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A Question Time audience member sparked a furious backlash on the BBC's hit panel show after insisting the UK isn't very racist.

The man prompted an angry response from poet George Mpanga and a fellow audience member when he insisted "the UK is one of the least racist societies across Europe".

"Have you actually looked at the numbers?" the man asked during the show in London.

But George - better known as George The Poet - replied sarcastically: "So I didn't get stopped by police sitting outside my mum's house earlier this year?

"That didn't happen to me? Oh thank you! I should have just explained that to the police officer!"

(Image: BBC) (Image: BBC)

* We'd love to speak to the QT audience members - email webnews@mirror.co.uk

A woman in a headscarf in the audience then chimed in: "It's funny that you're a white man saying that!

"You're a white man saying there's no racism in this country! How are you going to experience it?

"You're a white man! [crowd murmurs] How am I racist? You're not the one walking down the street and being screamed at.

"You're not a young black man walking across the street being stopped by police."

(Image: BBC)

A 2016 study by the US-based Pew Research Center found 28% of people in the UK had an "unfavourable" view of Muslims.

That was, as the man suggested, the lowest rate of 10 European countries included in the study. The highest was Hungary, where 72% of those polled had an unfavourable view.

Pew also found 33% of UK respondents thought growing diversity makes the country a better place to live - more than in almost other countries on the list including Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland and Greece.

However, official UK figures last year also showed the biggest leap in hate crime since records began in 2011.

There were 80,393 offences in 2016/17, a 29% rise in one year.

(Image: PA)

The government said the hike was due partly to a "genuine rise in hate crime around the time of the EU referendum."

Separate figures also revealed racial and religiously-aggravated hate crime reached an even higher peak after the London and Manchester terror attacks.

The spike to 6,000 offences in July 2017 was a few hundred higher than the previous post-referendum peak in July 2016.

The Home Office admitted the second spike - which used provisional figures because it happened after March 2017 - was also likely to reflect a “genuine increase” in aggravated offences, not just a rise in reporting.