Extremism Definition and Community Engagement

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Surely the essential point here is that the Government are proposing not to ban any organisation, however extreme, from operating legally and within the law, but to identify organisations that should be barred from receiving funding or other support from the Government. They have not shared their proposals with the Intelligence and Security Committee, so any point that I make now is purely personal to me, but does the Secretary of State agree that in any democratic society people have a right to decide with which bodies they will or will not associate? That is why it is right that, since July 2021, Labour has banned no fewer than seven extreme-left organisations as incompatible with party membership, in accordance with values defined, quite properly, by its own national executive committee.

[Michael Gove]

I thank my right hon. Friend, who has a distinguished record in this area. He is absolutely right. There is, appropriately, a very high threshold for the proscription of organisations, which Hizb ut-Tahrir recently met. We are not seeking to ban or restrict the operation of organisations in a free society; we are simply making it clear that it would be wrong for the Government to use taxpayers’ money or public endorsement in engagement with such organisations.