Murder of Lee Rigby

Hazel Blears Excerpts

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. All leaks are to be deplored, but leaks of this particular sort of material, when we have trusted the Committee with such important and delicate work, are particularly reprehensible. Communications data are vital not just in respect of terrorism, but when we are trying to find abducted children or solve rapes and murders. They are used in almost all serious crimes. What we did in the Bill was simply to stop the situation from getting worse. What we need now is to go forward with more full-throated legislation. I think we need an honest and open debate about that across the House.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

This was a brutal murder of a young man who was serving his country, so all our thoughts today are with his family for the months to come. I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement. Neither of the individuals involved was referred to the Prevent programme. I believe the Prevent programme has been under-resourced and not given the priority it should have had within the Contest strategy. If we can stop the pipeline of people being drawn into extremist behaviour, the money will be extremely well spent. I believe that because such activity has been viewed as something of a soft end to the counter-terrorism strategy, it has been seen as a cultural issue and has not had priority.

I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to new legal powers and I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to further resources, but we have to change the perspective. The threat we now face, with 500 people out in Syria and Iraq and 250 of them coming back—some of them radicalised and well trained—amounts to a different scenario. I think the Prevent programme must no longer be viewed as a soft and fluffy end of community engagement, but as a hard, targeted counter-ideological strategy and a counter-narrative that stops people from creating a climate for extremism.

[The Prime Minister]

I wholly agree with the right hon. Lady. What we did by separating the integration work from the Prevent work was to make sure that this is not seen as some soft and fluffy programme, but a tough and robust one. It will become more robust because additional funding has been secured; it will become more robust because we are putting it on a statutory footing; and it will become stronger because Channel will be put on a statutory footing, too.

I do not think anyone should underestimate the importance of putting this legal duty on all these organisations. When the right hon. Lady came to our extremism taskforce, I think she could see how the aim was to make sure that whether it be schools, prisons, universities, community centres or whatever, all have a legal duty to prevent extremism and terrorism. That is what we are aiming to do.