Islamaphobia

Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:04 pm on 14 March 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:04, 14 March 2018

Yes, well, there's nothing that I—. I really feel that there's not much to add to that. I couldn't agree more with everything that you said. We are doing a large number of things here in Wales. We work very closely with the four police forces and the hate crime criminal justice board to make sure that we do have robust systems and legislation in place to investigate the hate crimes that you've been highlighting, and, more importantly in some ways, to support the victims and to make sure that the perpetrators are brought to justice. But there is a much wider effect here, and, absolutely, the whole issue around people just perceiving themselves as people. 

Of course, the vast majority of people of the Muslim faith are peaceful and nice neighbours, in the same way as the vast majority of people are nice neighbours. Every community has people in it of which that community is not proud, and every community has people in it of which the community is very proud. All communities have the same. I think you've heard me saying in this Chamber before—I spent a large part of my young life going all around the world with my father, who had terrible itchy feet and needed to move on a lot, and we were always overwhelmed by the acceptance with which we were received into different communities, different faiths, different cultures. There was never any kind of problem at all, and I don't see any reason at all why that can't be reciprocal here in Wales.

There are some real issues around some of the policies that we have. We are working very closely with the UK Government to make sure that the UK Government's current stance on immigration doesn't have any unintended consequences. So, I have a group of people with whom I meet very regularly, and we have a Home Office representative there, and we raise issues where a particular policy may be having an unintended consequence in terms of community cohesion, for example. So, we do have very open channels of communication between us and the UK Government around making sure that we don't do things that exacerbate the kind of myth that you rightly highlight.

But, Llywydd, I think it's very important for us to state very firmly that we think this is abhorrent and that we very much, like all of our communities, equally, here in Wales, want to ensure that all of those communities live together peacefully and without this kind of abhorrent campaign against them.