Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of reported hate crime since January 2015; and if he will make a statement.

The Home Office holds hate crime data for all police forces in England and Wales on an annual basis. The number of hate crimes recorded by the police has increased by 79% between 2014/15 and 2017/18, from 52,465 to 98,098 offences. This increase is thought to be driven by general improvements by the police in how they record crime, better identification of hate crimes, willingness of victims to come forward, and a genuine increase in these offences around certain events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.

Better recording is an important part of how to tackle hate crime and support victims. However, it should be seen in the context of the latest data from the independent Crime Survey for England and Wales which shows there has been a downward trend in hate crime incidence with hate crime falling by 40% over the last decade.

On 16 October 2018 the Government published ‘Action Against Hate: The Uk Government’s plan for tackling hate crime: ‘two years on’’ - a refresh of the 2016 Hate Crime Action Plan, which includes an update on action so far and new commitments in relation to increasing the reporting and recording of hate crime.