Community Engagement Principles and Extremism Definition

Connor Naismith Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

I share the hon. Lady’s intent. We know that, whether it is in publicly available online forums or on the dark web, there are people who will use all corners of the internet to promote their views and to promote hateful ideologies. As part of our counter-extremism sprint and the strategy that will follow from that, we are looking very carefully at this and at the tools that we need to tackle it.

[Connor Naismith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

We will all be sadly familiar with the shocking and racist remarks made by the Conservative party donor Frank Hester last year. I do not intend to repeat them in this House, so that we do not have to relive them, but does the Minister agree that that kind of language encourages extremism and has no place in our politics?

[Alex Norris]

We all have to be careful, both as individuals and collectively within our parties, about the individuals with whom we choose to associate and from whom we choose to take money, so that we do not send messages that we would not want to send.