Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 28 March 2018 to Question 133769, what specific steps her Department is taking to encourage social media companies to tackle online hate crime.

The 2016 Hate Crime Action Plan set out a number of Home Office and cross-Government actions to tackle online hate crime, including engagement with industry. We will be refreshing the action plan this year.

The Government has already gone further than these actions: in October 2017 the Home Secretary announced funding for a national online hate crime hub that will help the police to manage online cases more effectively and efficiently; we have successfully worked with industry and partners internationally to agree the removal of illegal hate speech within 24 hours through the EU Commission Code of Conduct on Illegal Hate Speech; and we will publish the Government response to the Internet Safety Strategy consultation in the spring which will set out details on a comprehensive new social media code of practice.