Social Cohesion Action Plan

Baroness Gohir Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I agree with the noble Baroness that everyone deserves to feel safe in our country. We will work with and celebrate our faith and belief communities to improve understanding of different religions, support tolerance and build a more cohesive and resilient country.

We need to continue to support programmes such as Near Neighbours, which brings people together in religiously and ethnically diverse neighbourhoods to collaborate on community initiatives. We also want to grow Inter Faith Week. I have seen a lot of the very good work that is done in interfaith initiatives in my community. It builds an understanding and interaction between people of different faiths. We also need to promote the role of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education by supporting improved analysis of its annual reports to understand the role that it can help to play in communities, leading to cohesion. We are taking action to deliver the £92 million places of worship renewal fund to champion freedom of religion or belief globally through sustained diplomatic engagement and multilateral partnerships.

I understand the point that the noble Baroness made. The reason for the definition in the report was to tackle the very large percentage of our Muslim community who are suffering from crimes at the moment. I will run a session next week on the whole report, and I hope that people come along to that. The whole programme is directed to making sure that we have more cohesive communities overall.

[Baroness Gohir (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network UK. I was also a member of the working group on the definition. There was an orchestrated campaign to derail the work. Thankfully, it did not, and I thank the Government for adopting the definition.

Are the Government going to compile a list of all the misleading arguments that are being spread out there—the campaign is continuing—so that the public are aware of the counterarguments? The consequence of the misinformation—the disinformation, more accurately—is abuse of Muslim women. They are being targeted. We got a call today with a report of a Muslim woman on the Tube who was told to take off her headscarf. Why are the Government not addressing the safety of Muslim women? I would appreciate it if the Minister did not give the standard answers that I have received before from the Government—£40 million to mosques, millions to the British Muslim Trust and Pride in Place. What specific action is there for Muslim women? It almost feels as if the safety of Muslim women does not matter.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I start by reassuring the noble Baroness that the safety of Muslim women matters a great deal indeed. I could quote the figures of the sums. We are working with the British Muslim Trust to help tackle anti-Muslim hostility. We all have to concentrate on making sure that this actually happens in reality. Through our work across communities on cohesion, combined with the education programme—that will probably be slower—we need make sure that people understand different religions. I hope that will start to tackle the hostility. Having a definition in place is important in helping organisations right across the board—in the case of the Tube line, for example, it might be Transport for London—to understand what this means.