I welcome effective measures to tackle hate crime and all forms of prejudice. Hate crime is a crime based in prejudice and bigotry. I have always lived by the principle of live how you choose, believe what you like as long as you don’t harm anyone. Sadly, there are many people who don’t live by that principle. There are people who want to drive out behaviours they see as aberrant, who want to drive out people they regard as different, who want to silence those with different beliefs or political views, and who will use violence and intimidation to do so. There is a continuum of prejudice, with ignorance at one end and hate crime at the other. Bigots and thugs sit on the left and right of politics. It was prejudice that said voting ‘leave’ was about ignorance, lack of education and fear, when it was really about people understanding that the EU wasn’t working for them. We in north-east Wales have seen how the local Labour Party conducts itself and controls its thugs at an electoral count. Prejudice against the English or people who live in England is just as nasty as prejudice against any immigrant who comes to Wales.

As with other crime statistics, an increase in the number of hate crimes reported is not necessarily an indication that more of those crimes are actually being committed. Increases in reported crime are therefore more a testament to the effectiveness of the publicity machine surrounding hate crime than evidence that our society has become more intolerant. The statistics that gave rise to this debate are far from indicative of what’s happening on the streets and elsewhere. We need a proper investigation into the actual prevalence of hate crime in our society, and not leap on some unreliable data because it suits certain people’s political agendas.