Jack Dromey MP, Labour’s Shadow Policing Minister, responding to a Home Office report showing that tens of thousands of race hate crimes are going unreported every year, said:

“Reports that race hate crimes are not being reported are extremely worrying, as are the concerns that some police forces are no longer ‘looking’ for such crimes to investigate.

“We have warned many times about the inevitable consequences of the Home Secretary’s narrow focus on crime targets, allied with her unprecedented cuts to frontline policing. She must explain why reporting of race hate crime has plummeted, why also when rape, domestic violence and child sex abuse is increasing prosecutions are going down and come clean as to whether the Tory-led Government’s hollowing out of the criminal justice system is to blame. They should be cutting crime not sweeping it under the carpet.”