Prevent Strategy

Lord Rosser Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I thank my noble friend for that question. On Islamophobia, the Government are absolutely clear that hatred and intolerance on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity have absolutely no place in our society. Our hate crime action plan sets out our commitment to defeating all forms of hatred. Generally, the Government’s counterextremism strategy defines extremism as,

“vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”.

This applies to all forms of extremism, including the far and extreme right wing.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

Of course, the Prevent strategy to counteract extremism and acts likely to incite extremism applies across the board and to the whole community. Recently, some of our national media have carried a news story about alleged cultural impositions on a Christian child in the care of Muslim foster parents— a story that was subsequently revealed, following court proceedings, to be inaccurate in significant aspects, as well as being accompanied by a contentious mocked-up photograph. The way the story was presented and headlined was hardly designed to lower the temperature as far as attitudes about extremism are concerned. How exactly does the Prevent strategy apply to misleading reporting of such stories in our national media?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, it is extremely unhelpful and can be divisive when such stories hit the media. With regard to how that might fit into Prevent, the Prevent programme is fundamentally about supporting vulnerable individuals and safeguarding them from being drawn into terrorism. It is safeguarding in a similar way to how we would safeguard people from drug abuse or physical and sexual abuse. I will not comment on individual cases, but that would be the clear distinction between the two.