Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending the Sentencing Act 2020 to record crimes motivated by misogyny as hate crimes.

The Government has no current plans to extend the Sentencing Act 2020 to include sex as an aggravating factor in the enhanced sentencing regime.

However, an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill has added sex to the list of protected characteristics under the aggravated offences in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. When this provision has been implemented – offences listed in the Act motivated by hostility against someone’s sex or presumed sex can be charged as an aggravated offence and the courts will be able to impose a longer sentence on conviction beyond those provided for in the Sentencing Act 2020.