Racism will not be tolerated

IN LAST week’s Scotland on Sunday your editorial wrongly stated that official figures had shown a rise in anti-English sentiment in Scotland.

The figures show no such thing and there was no evidence to support this wholly inaccurate statement. In fact, in-depth analysis shows that where more detailed statistics are available, racist incidents involving white English people are going down and decreased by 17 per cent last year.

That decrease is to be welcomed. All racism is abhorrent whoever the victims are and it will not be tolerated anywhere in Scotland. No community or group should be subject to discrimination and abuse because of their ethnicity, nationality or beliefs. There will be no let-up in our efforts to drive down the number of racist incidents across the board.

I encourage anyone subjected to a racist attack to report it to the police in the confidence that their complaint will be taken extremely seriously.

Kenny MacAskill, Justice Secretary