May I congratulate Siân Gwenllian on getting this debate and leading it in the way she has, and on her work in her constituency? I was particularly interested in the story around the youth club there, GISDA.

She did say at one point in her speech that prejudice was the root of the increase. We heard from Leanne Wood that, I think quite rightly, social attitudes have progressed a lot in recent decades. I just don't know whether it's right to say that prejudice is the root of the increase, which, to me, implies that prejudice has got worse. I don't know if that is the case in the near term. Certainly, in the longer term, my impression, as with Leanne, is that things have got better—clearly, not good enough and there are problems that we need to address.

We have these statistics, and the focus has been on those reported to the police and the way they've recorded the crimes, and the 17 per cent increase in Wales and the 10 per cent across England and Wales in the past year. When someone reports a hate crime, it's very important that the police record them in a consistent way. Until recently, unfortunately, there's evidence that that hasn't been the case, and it's important that the standards of crime recording are set centrally.

The way it's done is, if someone alleges a crime has been committed, reports an incident, then it's recorded as a crime. If that person, or indeed anyone else, says that they consider race or another protected characteristic to be a motivating factor, then, again, it must be recorded as a hate crime. I think that is right and proper, but it's also right that we understand that and how that wasn't reliably the case in the past. And not all of these cases were necessarily proved to be that, and we haven't heard from other people there, or particularly a defendant, as to what they might say. I think 13 per cent of these cases lead to a charge or a summons, which is a somewhat higher proportion than for crime overall.

What I think is a useful corrective, though, is to check the police recorded crime statistics against what we see from the British crime survey. The trend in that has been different. On these issues, we've got the waves of the survey, and the first I'll refer to is in 2007 to 2009, and that, grossed up from the survey number to total population, suggested 69,000 hate crimes related to sexual orientation across the UK. And then, in 2010-12, that fell from 69,000 to 42,000 on the British crime survey, and then in 2013-15 fell again to 29,000. There is a small uptick in 2016-18 from 29,000 to 30,000, but not statistically significant on the basis of the numbers in the survey. On the transgender hate crimes, they didn't ask the relevant questions back in the first two surveys. They did in the latter two, but they have a sort of asterisk response, saying that the numbers were too small for them reliably to gross up and give an estimate for the country as a whole. One hate crime is too many, and these transgender hate crimes—. Clearly, transgender people and having that identity has become greater, and it's talked about in a way that it wasn't even almost a decade or so ago. People may debate what are the arrangements for sport or what are the arrangements for lavatories, but it's inexcusable when there are crimes, often crimes of violence, simply for, or at least motivated by, someone's identity.

So, I agree with much of what's been said in this debate, but I would just put that corrective of looking at the British crime survey, as well as the recorded police statistics. I would say that, when you compare the police statistics across the UK, overall, the Welsh forces aren't coming in the top 10 for hate crimes, but there's one exception to that, and that area is sexual orientation, where two of the Welsh forces—Gwent, in my region, and south Wales, which touches on part of my region—are fourth and fifth out of the 43, at 26 hate crimes on sexual orientation per 100,000. So, it may suggest at least in south Wales there is a particular issue there in Wales that we should be concerned about and interrogate why that is, and look to see how we can improve it, even if, overall, on the other hate crimes, we don't see Wales to the fore.

I'll just say that I'm not yet convinced of the link to points 2 and 3 of the motion, and for that reason I don't propose to support the motion today. It's unfortunate in terms of timing, because I'm very much looking forward to hearing Lord Thomas tomorrow; I think he's launching his commissioner's report on the Justice Commission for Wales from 8:30 tomorrow in the Pierhead. I hope to see some colleagues there, and I really want to listen to, read and digest that report before considering our position on devolution of justice. We're not yet convinced of it; in particular, I'd worry if we were then to go from police and crime commissioners who are elected to a Wales-wide force. I know that Wales's Government is doing some good things in some areas here, but that of itself doesn't strike me as a sufficient reason to devolve the whole of justice, but I will be reading very, very carefully what Lord Thomas and his team say tomorrow. Thank you.