Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience: Khan Review

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Mark, and to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend and city colleague the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) on securing this important debate.

The Khan review is welcome, and we can all be grateful to Dame Sara Khan for the considered work she has done. I am grateful to her for taking the time to visit Stoke-on-Trent and speak with community groups and various organisations in our city. Also, she has spent a considerable amount of time meeting MPs, including myself, for which I am grateful. She has helped shine a light on some of the serious challenges we face around social cohesion and countering extremism. There is much to agree with in her report and much to support in her recommendations, but there are also points that need to be raised and highlighted for the sake of further clarity, and that is what I intend to do in my remarks.

I echo my hon. Friend’s words about the foolhardy cessation of funding for Prevent and its work in our city of Stoke-on-Trent. That followed the previous removal of counter-extremism support. The report makes it clear that:

“Without such support, places like Stoke fall through the gaps despite the permissive extremism environment and harm it is causing to the city.”

It is not nice to have to say that our city still needs the close attention of Prevent. It would be wonderful to say that Prevent’s job was done and dusted, but the reality is that there are those in the city who reject our liberal, western, democratic values. Worst of all, there are those who have been prepared to act on their hatred by engaging in, or attempting to engage in, murderous terror. I am very concerned about the robustness of the decisions taken by the Home Office and how it is prioritising resources across the country.

Sadly, we have seen both Islamic extremism and far-right extremism in Stoke-on-Trent. Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun have been active in some communities in Stoke-on-Trent, radicalising young people and attempting to spread their perverse view of religion. That is why it is welcome to see the Government take action recently to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir, and I hope they will continue to closely monitor those who are now seeking to get around the proscription and continuing such activities under another guise.

There is also a history in the city of far-right activism, with the BNP, the English Defence League and a number of other organisations that my hon. Friend mentioned, which has in some cases resulted in the permeation of more serious radicalisation. In 2010, we saw attempts to blow up the City Central Mosque. Fortunately, those attempts were stopped, but that demonstrates an undercurrent of extremism that the far right has propagated.

Concerningly, we have seen attempts from extremist groups to undermine and control our democratic systems. Cases have been reported of Islamic extremists attempting to discourage participation and interfere with elections. With the far right, as my hon. Friend mentioned, we saw the BNP get up to nine councillors in 2008-9. The reason for their electoral success was their exploiting the political vacuum left by a declining Labour party. Many hundreds, indeed thousands, of voters in Stoke-on-Trent felt that voting BNP was the only way to make the main political parties listen to those voters’ mainstream concerns. Of course, the BNP was only too keen to take advantage of that situation. Our city felt forgotten and left behind. People felt that they were being told they were wrong to be proud to be British. They felt that a metropolitan and globalist London elite was sneering at traditional working-class communities. I am glad to say that we have won those voters back to mainstream politics, and we must keep those voters with mainstream concerns within mainstream politics.

I know that Dame Sara has expressed concern about the mainstreaming of extremism. There are concerns that engaging with extremist groups or individuals gives them legitimacy. She also highlighted a number of serious concerns about freedom-restricting harassment. It is particularly concerning that the report suggests that this problem is getting worse, stating that 60% of people feel that the problem is worse than it was five years ago.

I would like also to see more of a focus on what, for want of a better turn of phrase, I am going to call “extreming of the mainstream”. This is something that my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford, I think, was touching on, where we see the alienation of hard-working, patriotic communities. It is not extreme to want to hear “Rule, Britannia” at the Last Night of the Proms, or to sing it when and wherever you like in the UK. It is not extreme to fly the St George’s cross or to have an England flag tattoo. Rather, it is extreme to want to ban “Rule, Britannia”. It is extreme to want to ban the flag of England. And yet we all know that there are attempts to chip, chip away at our shared icons, heroes and ways of life.

The same can be said for religion. It should not be considered extreme to have strongly held religious beliefs, whether Christian, Muslim or of any other religion. Most faith is about peace, tolerance and respecting others. We have often seen faith communities throughout north Staffordshire come together in the toughest of times, when this cohesion is challenged, resisting fundamentalists and calling out those who attempt to cause and sow division.

I am glad that the Cass report has also brought public debate about life-altering medical interventions for minors back to the mainstream place of sanity and biological objectivity. It was beyond bizarre that it took legal action to determine that Maya Forstater was worthy of respect in a democratic society for her perfectly mainstream recognition of biological reality. That is an area in which I would like further clarity. The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has already said that of course “gender-critical” and, indeed, non-voluntary trans activist voices would not be affected by the definition of extremism. However, if a new body is created to report back on extremism annually, and to promote cohesion and so on, what is to stop that body becoming another national institution that is captured by those with extreme views of their own, which it wants to present and push as being mainstream and anti-hate? I hope we can hear how that will be safeguarded against.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said, the UK is one of the most open, multicultural and freedom-loving countries in the world. The rule of law, religious freedom and free speech are some of our core democratic British values. However, we cannot take these values for granted, especially at a time when we see these values under increasing threat around the world. Democracy is fragile. We must redouble our efforts to protect our shared values and democratic rights, and we must see robust action against those who threaten to undermine or suppress our way of life—something I have made very clear to Staffordshire police and others.

In conclusion, I welcome the important review and I look forward to hearing further from the Minister how the next steps will be taken. We must be wary of extremes, particularly those that bring violence with them, and we must also be wary of attempts to paint the mainstream as extreme, because doing so pushes mainstream voters into the arms of extremists.