Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps (1) they have taken, and (2) they intend to take, to address the level of (a) domestic abuse, (b) violence against women and girls, (c) hate crime, (d) online hate, and (e) online radicalisation, experienced by BAME communities.

Domestic Abuse and VAWG

Tackling Domestic abuse and violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a government priority. These abhorrent crimes have no place in our society.

We know that anyone can be a victim of domestic abuse, regardless of ethnicity or background. That is why the Home Office has provided funding to ‘by and for’ specialist services including , Southall Black Sisters who have been provided with £80,951 in funding during the Covid pandemic.

Added to this, our landmark Domestic Abuse Bill which is due to achieve Royal Assent this Spring will strengthen our response to perpetrators and improve our support to victims.This Summer the Government will also publish a strategy to combat Violence Against Women and Girls, followed by a complementary strategy on Domestic Abuse.

Hate Crime & Online Hate

The Government has been clear that all forms of hate crime are unacceptable and that the cowards who commit these crimes should face the full force of the law. Action under the hate crime action plan 2016-20 (Action Against Hate: The UK Government’s plan for tackling hate crime) included approximately £5 million for protective security measures to protect places of worship and asking the Law Commission to review the effectiveness and coverage of hate crime legislation.

In November 2020, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government awarded £1.8 million through the Faith, Race and Hate Crime Grant Scheme to support established community groups and civil society organisations to run short projects to boost shared values and tackle religiously and racially-motivated hate crime.

We have published the Full Government Response to the Online Harms White Paper, which includes specific measures to work with private companies and ensure that they are held to account for tackling illegal activity and content, such as hate crime, harassment, and cyber-stalking, as well as activity and content which may not be illegal but is nonetheless highly damaging to individuals (legal but harmful). The Full Government Response will be followed by legislation, which we are working on at pace, and will be ready this year. The Home Office also funds a Police Online Hate Crime Hub to improve the police response to victims of online hate crime.

Online radicalisation

Terrorist groups use the internet to spread propaganda designed to radicalise, recruit and inspire vulnerable people, and to incite, provide information to enable, and celebrate terrorist attacks. Our objective is to ensure that there are no safe spaces online for all forms of terrorists to promote or share their extreme views.

In 2010, we set up the police Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU), based in the Metropolitan Police. To date, over 314,500 individual pieces of terrorist content referred by CTIRU have been removed by companies and the Unit has also informed the design of the EU Internet Referral Unit based at Europol.

The Government has also pressed companies to increase the use of technology to automate the detection and removal of content where possible. As a result of continued engagement, companies have expanded the use of automated removals.