Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted of offences relating to online hate content in each of the last three years for which figures are available.

Information on prosecutions and convictions for hate crime, held by the Ministry of Justice, does not include details of whether an offence was committed through online activity.

On 26 July we published a comprehensive new cross-Government Hate Crime Action plan to drive forward action against hate crime. This includes education programmes to prevent hate incidents and measures to improve the police response and recording of hate crime. It also includes £2.4million for security at places of worship which are vulnerable to hate crime and £300,000 funding for community groups to tackle hate crime in innovative ways, including the potential to tackle hate crime online.