Southport Attack

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe; he brings immeasurable expertise in his contribution to this debate. I will say two things in response. First, the Prevent programme still has to focus primarily on people who are being radicalised through a range of means and pose threats on both Islamist and extreme right-wing fronts—that is the main focus. But, secondly, this case shows that there are potential areas where we need to look at other issues, including misogyny, concerns around violence and its worship generally, and people just wishing to inflict hate on society for a range of reasons that are not politically or culturally motivated. I take what the noble Lord said, as there may be lessons that we could learn from it. I would be very grateful to discuss—with both the Metropolitan Police and the noble Lord, if he wishes—how we can widen the debate on looking at potential areas. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, will look at how we can draw a wider circumference around the support mechanisms to help with cases that fall outside the broad areas of Prevent but which still lead to the types of actions that Prevent is designed to prevent.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister and others for understanding that not everything can be squeezed into the rubric of “terrorism”, with its ideological motive and so on. I will make a small point on a previous point my noble friend made in reference to the sentence of 52 years. It is quite important to remember, and for the public to understand, that this was, rightly, a life sentence with a minimum of 52 years before any consideration of release; one would not always get that information from reading the newspapers. I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for making that clear.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. The 52 years is a minimum; it is a life sentence. Indeed, in his sentencing remarks, Justice Goose indicated that he felt that it was highly unlikely that the individual convicted would be released. That is a matter for well downstream. The concerns that we have around Prevent are things that we can resolve to stop that type of activity taking place in the future. As my noble friend knows, the reason a whole-life tariff was not imposed was because of the age of the perpetrator at the time of the event. I suspect that, if he had been older, a whole-life tariff may well have been given by the judge. My noble friend was right to add further definition to my comment, which was not meant to undermine in any way the sentence given.