Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that more victims of transgender and sexual orientation hate crimes feel comfortable coming forward to report those crimes.

In October 2018 the Government published Action Against Hate: the Government’s plan for tackling hate crime – two years on. Two key themes of the action plan are encouraging reporting and increasing support to victims.

The Action Plan includes a number of commitments that are addressing all forms of hate crime, including a review of hate crime legislation by the Law Commission which commenced earlier this year, a public awareness campaign which has run twice, and the current Online Harms White Paper con-sultation.

There are also a number of specific commitments addressing homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime, which have been informed by the Government’s 2018 LGBT Action Plan. These include: the Crown Prosecution Service working with partners to improve the recording and monitoring of equalities data for LGBT victims of hate crime and reviewing and refreshing its LGBT Hate Crime Schools Pack; further Government Equalities Office funding for anti-bullying interventions in schools from March 2019 to March 2020; support from the Home Office to the police to improve training in responding to victims; multiple Home Office funded projects aimed at tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime; and continued engage-ment with LBGT stakeholders.