Prevent: Learning Review

Lord Carlile of Berriew Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that I conducted the first Prevent review in 2011 and started what became the Shawcross review, which I strongly support. I thank the Government for the remedial steps that have been taken, as described in the Statement, following the loss of a valued colleague with whom I too was in the House of Commons and had many happy exchanges. Can we now be a little bit more positive about the future? Does the Minister agree not only that there have been successes, as he just described, but that some of them have been quite remarkable in turning young men and women from becoming potential terrorists, and that we should not let up in enhancing the effectiveness of Prevent in what is an extremely challenging and difficult area of work, which is sometimes underestimated?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, for both his previous work on helping to support to development of the counterterrorism strategy and his comments. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, there have been around 5,000 successful Prevent referrals since 2015, and there are people now living productive, constructive lives who may have gone down the radicalisation route had Prevent intervention not taken place.

I add that I was in the Home Office from 2009 to 2010, and in the Ministry of Justice from 2007 to 2009, and when we dealt with Prevent then it was an entirely different world. There was no Twitter or Facebook; the internet was relatively in its infancy. In the 14 to 15 years between then and my return to the Home Office, there has been the dark web, radicalisation, fake news—a whole range of things. One of the key issues for the future is asking the tech companies to step up to the plate on what they need to do to help support the Prevent strategy and deradicalisation. That is why my right honourable friend the Home Secretary has written to tech companies, following both the Southport and Sir David Amess reviews, to ensure that we can examine, with them, their responsibilities once the Online Safety Act comes into effect on 17 March.

I am grateful for the noble Lord’s support. He is right that Prevent can be a success and we should not throw it out on the basis of failings that are self-evident but which are not the full story of how the Prevent strategy has worked.