All anti-semitic incidents to be recorded, vows Labour

A LABOUR government would require police to record non-hate crime incidents of anti-semitism and Islamophobia under plans to combat extremism, Yvette Cooper has pledged.

She believes there needs to be a zero-tolerance approach to ensure that anti-semitic and anti-muslim hatred that falls short of criminality is recorded by the police, including the perpetrators’ names.

It would reverse a decision by Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, to downgrade the monitoring of noncrime hate incidents, so that those specifically related to anti-semitism and Islamophobia could be logged by police.

In an article for The Telegraph, the shadow home secretary also said the Government needed to make sure that anti-semitic and Islamophobia hate crimes faced the “full force of the law”.

In her article, Ms Cooper said the Government’s response to growing extremist threats had been “too slow, too confused and at times completely counterproductive”.

She made the comments before an announcement tomorrow by Michael Gove, the Communities Secretary, of a new official definition of extremism that will enable the Government and bodies such as universities and councils, to ban funding for or engagement with Islamist and far-right groups.

The definition, which will replace the existing Prevent counter-terror programme’s one, will enable Government and public bodies to bar groups from venues or campuses and block funding if they are judged to be promoting an extremist ideology that “undermines” or “overturns” British values.

Ms Cooper said the Government needed to set out a “comprehensive strategy, not simply a new definition”.