Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, what steps she is taking to ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service is adequately resourced to prosecute hate crime against members of religious minority communities.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) recognises the serious impact hate crimes have on peoples’ lives and will always seek to prosecute where there is sufficient evidence to do so, regardless of the offence, or how it is committed. In 2021/22, the proportion of successful outcomes in religiously aggravated hate crime with an announced and recorded sentence uplift was 79.8%.

Each CPS Area has a Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor as a strategic hate crime lead and a network of dedicated Hate Crime Coordinators operates across all 14 CPS Areas, providing their expertise on matters relating to hate crime and acting as a local point of contact for all external partner agencies.

In addition, the CPS has created a hate crime External Consultation Group, which is responsible for providing a community perspective on CPS activity, providing an important check and balance in respect of CPS casework quality, and includes representatives from Tell MAMA and the Community Security Trust (CST).

The CPS also sits on the cross-government working groups on anti-Muslim Hatred and on Antisemitism.