Home Office written question – answered at on 27 April 2026.
Martin Wrigley
Liberal Democrat, Newton Abbot
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending the Sentencing Act 2020 to record crimes motivated by misogyny as hate crimes.
Sarah Jones
The Minister of State, Home Department
The Government has no current plans to extend the Sentencing Act 2020 to include sex as an aggravating factor in the enhanced sentencing regime.
However, an Amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill has added sex to the list of protected characteristics under the aggravated offences in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. When this provision has been implemented – offences listed in the Act motivated by hostility against someone’s sex or presumed sex can be charged as an aggravated offence and the courts will be able to impose a longer sentence on conviction beyond those provided for in the Sentencing Act 2020.
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Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
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