LGBT+ people face high levels of violence and abuse driven by hostility. Home Office figures show that anti-LGBT+ hate crime has, for the second year running, risen at twice the rate of other forms of hate crime. In the most recent data, reported hate crime has grown by 8%, while hate crime against LGB people has risen 19% in the same period, and transphobic hate crimes grew by 16%1. Updating legal protections to ensure diverse LGBT+ people can expect dignity, respect and safety is desperately needed and long overdue.
Galop welcomes the Law Commission proposals and makes the following suggestions:
- Adopt a single legal approach across all hate crime strands for ordinary criminal offences, stirring up offences and football chanting offences.
- Establish a statutory duty requiring the creation of a Hate Crime Commissioner role to drive best practice improvements in policy and victim support.
- Redefine the current definition of ‘transgender identity’ hate to include trans, non-binary, gender non-conforming and intersex people.
- Extend the current definition of ‘sexual orientation’ hate to include ace people (asexual and aromantic).
- Create a single Hate Crime Act containing all relevant legislation to remedy the confusing and dispersed pieces of legislation as they stand.
- Extend the hate crime legal test from ‘hostility’ to ‘hostility or prejudice’ as a means of making hate crime legislation more relevant to the forms of abuse faced by deaf and disabled people.
Galop is the UK’s only specialist LGBT+ anti-violence charity. Our mission is to make life safe, just and fair for LGBT+ people. We provide advice, support and advocacy to people who have experienced hate crime, domestic abuse and sexual violence.
Hate crime law consultation submission
Read the submission document here
