Violent Extremism

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for introducing this debate. I also thank all his colleagues on the British Council APPG for an excellent report highlighting the critical role of soft power in preventing and countering violent extremism in the Middle East and north Africa. The report makes a powerful case for tackling extremism overseas at its source by confronting the fundamental factors that increase people’s susceptibility to extremist ideology: economic problems, civic problems and social factors.

In an earlier debate on Sudan—not many noble Lords present would have had the opportunity to hear it, but the Minister did—I stressed that it is important to support civil society. It is critical to sustaining meaningful peace and dialogue for the future. I will do the same in a later debate—the one immediately following this one—because democracy is not limited to parliamentarians. Civil society, including trade unions, women’s groups and faith groups, is often the most important defender of human rights. It is the abuses of human rights that often catapult people into extremist behaviour.

In Sudan, UK aid has funded a £1 million British Council project to strengthen,

“cultural and educational development by building skills and capacity”.

As we have heard in this debate, the effect of promoting projects that build skills and support economic growth, encourage civic behaviour and strengthen community ties among young people can significantly counteract the underlying environment in which extremism is currently able to flourish.

I totally agree with the report’s conclusions that all our organisations carrying out this range of work, including the British Council, should collaborate to build a joint base of evidence of its impact to determine which interventions work best in which contexts. I certainly agree that the UK Government should work with the British Council to scale up its cultural, educational and civil society programmes in the region and I hope that the Minister will respond to the questions in that regard.

I have just a couple of questions to raise. In particular, I want to focus on the £1 billion Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, used by the Government to finance programmes in areas of conflict and instability. Concerns have been raised by groups such as Reprieve, as well as the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, about the unpublished spending of the fund. According to both, some CSSF programmes could have led to human rights abuses, which in turn might spur extremism. Will the Minister undertake to provide greater transparency on the fund and perhaps ensure that we utilise it to promote exactly those programmes which we have been talking about and which are encouraged in the APPG report?

The other element that the APPG report has highlighted is climate change. Both CAFOD and the ODI have reported about the level of spending in developing countries on fossil fuels. What steps are the Government taking to ensure investment in sustainable renewable energy, particularly by DfID and the CDC? I am pleased to see the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Bates, here. I hope that in the next debate he will pick up these points.

The use of education as a tool to tackle extremism is well established and is discussed heavily in the APPG report. The Global Partnership for Education has provided grants totalling $8.4 billion since 2003. Unfortunately, the UK’s recent pledge to the GPE was lower than expected and attracted criticism from a number of development charities. I hope that the Minister recognises—I am that sure he does, bearing in mind what he said in the previous debate—the role that education plays in tackling extremism. I hope that he will respond more positively on the need to back up such programmes abroad and to give more backing to the GPE.