There can be no doubt that racism, in all its forms, is real and rife for so many people in Wales. The Wales Governance Centre has shown us how imprisonment rates of people coming from black and minority ethnic groups are much higher here, with average sentence length being greater too. The 2018 report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 'Is Wales Fairer?', found that race was a motivating factor in 68 per cent of all of the 2,676 recorded hate crimes in Wales. And hate crime in Wales has increased by 16 per cent on the previous year. We know from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that people of colour are more likely to be employed in shut-down sectors, therefore more likely to be made unemployed. So, there is no doubt that racism exists—it is as prevalent in Wales as it is elsewhere, and in some cases it's worse here.

Questions of racism have been brought to the fore over the summer following the brutal murder of George Floyd and the protests that followed. Let's be under no illusion that these issues are confined to the United States, because we all have to have our eyes wide open here too. I've made the point many times before that politics and how we debate politics has an impact on racism and how racism is played out on the streets. How we talk about asylum seekers and immigration, how issues like the recent decision of the Home Office to house people in army camps in Penally, and how the Home Secretary talks about these matters, and how some have sought to exploit such decisions, directly contributes to ill-feeling towards minorities and fuels the flames of racism.

The dog-whistling we have seen from the far right politicians has been appalling. They know what they're doing, and they deserve to be called out by all of us who can see it. Because these actions and words have impacts, and that could mean a black child is bullied in the playground, or black teenagers getting beaten up, or women having scarves ripped from their heads. These are the everyday results of racist dog-whistling, and we all have to unite against it before it's too late. Racism is getting worse. There's lots of talk; let's now see some action that ends up reversing these trends.