Rushanara Ali
Main Page: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)Department Debates - View all Rushanara Ali's debates with the Home Office
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Victoria Atkins
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. Of course, increasing the amount of data helps to give us answers and helps to direct our resources in the right way. We very much hope that disaggregating the different types of hate crime that exist will help individual constabularies to work out how better to prioritise their resources to deal with them.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
The level of hate and violence against Muslims has become utterly intolerable. For years, many of our constituencies have faced the onslaught of threats from the English Defence League, Britain First and others. What action will the Minister take, first, to provide protection for the communities who feel particularly under threat on 3 April and in the run-up to 3 April and, secondly, to proscribe groups that are actively seeking to incite violence and hatred across our communities?
Victoria Atkins
Again, the hon. Lady will understand that I must not comment on the investigation going on at the moment, given that it is, by definition, a live investigation. Communities that may be affected by any such communication will be uppermost in the police’s mind with regard to protection and their vulnerability. Tackling far right extremism more generally is part of a cross-Government programme that also supports victims of such behaviour. This is where the Prevent strategy, which is a safeguarding programme for people who may be vulnerable to radicalisation, has such an impact, because, sadly, a quarter of the referrals to it in 2015-16 involved far right extremism. The strategy is about trying to lead people away from the path of radicalisation, so that they do not commit these terrible acts.