Joan Ryan
Main Page: Joan Ryan (The Independent Group for Change - Enfield North)Department Debates - View all Joan Ryan's debates with the Home Office
(6 years, 8 months ago)
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Victoria Atkins
Of course we recognise the importance of bringing communities together, and there are many ways in which to do that. My constituency may enjoy being brought together in a very different way from another constituency elsewhere in the country. I am not clear about the direct impact asserted by the hon. Gentleman in relation to that project, but I will happily write to him about it.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
May I, along with everybody else, condemn this absolutely abhorrent letter? It has been reported that since the EU referendum there has been a spike in hate crime, both in Islamophobia and in anti-Semitism, coming from the hard right and the hard left. It has also been reported by the Crown Prosecution Service that, against that increase in incidents, there was a drop by more than 1,000 in the number of prosecutions in 2016-17. What is the Minister doing with the CPS and the police to ensure that that is reversed?
Victoria Atkins
The drop in referrals, recorded last year, has had an impact on the number of completed prosecutions in 2016 and 2017. The Crown Prosecution Service is working with the police at local and national level to understand the reasons for the overall fall in referrals in the past two years. The message to spread around our constituencies to people who have been a victim of hate crime is please report it, because that way we can try to do something about it.