A row has broken out after Susan Hall, the former Tory mayoral candidate, suggested that some victims of hate crime needed to “toughen up”.Labour accused Ms Hall of a “lack of empathy” and suggested she should apologise for her remarks, which were made during a City Hall question-and-answer session investigating the level of hate crime on London’s public transport network.Ms Hall, leader of the City Hall Conservatives and a prominent critic of what she regards as “woke leftie” opinions, said repeated cuts to Metropolitan police funding meant officers were being forced to prioritise which incidents to investigate.Last month the Met announced that it would no longer investigate “non-crime” hate incidents after comedian Grahan Linehan was told he would face no further action over social media posts about transgender issues.Addressing a panel of experts at a London Assembly police and crime committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon, Ms Hall said: “We have got to face facts. The police are being funded less and less. They are not going to be able to look into some of these hate crimes.
00:00Andy, I really like the idea of bystander intervention. I don't think any of us take enough personal responsibility these days. It seems to be reducing and reducing. Also, if you're on a train and you see somebody in distress, the more of you around that person that can actually find a way to intervene, the better.
00:20Because we've got to face facts. The police are being funded less and less and less. They are not going to be able to look into some of these hate crimes. And you said earlier that, you know, people are upset if they report and it's dismissed the next day.
00:37But if there's if there's no evidence, the police can't keep these things open. They haven't got the resource. And a bit controversially, I'll ask you, do you think that some of us need to toughen up a little bit?
00:52I know if people say I know your eyebrows have gone very high, Dr. David, but at the end of the day, many of us I know I do. I get abuse sometimes. Obviously, I'm a Tory in in London. And sometimes we we get abuse. It to me is water off a duck's back. I ignore it because you have to carry on. You can't ignore real crime.
01:16And sometimes these verge into that. But do you not think that we should start toughening up and say, just ignore it, you know, at levels, because we've got to start taking personal responsibility now.
01:30We've all got to start looking after other people that are around us. And we've all got to think, well, you know, I know I'm not that thing. Get on with it. Move on.
01:40No, I don't agree that the answer is people need to toughen up. I think we work day in, day out with victims of hate crime who phone us or get in touch via the On Your Side website and tell us about their experiences.
01:58And we've got fantastic casework advocates who work with them and support them as they both try to access justice for their experience, but also access well-being support.
02:11And I can tell you absolutely, frankly and honestly, the impacts on people of experiencing hate, even what might be considered as low level hate by some, such as verbal abuse in the street.
02:24And the impacts are huge. And even if your interest isn't on the individual and what those impacts are for them, we know for a fact that people who experience hate crime start to engage less with the community around them.
02:41So it has impacts on cohesion more broadly. They start to avoid places. They don't use public transport. They stop going to certain parts of town.
02:49That's not helpful for the economy. Some people want to move house. Some people want to stop going to their work or their jobs. People isolate and become more insular.
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