2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:18 pm on 23 October 2018.

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Photo of Joyce Watson Joyce Watson Labour 2:18, 23 October 2018

Could we have a statement on the rise of racism and hate crime in Wales since 2016? And I'm sure that you'd like to share with me the absolute disgust about the incident that happened on a Ryanair flight at the weekend and say that there is no place for this sort of behaviour, certainly across the world, but more specifically here in Wales.

And the facts are simple, that, since the referendum vote, the figures of race crime and hate crime have shot through the roof. Police figures obtained through a freedom of information request show that incidents surged by 23 per cent, Gwent being the biggest area that was affected, with a rise of 77 per cent—that's a 77 per cent rise in incidents from the previous year. That's an unparalleled rise during the time that these records have been kept. Now, those incidents reported in the past year included a Muslim woman being dragged along the pavement by her hijab, two Polish men being attacked in the street, resulting in the death of one of them, a Muslim man and woman being squirted with acid, leaving them with life-changing injuries—these are the most despicable crimes and they have been fuelled by racism and hatred towards the other. There is no area whatsoever in the UK that hasn't escaped these crimes, even those areas where they have voted very strongly to stay in the EU. And there were—76 per cent of incidents were restricted to verbal abuse; 14 per cent of cases involved threat of actual or physical violence. The statistics are extremely interesting—