Racial violence and harassment: a case for a national survey?

In 1994, the Home Affairs Select Committee report on racial attacks and harassment 'strongly recommend[ed] that the government improves its performance in providing statistics to judge the nature and extent of racial violence and harassment'. To that end, it repeated its recommendation, first made in its 1989 report, for the government to commission a national survey to examine the occurrence of racial attacks and harassment.1 Why does the committee think a national survey is needed? Are existing national figures not adequate in providing an accurate measure? If a new survey were to be launched what should it examine in addition to the scale of racial incidents? How far could such a survey go towards improving understanding of why racial violence and harassment arise in the first place