Far-right Violence and Online Extremism

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

When I see Islamophobia in the media, it breaks down into three reasons: laziness, because the journalist could not be bothered to find out about what they were writing about; ignorance, because they do not know anything about the religion, people or communities they are writing about; and naked racism or aggression. We can deal with two of those factors quite well.

We need to make sure that we educate people about different faiths in this country, so that they understand the differences within the faiths and across the faiths. We need to bring more people together to understand our different communities. That is why the £63 million for building strong communities is a good place to start. If we can remove the ignorance and teach tolerance and respect for each other, together we will make a difference. That is a strong message to send.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is very clear that the Government are not doing enough to tackle this crime. The Home Office reported recently that religious hate crime rocketed by 40% across England and Wales in just one year. More than half of it is directed at Muslims. What are the Minister’s Government going to do now to tackle the rise in far-right attacks against British Muslims and other minority communities?

[Mr Wallace]

As I said to one of the hon. Gentleman’s honourable colleagues, we asked the Law Commission to review hate crime to make sure that the legislation is fit for the 21st century, and can deal with, for example, the online aspect and how things have changed. We will fund that with £1.5 million. We will also make sure that we tackle the ignorance that I talked about in communities; that is the first thing we need to do. At the same time, we need to deal with online harm to make sure that people stop spreading it. We have also funded work with groups such as Tell MAMA, so that people can report hate crime better, because by them reporting it and our getting better data, we will be able to do something about it.