[Mr Speaker: There will be wizardry in the way this question from Sir Julian is delivered.]

Sir Julian Lewis: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does the Minister accept that it would greatly assist the police to investigate crime in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and indeed elsewhere, if they were not spending an estimated 60,000 hours investigating and recording so-called non-crime hate incidents?

[The Minister for Policing, Fire and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson): The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I, as the Policing Minister, have said that we want a common-sense approach to dealing with these matters. The Government have been very clear on this. We have set out our priorities as the incoming Government: halving knife crime; halving violence against women and girls; restoring confidence in the justice system; and – one of the big issues for me – tackling antisocial behaviour through our neighbourhood policing guarantee.]