HC Deb 08 January 2002 vol 377 cc574-5W
Jeremy Corbyn

To ask the Solicitor-General how many cases of(a) incitement to race hatred and (b) racist violence have been brought before courts in England and Wales; and of these how many have been successful in each of the past three years. [25229]

The Solicitor-General

Records for prosecutions for incitement of racial hatred under part III of the Public Order Act 1986 have been kept since 1988. The records relate to the year that the application for consent to prosecute was dealt with and so it is not possible to state with any certainty how many prosecutions resulted in convictions in any given year. The number of applications for consent to prosecute for each year since 1999 and the number of convictions resulting from the prosecutions are summarised in the table.

Consent applications and prosecutions since 1999 under part III of the Public Order Act 1986
1999 2000 2001
Number of Attorney-General consent applications1 4 5 8
Withdrawn — — —
Not granted — — —
Prosecuted 4 5 8
Convicted2 3 32 4—
1 Per defendant.
2 Not necessarily in same year.
3 One result outstanding. One prosecution stayed on ill health grounds.
4 Results awaited.

Note:

1. Data for prosecutions of racist violent offences are included in figures published annually by the Home Office. The offences covered are racially aggravated offences under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which came into force on 30 September 1998. The racially aggravated (RA) offences are:

  1. (i)RA wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm.
  2. (ii)RA actual bodily harm.
  3. (iii)RA common assault.
  4. (iv)RA intentional harassment alarm or distress.
  5. (v)RA offence of harassment.
  6. (vi)RA putting people in fear of violence.

The figures supplied by the Home Office for 1999 and 2000 (data for 2001 not available) are given as follows on a principal offence basis.

Year Prosecuted Convicted
1999 1,330 451
20001 2,342 878
1 Staffordshire police force was only able to submit sample data for persons dealt with at magistrates' courts for the year 2000. Although sufficient to estimate higher orders of data, these data are not robust at a detailed level and have been excluded from this table.

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