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

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth on 14 January (HL Deb, col 7), what evidence there is that there are more attacks on the Muslim community than any other.

The Government treats all forms of hate crime equally seriously. Two separate statistical sources used by Government show the scale of hate crimes targeted at Muslims in relation to hate crimes against other faith groups.

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), published by the Office for National Statistics in October 2018, portrays the experience of hate crime. It is estimated that 0.1 per cent of adults (105,459) were victims of a religiously motivated hate crime in the 12 months prior to interview. The 2015/16 to 2017/18 CSEW showed that 0.8% of Muslim adults were the victim of religiously motivated hate crime, which was the highest percentage for a faith group where data is available.

The full breakdown from the CSEW is as follows:

Christian - (61,804) 0.0%

Buddhist - (489) 0.%

Hindu 0.5 - (1,326) 0.5%

Muslim - (3,480) 0.8%

Other - (1,553) 0.2%

No religion - (36,518) 0.0%

Statistics for police recorded crime, also published in October 2018, show that hate crimes motivated by religion have increased by 40% from 2016/17 to 2017/18, representing the largest percentage increase of all hate crime strands (comprising race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender). The 2017/18 police statistics were the first to reflect the mandatory break down of hate crime reporting by perceived religion, and provided a breakdown based on the targeted religion of victims of religiously motivated hate crimes . They show that 52% of religiously-motivated hate crimes recorded by the police comprised anti-Muslim hostility.

The full breakdown of police recorded hate crime is as follows:

Buddhist - (19) 0%

Christian - (264) 5%

Hindu - (58) 1%

Jewish - (672) 12%

Muslim - (2,965) 52%

Sikh - (117) 2%

Other - (311) 5%

No religion - (237) 4%

Unknown - (1,174) 21%

Total number of targeted religions 5,817

Total number of offences 5,680