EU Referendum: Race Hate Crime — House of Commons, 2016-07-05
Topic: Civil Rights
Karen Anne Bradley (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) on securing today’s debate and I wish her a happy birthday. I hope she will have some remaining time this evening to enjoy it Hate crime of any kind, directed against any community, race or religion has absolutely no place in our society. I reiterate my message from last week: this Government are utterly committed to tackling hate crime, and we will provide extra funding to do so. We will also take steps to boost reporting of hate crime and support victims, issue new Crown Prosecution Service guidance to prosecutors on racially aggravated crime, provide a new fund for protective security measures at potentially vulnerable institutions and offer additional funding to community organisations so that they can tackle hate crime I do not propose to repeat the many points discussed last week. Instead, I shall reflect on the comments made today and answer the questions put to me. It is worth repeating, however, that the scenes and behaviour we have seen in recent days, including offensive graffiti and abuse hurled at people because they are members of ethnic minorities or because of their nationality, are despicable and shameful. The examples cited today across the House show that this is a real problem affecting our constituents up and down the country, including in my own constituency of Staffordshire, Moorlands. I know of comments and abuse that have been directed at Polish friends in my constituency —people who have lived and worked there, who have contributed to our communities, and whom we value and want to protect. We must stand together against such hate crime, and ensure that it is stamped out The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) gave the House some statistics. Let me now give some statistics from True Vision, the police online reporting portal, and from the letter to which he referred. Between 23 and 29 June, 331 reports of hate incidents were made to True Vision. When compared to the weekly average of 63 reports in 2016, that shows a 525% increase. However, although those figures undoubtedly seem shocking, I urge people to be cautious about drawing conclusions from them, because they represent a snapshot of reports rather than definite statistics. We should bear in mind that the extensive media coverage of hate crime will have increased awareness of True Vision, and may have encouraged increased reporting—which we welcome. We should also bear in mind that some of the reports may relate to non-criminal hate incidents, and that some may be duplicated. As I have said, I urge caution because this is an early snapshot, but we nevertheless take it very seriously The right hon. Gentleman referred to figures included in a letter from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, which showed that there had been 599 incidents of race hate crime between 24 June and 2 July in the Metropolitan police area. As he said, that is an average of 67 per day. However, it is worth noting that the average daily number before 24 June was 44 per day, and that the number of reports normally varies between 25 and 50 per day. We are seeing an increase in reporting of hate crime, which I greatly welcome, but when we have definitive figures, we will need to establish whether it is an underlying increase in prevalence or an increase in reporting. We need to know how the figures break down Much of the reporting of hate incidents has been through social media, including reports of xenophobic abuse of eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom, as well as attacks against members of the Muslim community. However, we have also seen messages of support and friendship on social media. The hon. Member for Bolton South East referred to an incident on a tram in Manchester. I am sure that the whole House will join me in commending those we have seen stand up for what is right, upholding the shared values that bring us together as a country When we debated this matter last week, the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) asked us to ensure that the hate crime action plan did not include the words "tolerate" and "tolerance", and he was right to do so. We cannot "tolerate" incidents such as these, because they are not acceptable. We cannot say, "You received 40 messages of hate on Twitter today, so if you receive 50 tomorrow that is worse, but if you receive only 30, that is OK." We cannot tolerate any such crimes. We must make it clear that they will not be tolerated, that they need to be reported, and that the police must take them seriously The hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) made a couple of interventions about social media and online messages, and I agree with much of what he said. What is illegal offline is illegal online. We have seen some prosecutions for online hatred, but there is no doubt that more needs to be done. We have been talking to social media companies, and I am pleased to say that the European Commission and IT companies recently announced a code of conduct on illegal online hate speech. We must now work with those companies to ensure that hateful content online is removed and perpetrators are brought to justice, but we must also recognise the scale of the challenge. Facebook receives 4 billion posts a day—4 billion pieces of content are uploaded on to it each day, globally. The task is therefore very difficult. More responsibility must be taken by the social media companies, and I am pressing them on exactly that matter. However, we must also recognise that this is something that we must change in society as a whole The hon. Member for Bolton South East talked about hate speech in the media, and again there is no place for hate speech anywhere in society. Freedom of speech is a vital cornerstone of our society, but everybody must remember they have responsibilities not to spread hatred or fear. Anyone using freedom of speech as an excuse to break the law should face the full force of the law.