Diane Abbott has said rhetoric employed by sections of the Tory party "legitimises" attacks on and abuse against foreigners.

The shadow home secretary, writing in the Morning Star, was writing about the need to tackle hate crime, after new figures released by the Home Office revealed that such crime has risen by almost a third in the UK over the past year.

The Labour grandee, a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, suggested that the Tories have "made great claims" about tackling injustice, "but they are clearly not tackling the great injustice of being attacked simply because of your religion, your sexuality, the colour of your skin or your disability.

"Instead rhetoric from parts of the Tories legitimises those who will tell someone to 'go home.'

"The Government’s own policies and rhetoric — both currently and over a number of years — have clear responsibility in this area.

From Go Home vans, to demonising international students, to talking about a foreigner-free NHS, this is a government whose policies are contributing to a climate of hate and fear.

"Indeed it was only this August that a scathing cross-party report said the government was fuelling “toxic” anti-immigrant sentiment and that Theresa May’s discredited target of cutting net migration to under 100,000 was particularly to blame for 'stoking anxiety.'"

Abbott herself has been accused of racism in the past, after suggesting that white people like to "divide and rule" and that West Indian mothers fight harder for their children than mums from other regions.