SHADOW police minister Jack Dromey rounded on the Tories yesterday for their role in a storm of hate crime against “scroungers” — including an attack on a wheelchair-bound child in his constituency.

He blamed a “whispering campaign” against the boy and a culture whipped up by the Conservative Party in which people have been led to think that “anyone who has got a car or mobility chair on benefits should somehow be a scrounger.”

“Hate crime, one of the most hateful of crimes, is up and I have seen that first hand in my constituency, including a very fine woman who was out with her disabled son in a motorised wheelchair and had stones thrown at him,” Mr Dromey said.

“I sometimes think that ministers should be ashamed of themselves in terms of the tone that they set because of what it leads to in communities all over the country.”