A new report by Britain’s taxpayer-funded Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has recommended that UK police should be spending more time “socialising in known LGB&T venues and community ‘hubs’” in order to make Britain’s gay community feel safer.
The report, entitled “LGB&T Hate Crime Reporting: Identifying Barriers and Solutions” was produced with a sample size of just 50 people, by the University of Leicester’s ‘Centre for Hate Studies’, which looks exclusively at LGBT issues, far-right groups, and Islamophobia. The centre does not spend any time or money researching Britain’s militant left, jihadist groups, or researching anti-Christian or anti-Semitic activity in Britain.
Nevertheless the report, which was published a week ago, declared that by interviewing 50 people it had found ways in which to tackle homophobic incidents, including asking the police to keep in touch with victims after the reported a crime, and socialising in “LGB&T venues and community hubs”.
The report was commissioned by the EHRC, which paid the University of Leicester to research the issue. The EHRC refused Breitbart London’s requests as to how much taxpayer money was used on the study, but said it stood by the report’s findings, particularly the notion that there are 35,000 unreported LGBT hate crimes in Britain each year.
This, despite the fact that even some of the reports interviewees dismissed the idea of having to report a hate crime for everything.
“When someone shouts something at us, we don’t class that as abuse. We don’t class that as a serious offence,” said one of the interviewees, a lesbian in her 20s.
Another interviewee, a gay male in his 40s, said: “I do have people who say, ‘Well, if I report every little thing that’s shouted to me in the street, I’ll be in the police station all day.’ That’s very common.”
But despite these approaches being similar across the spectrum of crime reporting, the EHRC told Breitbart London: “We have not undertaken any comparative studies to know whether this is the case or not.”
The report also said that there are incidents of racism within the LGBT community, but when pressed on the matter, the EHRC admitted that they had done no research into this area.
The research was entirely reliant on 50 interviews from volunteers who were advertised to via the Leicester Hate Centre’s partner groups, ‘The Chameleons’ – a support and social group for transgender people, ‘The East Midlands Bisexual Network’ – a social group that brings together bisexual people throughout the region, ‘The LGBT Centre’ – a voluntary organisation established to support lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, and ‘Trade’ – a health charity working with the LGB&T community of Leicester.
The EHRC was unable to comment on how the volunteers were advertise to, whether they had been paid for their time, or even what criteria the report used for selecting appropriate volunteers.
The Leicester Hate Centre did not respond to a request for further information.
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