onto our streets, cut crime, protect the public and bring more criminals to justice. We are supporting the police by providing them with the resources they need. We delivered our commitment to recruit an additional 20,000 officers by March 2023 and there are now over 149,000 officers in England and Wales, which is higher than the previous peak in March 2010 before the Police Uplift Programme.