Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of hate crime reporting.

There were 62,518 hate crimes recorded by the police in 2015/16, an increase of 19% over the previous year. There were increases in all five hate crime strands - race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and gender identity.

Improvements in recording by the police, a greater awareness of hate crime and improved willingness of victims to come forward are likely to have led to the increase in recorded crime.