Steve Rotheram – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve Rotheram on 2016-01-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of trends in the rate of race-related crimes in England and Wales over the last five years.

Karen Bradley

The Crime Survey for England and Wales estimates that there were 106,000 incidents of race hate crime a year, based on the combined data from the 2012/13 to 2014/15 surveys (the most recently available figures). There has been a clear downward trend in the number of hate crime incidents between the 2007/08 to 2008/09 and 2012/13 to 2014/15 crimes surveys, which have fallen by 28% for all hate crimes over this period. The Home Office also collects information from the police on hate crimes. This shows that were 42,930 race hate crimes recorded by the police in 2014/15, a 15% increase on the previous year. This increase is largely thought to be due to improvements in recording practices by the police over the last year rather than a real increase in race hate crime. However, it is possible in some police forces areas that recording may not be the only reason and there could be an element of real increases in certain areas.

The Government is committed to tackling all forms of hate crime, including that perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person. That is why we announced in October last year the intention to bring forward a new cross Government hate crime action plan. This is being developed with the communities most affected by hate crime and will be published later this year.