Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to (a) tackle and (b) improve reporting rates of disability hate crime.

Disability hate crimes are completely unacceptable, and this Government is committed to tackling these appalling crimes.

We have a robust legislative framework in place in England and Wales to respond to hate crimes, including those which target disability, and we back the police in taking strong action against the perpetrators of these offences.

We are carefully considering next steps to tackle the full range of hate crime offences.

The Government funds an online hate crime reporting portal, True Vision, that was designed so that victims of all types of hate crime - including disability hate crime - do not have to visit a police station to report. The Government also funds the National Online Hate Crime Hub which supports individual local police forces in dealing specifically with online hate crime. The Hub provides expert advice to police forces to support them in investigating these offences.