News
David Cameron pledges more protection for places of worship after surge in hate crime
October 13, 2015 14:57
A significant rise in religious hate crime has led Prime Minister David Cameron to pledge more protection for synagogues, mosques and churches.
Religious hate crime has risen by 43 per cent over the last year, according to Home Office statistics.
Speaking on Tuesday, Mr Cameron said: “Rising hate crime is unacceptable – we must do more to fight it”.
He added that his government will hand over more funding to ensure the security of “faith establishments” in Britain.
The worst month in the data, collected in the year up until the end of March, was July 2014, with 3,558 religious or racially aggravated offences.
The Home Office denied that the Gaza conflict was a factor in this spike, noting in its report that there was “a rise in racially or religiously aggravated offences in July 2014 followed by a fall in August, suggesting little effect of the conflict in Israel and Gaza in July/August 2014.”
However, in its annual release of figures on antisemitism in February, the Community Security Trust said the biggest spike in 2014 came after the Gaza conflict.
According to the Home Office, March 2015 was the month that saw the next-most religiously or racially aggravated offences, with 3,504, which echoed the CST’s own figures.
A spokesperson for CST welcomed the Prime Minister's announcement.
He said: “The past year saw several trigger events that could cause increases in religiously aggravated hate crime, such as the war in Israel and Gaza last summer, the Paris terrorist attacks and the rise of Islamic State.
"Hopefully there has also been an improvement in the reporting of hate crimes by victims and the government’s call for police to separately record antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate crime should help us to understand these different trends in future years.
"We welcome the announcement by the Prime Minister of an increase in protection for places of worship, which follows the government’s commitment of over £10m to fund security efforts at Jewish buildings that he announced at the CST dinner in March.”
