Race hate crime on the Underground rose by 57 per cent in the six months following the Brexit vote last year, new figures show.

A total of 468 racially and religiously aggravated offences were reported on the Tube from July to December, compared with 297 in the six months leading up to the referendum in June.

The crimes also surged in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote and in the weeks after the election of Donald Trump in November.

Hate offences have increased each year since 2014. British Transport Police recorded a total of 765 last year, 580 in 2015 and 485 in 2014.

Reports of incidents have included a man giving a Nazi salute on the Tube, and a woman who reported that her headscarf was tugged by a man who pulled “monkey faces” at Covent Garden station two days ago.

There was a 28 per cent annual rise in offences across the whole train system in London — including overland services and the Docklands Light Railway — from 642 to 827.

The figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, also show a rise in reports of violent race crime, up from 126 in 2015 to 145 last year.

Superintendent Jenny Gilmer, of British Transport Police, said: “The figures do illustrate that we see an increase in hate crime following an international or a high-profile local event.”

But she pointed out that the latest figures also followed the nationwide #WeStandTogether campaign, launched after the referendum vote, which urged people to report hate offences.

She added: “The sort of hate crime we see on the transport network is verbal abuse rather than physical attacks but this is extremely serious and we treat it extremely seriously. We are putting every effort into investigating these type of offences.”

BTP had given a higher priority to the investigation of hate crimes, with all reports now being investigated by CID officers, she added.

Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s director of campaigns, said she was concerned that “divisive political campaigning” during the referendum and the US election had contributed to the surge.

“We witnessed negative and sometimes toxic language being used in debates on refugees and migrant rights,” she said.

“This toxic rhetoric being used by politicians around the world can legitimise hate. It risks taking us into a dark age for human rights.”

A BTP spokesman said there were 1.35 billion journeys on the Tube last year.

Passengers can report hate crime by texting 61016.