Every October since 2013, the Home Office has released official statistics on the number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales. With over 90 per cent of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate crime going unreported according to the government’s own research, it seems impossible to really know. This year, for the first time, the average number of reported hate crimes went down overall – despite an increase in reported transphobic hate crimes, which went up by 11 per cent. Galop has been providing support to LGBTQIA+ victims of hate crimes since the early 1980s and, 40 years on, our national hate crime support services are hearing from thousands of LGBTQIA+ victims of hate crime every year. From what we see in our services, hate crime against our community has not gone down – in fact, demand on our National LGBTQIA+ Hate Crime Helpline has increased by 65 per cent in a single year.

Source: The Times October 16, 2023 12:40 UTC