Yes, that just about covers it.
The definition of 'hate crime', which started being measured about a decade ago, has become bizarrely subjectified, and something of an obsession of government, police and media, and inevitably, the left. It has also become very easy to report 'hate crime', anonymously if so wished, using the web (
simply press the red button). A hate crime is defined as 'any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic', that prejudice being based on race, religion or faith,sexual orientation, disability and gender identity. The keywords there are 'perceived by the victim or any other person'. No evidence is required, and the police are required by law to log any such report as a hate incident. Should the police question the victim/witness in such a way as to make that person uncomfortable the person could then report the attitude of the police as a secondary hate crime incident. Police guidance stresses that all that counts is the perception of the victim/witness, and that motivation, or more importantly lack of it, is irrelevant. The defining characteristic of the person does not even need to be mentioned in the incident - should someone abuse a person in the street, and that person happen to be gay, or dark-skinned or to follow a particular faith, whatever, that characteristic doesn't even need to be mentioned by the abuser for the victim (or any other person) to report the incident as a hate crime, and should they do so the police are still compelled to report it as such.
The CPS guidance says that 'the prosecution does not need to prove hatred as the motivating factor behind the offence', adding that any crime that involved 'ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment or dislike' on the basis of a personal characteristic could be a hate crime, so simply being unpleasant or unfriendly to someone might now be considered a criminal offence if that unfriendliness is perceived to be based on a personal characteristic.
Police operational guidance also requires that there should be a continuous increase in the reporting of hate crime, based initially upon the reasonable belief that a great deal of hate crime was previously not being reported, so the police themselves are motivated to report ever more hate crime, and that any drop in the level of reporting should be considered a failure rather than a success. Success, therefore, is measured upon creating evidence to suggest that the incidence of hate crime is increasing, and that the problems are getting worse.
This has all been acknowledged in official hate crime reports. Certainly there were spikes at the time of the referendum and the Paris, London and Manchester attacks, but reports have repeatedly stated that a 'high proportion' of the increase in hate crime statistics are' likely to be due to better reporting'. There has been an improvement in conviction rates of those cases that are referred by the police to the CPS, I think that there was an increase of around 1000 referrals from the 10,000 to the 11,000 mark last year in the case of race/religion hate crimes, with conviction rates edging up into the mid-80%s.