Diolch. As the Equality and Human Rights Commission in Wales states, hate crimes are any crimes that are targeted at a person because of hostility or prejudice towards that person's disability, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, age, sexual orientation or transgender identity. This could be committed against a person or property. They say a victim does not have to be a member of the group at which the hostility is targeted; in fact, anyone could be a victim of hate crime. 

As the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip stated in her hate crime statement last October, 2018-19 hate crimes statistics for England and Wales were published by the Home Office on 15 October. The statistics show a 17 per cent increase in recorded hate crimes across Wales compared to 2017-18; this compares to an overall 10 per cent increase across the whole of England and Wales. I therefore move amendment 2, which regrets the 17 per cent increase in recorded hate crimes across Wales last year compared to an overall 10 per cent increase across the whole of England and Wales.

We therefore need to better understand why this differential exists, especially when the Welsh Government states that the statistics reflect the hard work being done across Wales by police forces, third sector, and the national hate crime report and support centre, run by Victim Support Cymru, to increase the confidence of victims and encourage them to report these incidents. Some 76 per cent of the hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales were race related—falling to 68 per cent of the 3,932 recorded hate crimes across the four Welsh police force areas—with 19 per cent related to sexual orientation, 11 per cent to disability, 5 per cent to religion, and 3 per cent to transgender.

Using similar arguments to the Welsh Government, the Home Office states that the increase in reported hate crime over the past five years is thought to have been driven by improvements in recording by police and the growing awareness of hate crime, as well as short-term rises following certain events such as the 2016 EU referendum. Of course, whatever our views on Brexit, it's now a reality, and we must all work together for an inclusive Wales within an outward looking and global UK.

The crime survey of England and Wales is considered to be a more reliable indicator of long-term crime trends than the police recorded crime series. Experience of hate crime captured in the crime survey has gone down steadily over the last 10 years. Ironically, it's higher overall than the police figures, but is showing a decline rather an increase. So, according to the crime survey, hate crime incidents averaged 184,000 annually, between 2015 and 2018, representing around 3 per cent of all crime recorded in the survey, compared with only 2 per cent of police-recorded crime. And between 2015 and 2018, 53 per cent of the hate crime incidents recorded by the crime survey were reported, so 47 per cent went unreported.

I move amendment 1, noting the UK Government's hate crime action plan, which applies to England and Wales. 'Action Against Hate: The UK Government's plan for tackling hate crime—"two years on"' reflects the devolved policy responsibilities in Wales, stating,

'the Welsh Government has published a Hate Crime Action Plan for Wales, which includes activities that are specifically applicable to tackling hate crime in Wales.'

As the UK Government plan states,

'Action to prevent and tackle hate crime will also support our ambition to build strong, integrated communities'.

It goes on,

'We want to build communities where people—whatever their background—live, work, learn and socialise together, based around shared rights, responsibilities and opportunities. Hate crime undermines this vision, spreading fear and stopping people from playing a full part in their communities.'

As I've said previously, we must recognise the vital work being carried out by front-line community and third sector organisations to promote multicultural integration in Wales. As the chair and founder of Networking for World Awareness of Multicultural Integration, Dr Sibani Roy, has stated,

'Some of the people think that when you talk about integration, you mean assimilation. We have to explain to people that integration is not assimilation. We have to respect the law and culture of the land.... What we need to do is educate people and say we are all human beings, we're friendly and we should try to understand each other's culture.... By talking to people and educating people—eventually by convincing them that human beings are not all bad...we treat them as individuals—it doesn't matter what the background is, their faith or colour.'

And, as she said only last week, we're a team, and we need to work collectively towards the noble cause of integration and reducing hate crimes.

I leave the last word to her.