UK Lords vote to make misogyny a hate crime
The House of Lords delivered a blow to the UK government on Monday evening, backing making misogyny a hate crime despite the Prime Minister rejecting the proposal in October 2021.
With a significant majority of 242 to 185 votes, the House of Lords backed making misogyny a hate crime, returning the legislation to the House of Commons for MPs to consider the amendment.
If misogyny was made a hate crime, judges would be given the ability to hand down harsher punishments to those convicted of prejudice against women. It would also require police to make it known on criminal records if offences were motivated by the hatred of a person’s gender.
Previously UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson blasted the effort to recategorize misogyny, claiming that police should, instead, be focusing on “very real crimes.”
The change came on a night that saw the UK government face multiple defeats over the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, as the Lords blocked 14 measures that the Tories tried to push through.
The policing bill has proved controversial in the UK. If passed, it could see authorities secure new powers to halt protests that are deemed noisy and disruptive, as well as imprison, for up to 51 weeks, activists who lock themselves to objects.
During the parliamentary session, which went on late into the night, Labour Lord Hain called the legislation “the biggest threat to the right to dissent and the right to protest” in his lifetime.
