EU Council, Security and Middle East

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 1st September 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The steps that need to be taken are to stop supporting the separatists in eastern Ukraine with men and materiel, and also to release hostages and get out of the border posts that are part of Ukraine’s sovereign territory. Those steps, I think, would signal a change of heart from Russia and would result in an easing rather than a growing of the pressure. I do not accept that what has been done so far has not been noticed, but we have to show resolve in permanently turning up the dial if Russia continues in the wrong direction.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister knows—indeed, he has acknowledged in response to my hon. Friends—that young Muslims at risk of radicalisation are more likely to listen to peers and people in their own community than they are to police officers or representatives of the Government who they believe has failed to protect the people of Gaza. Why, then, has he cut £15 million from the Prevent communities budget and will he take the opportunity today to say that he will put that money back into that sort of voluntary community-based action that will persuade these young people away from radicalisation?

[The Prime Minister]

We do work through Muslim and other organisations, and we should do so. We did make changes to Prevent, not least because, when we reviewed it, we believed that some of the funded organisations were not confronting the problems of extremism. That needed to change.