Prevent Strategy

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I will not repeat the previous answer I gave—but, far from trying to target people, Prevent tries to protect people. As to children being dealt with inappropriately in schools, there have been some of the most ridiculous stories you might hear of children being targeted. The Government have recognised the need for much-enhanced training in this area. Since 2011 we have significantly stepped that up, training more than 600,000 front-line staff in how to spot the subtleties the noble Baroness talks about, which are often being missed.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, the difficulty with Prevent is that it is very vague. Words such as “extremism”, “fundamentalism” and “radicalisation” all leave us none the wiser—and “Islamist” is a positive insult to the Muslim community. Would the Minister agree that the real target of Prevent is the out-of-context use of religious texts to justify the abuse of human rights and the cruel treatment of women and people of other faiths? Will she try to engage with faith leaders to ensure that they interpret religious texts in the context of today’s times?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord, as always, makes very wise points. So often in the case of religion, religious texts are misinterpreted to the extent that they are completely out of context with the actions of those who would seek to undermine the true tenets of those religions. Islam is one such example: it is a very peaceful, loving religion, but you would not think so sometimes from some of the actions of some people.