Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons police forces reported to the Home Office the ethnicity of victims of racially and religiously aggravated crimes in 40 per cent of cases in the year ending 31 March 2025.

Police forces are required to send ethnicity data for victims of racially or religiously aggravated offences to the Home Office under the Annual Data Requirement (ADR). The Home Office publishes these data annually, with the figures based on self-defined ethnicity.

There are several reasons why these data are not available for every offence recorded. Some crimes, such as racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress, will not have a single identifiable victim. This is a public order offence and can be a crime against the state rather than a specific victim. For other offences, the victim may not want to give their ethnicity to the police. There may also be IT issues for certain forces in supplying these data.