Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to support workers that have faced racial, verbal and physical abuse while providing local authority services during the covid-19 outbreak.

The Government takes hate crime and discrimination of any kind very seriously. We are a tolerant and welcoming multicultural society and we have one of the strongest legal frameworks in the world to report, record and prosecute hate crime. As such, I would encourage anyone who experiences hate crime or any other form of verbal or physical abuse to report it to the police.

While MHCLG does not performance manage local government, we do consider the service delivery of authorities as part of our oversight of local government. We continue to assess the risks affecting local government as part of the response to coronavirus. This will allow for us to compile the information needed to identify risks affecting councils and their workers, aiding us in assisting the Local Government Association and across Government to identify those local authorities which may need support.