Hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales have more than doubled over the last six years with Muslims the most targeted religious group, new figures revealed on Tuesday. More than 103,000 hate crimes were recorded in 2018-2019 including attacks on people because of their race, religion, disability and sexual orientation. Three-quarters of the offences were connected to race. Statisticians say the increase is largely down to better police crime recording practices but spikes in crimes followed major terrorist attacks and the 2016 referendum to leave the European Union. The issue of immigration and control of the UK’s borders dominated the Brexit campaign, stoking divisions between communities in the country. The reports, compiled from police records, came to similar conclusions to other studies that have charted a rise in hate crimes. Organisations have reported arson attacks on mosques and assaults of women wearing headscarves and abuse. The statistics for the first time included some details about the affiliations of victims of religious hate crimes. Nearly half of the 8,566 religious crimes were aimed at Muslims, with Jewish people the next highest targeted group with 18 per cent, according to the figures. The Islamophobia monitoring group Tell Mama reported last month that UK prime minister Boris Johnson was behind the largest spike in anti-Muslim hate crime in 2018 after he compared women wearing the veil to “bank robbers”. Incidents increased by 375 per cent in a week after Mr Johnson likened women wearing burqas and niqabs to criminals and “letterboxes”. The government figures also revealed that a third of physical hate crime attacks did not result in convictions because victims declined to help prosecutors and police to bring the perpetrator to book.Catherine Anderson, chief executive of the Jo Cox Foundation set up in honour of the MP murdered by a right-wing extremist a week before the referendum in 2016, said the 11 per cent increase was not “all that surprising” though it represented a smaller rise than in the previous year. Ms Cox’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, told MPs on Tuesday that one of the causes or rising hate crime was from people being disillusioned and disengaged from events in the country. “People feel they don’t have a say in things… the easiest thing to do when you feel that way is to blame someone who is not like you for your frustrations. That feeds into animosity and dislike of people who are not like you,” she said. The UK government defines hate crime is defined as an offence motivated by “hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic”.