Thank you for this debate today. Plaid Cymru obviously is completely opposed to hate crime, and what I’d like to say at the beginning is that I think the target of hate crime changes from generation to generation and from community to community. I say this because my mother comes from Belfast, from the north of Ireland, and I remember distinctly, when we were walking down the street—sadly, in a Valleys community, but I’m not branding everybody that way—and a woman came up to her and heard her talking and said, ‘Why don’t you just go home?’ My mother said, ‘Well, this is my home, and I’ve got nowhere else to go’. So, I think, sometimes—I remember that and I was only about seven years old—the things that you remember have a distinct way of shaping your life. I think that’s why it’s so important that, even though there may be people who come to our country for various reasons, we should always start from a degree of tolerance. Everybody has their own stories to tell. Everybody has their own backgrounds to their own situations, regardless of ethnicity, sexuality or gender. So, I think sometimes, in all of this debate, yes, there may be people who are coming here for the wrong reasons, but we don’t know that until we actually talk to them. I think many people—the media and political parties—brand certain ethnicities or groups of people without even taking a second thought as to the torment that they’ve gone through to perhaps get to this country in the first place.

We all know that hate crime has grown as a result of Brexit. I don’t know if it’s directly associated or whether it was a way in which people then thought that it was acceptable to come out with some inflammatory behaviour. When we had the communities and culture briefing with various organisations recently, we heard people saying that it’s getting worse in our schools, whereby other children are saying, because of the colour of their skin, they should not be present in the school environment anymore. I think that’s very, very worrying, if this type of attitude is deemed acceptable.

Last weekend, we had the social media campaign #WeAreWales, showing an appetite to combat this kind of hostility. People want to live in strong, happy and inclusive communities. The principle of treating everyone with respect, regardless of who they are or what their background is, is under threat, and we need to protect that.

We know that the Welsh Government’s report suggests that the increase in recorded hate crime offences could be viewed as a positive indicator, much like, potentially, with people reporting domestic violence, that people are coming forward to report that more because they feel more empowered to be able to do so. So, that might be a good indicator, but then it might show also that our communities are becoming more fraught with issues that we really need to get to grips with. So, I would call for some more rational and logical approach to the public debate on immigration, rather than fearmongering, which is driving division in our communities.

We need to have an informed debate. There may be people from different political parties who are as guilty as each other in all of this. Rachel Reeves claimed at her party’s annual conference in September that tensions over immigration could explode into riots if the issue isn’t controlled. Using the word ‘riots’—it’s quite a strong word when you think about how this could impact on our communities.

We need to address the fears of people in our communities with practical steps, like legislation to stop employers from undercutting the domestic workforce, not with reckless rhetoric. Much of people’s concerns arise from problems caused by the Tory UK Government’s destructive austerity agenda. Rather than acknowledging this and holding the Tories to account, we see, again, communities being pitted against other communities and then increasing that fear that I’ve mentioned already. It hasn’t been helpful—. I watched ‘Question Time’ last night. I hadn’t been here to see it originally, on Thursday. I just think that the Secretary of State for Wales not only attacking our own party but distorting history with smears and insinuation also made politicians come over in a very negative light. I think that he needs to justify what he said, and if he is associating a political party with what he said on that programme, then he needs to justify why and how, and give us evidence as to how he’s come to that conclusion.

We all want to be treated in this place with respect amongst each other. We all want that to happen. Yes, we will argue and debate, but we can go outside this Chamber and we can talk to each other in a civil fashion. I think sometimes, if we just think about how we would like to be treated as human beings, then we can perhaps frame our political debate in a more positive and constructive way.