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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the strategy of the Equality and Human Rights Commission in combating rising levels of antisemitism and hate crime.

The Government deplores all forms of hate crime and is committed to tackling it. We treat all hate crime with equal seriousness; there is no place for treating victims differently regardless of their race, religion, age, gender identity, sexuality or disability.

Our response to anti-Semitism has been built on the solid work of the Cross-Government working group on tackling anti-Semitism which includes Jewish communal stakeholders, ensuring that we are alive to any issues and concerns of the Jewish community and can respond quickly. The Government supports the Community Security Trust (CST) to provide security for Jewish communal buildings, as well as a range of projects to tackle anti-Semitism on campus such as the Union of Jewish Student's Bridges Not Boycotts programme, and the Holocaust Educational Trust's Lessons From Auschwitz.

In 2016, the Government published the Hate Crime Action Plan. The Plan includes a range of actions, including funding for security for places of worship, and the disaggregation of religion-based hate crime data. We have taken further action in education, equipping teachers to have difficult conversations and funding programmes through the Anne Frank Trust and Streetwise. The Plan also brings together the work of a wider range of departments and agencies, including Fire and Rescue Services for the first time. We are now refreshing the plan to ensure that we remain able to respond to all forms of hatred effectively and appropriately.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is an independent public body. I have therefore asked the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer to write to the Hon Member with the information requested. I will place a copy of the letter in the libraries of both Houses.