Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that those people subject to disability hate crime have the confidence to report offences.

This Government is committed to ensuring that disabled people who have experienced hate crime have the confidence to report it.

On 26 July last year the Government published a new Hate Crime Action Plan. This outlines the work we will do over the next four years to drive forward action against hate crime in all its forms. The action plan focuses on 5 key areas, one of which is to increase the confidence of victims to report hate crime.

2,508 disability hate crimes were reported to the police in 2014/15 and this increased by 69% to 3,629, in 2015/16. The number of prosecutions for disability hate crimes has also increased by 41% compared with 2014/15.

The Government have undertaken, supported and funded a number of activities to increase the confidence of disabled people to report hate crime.