Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the Committee on the Administration of Justice
Attached please find a letter being sent in
the same post to the Northern Ireland Office regarding CAJ's view
(albeit belated) that it would be important to include "disability"
in the grounds covered by hate crime legislation.
In our oral testimony to the Committee, in response
to the Rev Martin Smyth, I indicated CAJ would have no particular
problem of principle in having differential pieces of legislation
across the different UK jurisdictions. It would have been more
accurate for me to say that, as an organisation committed to ensuring
the highest standards ofadministration in Northern Ireland, we
have no problem in principle with having better civil liberties
and human rights protections than elsewhere in UK. We will, however,
definitely seek to challenge any attempt to introduce lower standards.
Criminal Justice Division
Northern Ireland Office
Massey House
Stormont
Belfast BT4 3SX
17 May2004
Dear Sir/Madam
RE: CRIMINAL JUSTICE (NI) ORDER 2004
While I realise that the consultation period
around this legislation is completed, the Committee on the Administration
of Justice (CAJ) was only made aware of some additional concerns
in the course of its testimony before the Northern Ireland Affairs
Committee on 12 May 2004.
When responding to the initial consultation
document (in Februaty 2003) and to the draft legislation (10 May
2004), CAJ had not realised that the issue of hate crime on the
basis of disability was already covered in the equivalent legislation
in England and Wales, To our recollection, there was no allusion
to disability in the original consultation material, and we therefore
concentrated on arguing why the English legislation needed to
be extended beyond race, to sectarian and homophobic crime. While
we did consider the issue of disability (and indeed other section
75 categories), we were unsure if "hate crime" was the
appropriate denomination, whether there were problems in this
domain, and we hesitated to make further suggestions to "extend"
the legislation. had we realised that disability was included
in the English equivalent legislation, we would have argued for
its inclusion in the Northern Ireland legislation.
While, as we indicated in our testimony, we
have no problem in principle with differential provisions across
the different UK jurisdictions, CAJ will always campaign for the
best possible provisions in Northern Ireland and we think that
in respect to disability we should therefore mirror more closely
the Criminal Justice Act 2003. MENCAP's testimony to the Northern
Ireland Affairs Committee was doubly impressive—firstly
in highlighting that there are already documented cases of hate
crime on grounds of disability, and secondly highlighting the
need for some recognition of this problem if we are properly to
document trends and counter such crimes ever more effectively.
Last but not least, CAJ thinks it would give entirely the wrong
signal to the public that disability is included as one of the
grounds for hate crime in England and Wales, but is not given
a similar status in its NI equivalent.
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