Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 18 October (HL Deb col 2279), what they consider to be the normal levels of hate crime; whether these are acceptable; and if not, whether they have a target for their further reduction.

There is no acceptable level for hate crime; it is a pernicious crime that affects victims disproportionately and it has no place in a Britain that works for everyone.

Government statistics show that 62,518 hate crimes were recorded by the police between April 2015 and March 2016. There was a sharp increase in racially and religiously aggravated crime in the month following the EU Referendum, but we have now seen a fall to pre-referendum levels.

One of the aims of Action Against Hate is to reduce incidence of hate crime through education and changing attitudes. We have not set a numerical target for this.