My Lords, I was quite pleased to hear noble Lords saying that your Lordships’ House should curtail debate this evening: I have never experienced it in all my time as a Minister.
I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Newlove and the noble Lords, Lord Russell of Liverpool and Lord Ponsonby, for this amendment. It speaks to their continued commitment to tackling violence against women and girls and I know they have campaigned tirelessly on this issue. Given their sincerity and their deep and obvious desire to do what is best in this sphere, I am saddened that I am not going to give them much comfort on this amendment, and I shall explain why.
As noble Lords may be aware, last month the Law Commission published its final report, Hate Crime Laws. It is a weighty tome—some 545 pages—and, as always with the Law Commission, it is a thoughtful
and well-argued document that warrants very close reading. On behalf of the Government, I thank the Law Commission for the thorough and intelligent way in which it approached the task that it was given. I assure noble Lords that the Government will give all the recommendations, of which there are 34, very detailed consideration. As is customary, a full government response will be published in due course; it will address each of the recommendations and I do not want to pre-empt that process.
However, ahead of that I should just draw noble Lords’ attention to what the Law Commission said on the specific issue which Amendment 114F addresses; namely, adding sex and gender to hate crime laws or, in common parlance, “making misogyny a hate crime”. In its report, the Law Commission was unequivocal that the course of action represented by this amendment would not be appropriate, as it would potentially prove detrimental to women and girls. Indeed, it noted that to add these characteristics to the hate crime legislative framework
“may prove more harmful than helpful”
and would be
“the wrong solution to a very real problem.”
I add that transgender identity is already covered in hate crime laws.
In coming to the conclusion it did, the Law Commission applied its usual rigour, dedicating almost three years of thought and careful deliberation to its work. It did so by examining, in exhaustive fashion, whether any legal models would be appropriate to making misogyny a hate crime. It did so on the premise that
“violence against women and girls is extremely prevalent and harmful”,
as noble Lords have said—eliminating all doubt, if there was any, that it did not in good faith stretch every sinew to find an appropriate solution through the hate crime framework. Finally, it did so while listening to and acknowledging the voices of many practitioners who are dedicated to tackling violence against women and girls before making its recommendations, independent of government or political considerations. In this regard, there are few greater examples of what might be called evidence-based policy-making.
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Turning now to the report itself, it noted that the majority of consultation respondents opposed adding the characteristics of sex and gender to these laws. A majority of specialist organisations which responded to the consultation were also opposed in one way or another. It noted, for example, that the largest sexual violence support organisation in England and Wales, Rape Crisis, rejected proposals to recognise sex and gender in any format within hate crime laws. Other women’s advocacy organisations made support conditional on certain models being pushed that meant, as the commission puts it—and I think this goes to the heart of the matter—
“Even amongst those who supported hate crime recognition in this area, there was very little consensus as to what form it should take.”
My noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston echoed that point.
I sense from our own previous debates on this matter that consensus on the seriousness of the problem obscures the huge complexity over its solutions, and this debate demonstrates that. On terminology alone, a majority of the Law Commission’s consultation respondents opposed the inclusion of both sex and gender. Others stated they would prefer excluding such characteristics altogether unless they focused solely on women. It is clear that there is little agreement on how to implement change here in a manner that is widely accepted and fair. Amendment 114G, in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes, serves only to illustrate all too well the lack of agreement on this question.
Understandably, this House ought to make the distinction between what might be popular and what might be necessary. However, the principal problem the commission found is that each possible option for adding sex and gender to hate crime presented unacceptable trade-offs. That is why there is so little agreement on the specifics, even among advocates. One key stakeholder concern was the finding that simply adding these characteristics in the same manner as those already represented would make it harder to prosecute crimes that disproportionately affect women and girls, like rape and domestic abuse. I do not need to explain to noble Lords why that is an intolerable unintended consequence.
I mentioned that the Law Commission was thorough. Inevitably, then, it turned its attention to legal models which might exclude some types of crimes and include others only where misogynistic hostility might be more apparent or did not include the same risks to prosecutions—public harassment, for example. This created a not unsubstantial problem that one of the central drivers of the review was to create parity across groups protected by hate crime laws. Creating a system where some crimes were excluded only as they concerned sex or gender runs directly contrary to this. None the less, the commission explored the possibilities.
This brings me to what I suspect Amendment 114F seeks to get at. It too applies the recognition of these characteristics only to certain offences. The Law Commission’s assessment of a number of models—akin to what is tabled here—similarly found them to be unsuitable. Specifically, it notes that recognising sex or gender only as it concerns certain offences gives rise to at least four problems. First, it would risk suggesting the excluded offences, such as domestic abuse, are by default not misogynistic or are somehow less important. Secondly, it is tokenistic to apply hate crime laws only to certain offences and especially where to do so would exclude the vast majority of most harmful crimes impacting women and girls. Thirdly, it would make the law more complex when a central aim of the review was to simplify it. Fourthly, it would treat sex and gender differently to the other protected groups in hate crime laws and therefore simply repeat the same principal problems of inequality that prompted the review in the first place.
I also want to address the elements of this amendment that concentrate on regulations for the collection of police data on such crimes. I can confirm that such provisions are unnecessary. There is already the capability for the Home Office to ask forces to collect data,
subject to a dialogue with them about the feasibility of its collection. It is noteworthy, however, that the received wisdom about the success of pilots by forces to collect this data on their own initiative was not backed by the Law Commission’s review. Nottinghamshire, which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, mentioned, had not been associated with increased reporting of hate crimes, and that is disappointing.
I know we all share a commitment to tackling violence and abuse against women and girls. That is not in question here tonight. The proposal to make misogyny a hate crime is a well-intentioned expression of this aim. But, in the face of a clear and objective analysis of the issue by a panel of experts, which has unequivocally recommended against a change in the law of this kind, and ahead of the wider government response to the detailed report, I cannot advise your Lordships to accept this amendment. Instead, I ask my noble friend to withdraw it.