On Wednesday 26 October Disability Equality Scotland joined the relaunch of the National Hate Crime Charter, a zero-tolerance policy to hate crime on Scotland’s public transport network. We are asking key organisations to commit to this policy to actively challenge the status quo around hate crime in Scotland where within this disability makes up 11% of hate crimes in Scotland and 97% of disability hate crime goes unreported.

At this event we were joined by representatives from Glasgow Disability Alliance, BEMIS, Police Scotland, the Crown Office, and COPFS who raised awareness of important topics around hate crime, such as third-party reporting, the Hate Crime Strategy consultation, and the importance of reporting hate crimes and creating policy and strategies informed by intersectionality and lived experience.

We were also grateful to be joined by the Minister for Transport Jenny Gilruth MSP who discussed the importance of public transport, especially for disabled people, and that it is vital to ensure this is safe: “Transport is really vital for all of us… it is especially important to disabled people… it is critical therefore that it is safe for people to use; public transport needs to be a Hate Crime free zone”.

We were also delighted to be able to announce there are now 25 organisations who have signed the Hate Crime Charter and following this launch we hope to see even more committing to this. A big thank you to all the guests who joined us either online or in-person, to the representatives for sharing the work they are doing to tackle hate crime and to the Minister for Transport for pledging her support of the National Hate Crime Charter.

More information on the Charter can be found at: www.accessibletravel.scot/hate-crime