Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding his Department allocates from the public purse to tackling racism each year; and what proportion of his Department's resources has been allocated to race equality in 2019-2020.

All forms of hate crime are completely unacceptable and tackling racially motivated hate crime remains a priority for this government.

MHCLG paid approximately £219,00 to projects specifically to target racism in the financial year 19/20. These include Show Racism the Red Card and the Anne Frank Trust who work with young people across the country to challenge prejudice and discrimination. We are also supporting Kick It Out to tackle racism in sport and have confirmed funding for the Kingston Race Equality Council to improve support for victims of racially motivated hatred nationally.

In addition to this, 2019 saw the first provision of an annual £500,000 grant to support Windrush Day celebrations. This annual grant will be providing £500,000 to a further 49 projects this year. Government has also committed to spending a total of £1 million on the Windrush monument, which will be placed in London Waterloo Station.

We are committed to continue promoting shared values among people of all backgrounds through sustainable social integration and meaningful civic participation, whilst tackling and preventing religiously and racially discriminatory behaviour. To support this, we have launched a competitive grant scheme for 2020-21 to support projects in this space, with a budget of up to £2 million.