Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-111)
12 MAY 2004
MR NICHOLAS
RUSSELL AND
MS MAUREEN
PIGGOT
Q100 Chairman: Again you are referring
to your organisation, people your organisation is responsible
for.
Ms Piggot: In Northern Ireland.
I would have greater knowledge of the people in my organisation,
but I also work closely with other disability organisations and
in my experience people do not stop to distinguish which kind
of disability people have; they make assumptions about disability.
Anyone who has a communication impairment is generally assumed
also to have a mental impairment. The general public does not
make those fine distinctions.
Q101 Chairman: As opposed to someone
who is in a wheelchair because they have lost a leg. Do you sense
that there is a difference in the way such people are treated?
Ms Piggot: I can believe that
there might be, but I do not believe that people who are in wheelchairs
are subjected to less intimidation or harassment than other people.
Q102 Chairman: So you think it is common
to all people, whatever their disability.
Ms Piggot: I think it is.
Q103 Chairman: Are there statistics which
would support that?
Ms Piggot: Not to my knowledge,
except these studies of children and their concerns and the bullying
amongst children.
Q104 Chairman: Is this something that
the young do more, in terms of bullying and harassment, than older
people?
Ms Piggot: That would seem to
be the case, although it is not confined to young people.
Q105 Mr Pound: If you think that perhaps
we are going into this in some depth, it is because you are describing
a set of circumstances which are almost unique in the experience
of most of us and uniquely terrifying as well. I appreciate that
this is between anecdotal and empirical and I understand the response
you just gave to the Chairman. Are these attacks taking place
within communities or across communities? I think you know where
I am going with this. Do you have any evidence that this is one
community attacking a member of another community who happens
to be differently abled, or is this an attack within the community?
Ms Piggot: It is both. People
with disabilities are being attacked as being members of the other
community whichever that is, as well as being attacked within
communities on the grounds of their disability alone.
Q106 Mr Pound: Is it possible, and I
appreciate that it may not be possible, to indicate whether the
attack would have taken place had the person not had a visual
impairment or been differently abled? Do you think this is part
of the normal—if one can use that word without weeping—inter-community
aggression?
Ms Piggot: No, I do not think
it is. I think it is motivated by the perception of difference
which is related to the disability.
Q107 Mr Pound: Overriding community orientation.
Ms Piggot: Yes; irrespective of
community orientation I might say.
Q108 Mr Pound: Even more terrifying.
Ms Piggot: Yes.
Q109 Chairman: Do you think that the
definition of hate crime is sufficiently precise to accommodate
hate crime against disabled people?
Ms Piggot: The concept of it being
an aggravating circumstance or an aggravating factor applies equally
to people with disabilities as it would to people on grounds of
race or sectarian difference.
Q110 Chairman: Another concern we have
had expressed to us is that the Order has not been extended to
the carers or the families of disabled people. Would you want
them included in legislation?
Ms Piggot: I am not sure it needs
to be included in the legislation, but perhaps some consideration
might be given in looking at the seriousness of the offence to
the impact on carers or other family members. Quite often family
members are also targeted as part of the attack because of being
in the same household or accompanying the person. We should also
remember that people with disabilities are in families, people
with disabilities might be parents and the children of parents
with a disability might be targeted because their parents are
disabled. Other family members, siblings accompanying the person
with the disability might similarly experience attacks.
Q111 Chairman: I think the Committee
is sympathetic in principle to trying to make legislation similar
and compatible throughout the United Kingdom. Therefore the fact
that it has been included in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, although
not yet implemented, is quite a strong point in favour of what
you are saying. Assuming that it was included in the Order and
it required the police to gather data on attacks on disabled people,
what other initiatives would be required in your view to make
the introduction of such legislation effective?
Ms Piggot: One of the most important
things is letting people with a disability know that their complaints
will be taken seriously. In our experience people with disabilities
often find that their complaint is dismissed, or that the complaint
is not investigated because of police officers' concerns that
they may not be able to substantiate the complaint, or their assessment
of the person's reliability or credibility as a witness. There
needs to be training of police officers first of all in assessing
the ability and knowing how to obtain evidence from the witnesses
or from the victim. Also awareness should be raised amongst disabled
people that they have the right to be protected and that they
can make a complaint and also public attitudes, which are the
source of the hate crime in the first place, they need to understand
more about disability and to understand that it is a crime to
pick on people because of their disability.
Mr Russell: One thing, particularly
from the point of view of vision impaired people who are subject
to hate crime, or indeed any crime, is the difficulty they face
because they cannot see the person who attacked them. For that
reason, during the passage of the Criminal Justice Bill we worked
on the issue of voice identity parades, indeed a voice identity
parade was used successfully to secure a conviction for murder
in the Old Bailey. On the basis of that, Home Office circular
57/2003 has been issued giving guidance to all police forces in
England and Wales on the use of voice identity parades. That has
not been extended to Northern Ireland and it would be useful if
this Committee could encourage that guidance to be issued in Northern
Ireland. There is also further work going on looking at Code D
under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 to make a formal
revision to that. A lot of research is required and it would be
good to encourage Northern Ireland to adopt the results of that
research as well.
Chairman: Thank you both very much. What
you have said to us has been extremely helpful, but it is rather
sad that we do not have enough statistics. One of the things you
could usefully do even at this late stage would be to try to pick
out concrete facts and figures because it is important to know
whether the trend is increasing or whether it is standing still
and to know in relation to what Mr Pound said and what I said
to you earlier how much of this is caught up in the sectarian
arguments which remain in Northern Ireland. Someone goes and has
a go at a family in a household from the opposite community not
specially because there is a disabled person there, but perhaps
because it is easier if there is one there, is a different type
of motivation from the straight "I'm going to be difficult
and rude and harass and bully anybody who is not like me".
If we are going to come to sensible and sensitive conclusions,
statistics would be an enormous help in that. Thank you both very
much for coming and we shall be reporting when we have finished
our inquiry. Thank you.
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