Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of
any increase in the number incidents of race and faith-based hate
crimes, and whether they intend to introduce a new hate crime
action plan.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Levelling Up, Housing & Communities () (Con)
My Lords, hate crimes recorded by the police decreased by 5% last
year. This reflects the crime survey statistics, which show a
decline in hate crime reported over the last 15 years. Since 7
October, British Jews and Muslims have reported incidents in
increased numbers. This is unacceptable, and we continue to work
closely with communities. We are not intending to publish a hate
crime strategy. We remain committed to cutting crime and
protecting all communities.
(LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response, but, as she
said, hate crime has spiked very recently, and we know that hate
crimes are chronically underreported in the UK and that many
victims feel disempowered by existing reporting services. In the
Government’s last hate crime action plan of 2016, they pledged to
increase the reporting of hate crimes and encourage more people
from under- reported groups to come forward. What is happening
about that? Can the Minister tell the House whether this work has
been reviewed in the last eight years and whether reporting and
prosecutions have indeed improved? Will the Government introduce
a comprehensive strategy to ensure vulnerable groups feel
protected and supported in law?
(Con)
My Lords, we have seen an increase in reporting and recording of
hate crime over the last decade or so. There has been a small
decrease in the last year, but, overall, that is partly
reflective of the fact that we have put additional efforts into
encouraging people to come forward. That includes through
supporting charities such as the Community Security Trust but
also Tell MAMA, which we fund, which is an organisation that
focuses on anti-Muslim hatred and provides a different route by
which people can report crimes and incidents and then get the
appropriate support.
(Con)
My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of interests, which
discloses that I am president of Westminster Synagogue. This
Saturday, we had 20 policemen and four vans to protect us as a
demonstration went past Knightsbridge. Does my noble friend agree
that these demonstrations, with anti-Semitic slogans and rhetoric
calling for genocide against the State of Israel, need to be
controlled and curtailed so that British Jews can once again feel
safe and secure in the streets of London?
(Con)
My Lords, I think my noble friend’s experience bears out the
statistics that we saw announced by the Community Security Trust
last week, showing the highest number of reported anti-Semitic
incidents on record in 2023, with the majority of these being
reported from 7 October. There is no place on British streets for
demonstrations, convoys or flag-waving that glorify terrorism or
harass the Jewish community, and we will work closely with the
police, who we urge to step up patrols and use all available
powers to enforce the law.
(CB)
My Lords, the current practice of giving government funding to
more vocal communities to collect figures to show that they are
more hated than others is a waste of that funding. Does the
Minister agree that a better approach would be to tackle the
underlying ignorance on which prejudice thrives by stressing, in
the teaching of RE in schools and elsewhere, the large number of
important ethical commonalities between different faiths to show
that the superficial differences are very insignificant?
(Con)
My Lords, the Government committed to break down the recording of
hate crime first by religion and then more recently by race. That
provides us with an important insight into the experiences of
different communities, which can be quite different across the
country. Where I agree with the noble Lord is that part of the
solution to some of these issues is focusing on where we have
more in common than what divides us. We should emphasise that,
particularly in our schools.
The Lord
My Lords, this is an extremely difficult time, in which we hear
profoundly disturbing reports of the rise in race and faith-based
hate crimes. Tomorrow, the board of the UK’s Inter Faith Network
will meet to confirm its closure following the withdrawal of
funding by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and
Communities. This comes at a time when we urgently need to
promote interfaith dialogue and the expansion of religious
literacy in schools, as has been mentioned, and elsewhere. What
assessment have His Majesty’s Government made of the impact of
the closure of the Inter Faith Network, and what will replace
it?
(Con)
My Lords, the Government fund a number of organisations to work
in the space. On the Inter Faith Network specifically, the
Secretary of State decided to withdraw the offer of funding for
this year due to the appointment of a member of the Muslim
Council of Britain to the board of trustees of the IFN.
Successive Governments have had a long-standing policy of
non-engagement with the MCB. Therefore, the appointment of an MCB
member to the core governance structure of a government-funded
organisation informed that decision.
(Lab)
My Lords, following the previous question, would it not be
helpful if the leadership of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian
communities made a joint statement about how abhorrent racial
hatred really is?
(Con)
I know of many efforts across the country, locally and
nationally, to bring leaders of different faiths together and
make statements of unity. That is something the Government
continue to support.
(CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, , issued a report on anti-Semitism
not long ago which made very useful recommendations, including
teaching about anti-Semitism and Jewish history in school. Would
that not be a far better approach than focusing entirely on
Holocaust education, which places everything in the past, far
away, nothing to do with us today?
(Con)
My Lords, one of the most recent announcements from the
Government in this area is indeed additional funding through the
Department for Education to schools to increase education around
this area. That is something the DfE is taking forward.
(Con)
My Lords, when the Government look at their hate crime strategy,
how much of it do they think they can achieve in a top-down way
from central government, and how much can they achieve in working
with local community organisations, so that it is a bottom-up
approach to tackling hate crimes?
(Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right that working at a local level
is key to giving people more confidence in reporting, but it is
also really important in thinking about solutions to these
issues. One of the things that my department has been doing, in
particular since 7 October, is regular engagement with local
authorities to understand what is going on in their area,
examples of best practice we can help share, and any particular
issues that they are aware of that we can provide more support
on.
(Lab)
My Lords, news reports this week of a baby’s passport application
being returned from the Home Office to its parents with its
birthplace, Israel, scribbled out and the application torn, and a
statue of Amy Winehouse being defaced with a Palestinian flag
sticker placed over her Star of David, are more evidence of the
increase in anti-Semitic incidents reported by the CST. The
Government’s downgrading of recording of non-crime hate incidents
limits the police’s ability to monitor and prevent escalation
within communities. Can the Minister tell the House whether the
Government will support Labour’s plan to reinstate full
collection details for all hate incidents?
(Con)
My Lords, I have not had the same feedback as the noble Baroness.
As I say, it was this Government that brought in the
disaggregation of hate crimes by different religions to help
provide insight into the experience of different communities. We
provide ongoing support and funding to the CST in its work, and
we have regular engagement with the police to understand what the
picture is in local areas. I will look at the issue the noble
Baroness raises, and also understand from the feedback and
conversations we have what impact that has.
(Non-Afl)
My Lords—
(LD)
My Lords—
of Northwood (Con)
My Lords—
(Con)
My Lords, it is the turn of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox.
(Non-Afl)
My Lords, will the Minister acknowledge that there are real
problems in terms of legislating against hate as a crime, because
it can be used to silence opposition? One of our fellow Peers has
recently been accused of, and in fact punished for, bigotry, when
bad-faith activists wilfully labelled a tweet against
Islamists—that is Hamas—as Islamophobic. Conversely, while I
consider that the virulent rhetoric and abuse directed at Zionism
is often—usually—thinly disguised anti-Semitism, the same
legitimate criticism of Israel is being curtailed. Should we
avoid using the law, and instead argue back and condemn
loudly?
(Con)
My Lords, we have both systems in place. We fully support lawful
freedom of speech; it generates rigorous debate and is incredibly
important to our society. But it is not an absolute right, and
does not include the right to harass others or incite them to
violence or terrorism. It is possible to both have in place laws
against hate crime while protecting and respecting freedom of
speech. Sometimes the implementation of that is a carefully
balanced judgment, and that is something we all need to take care
with.
