European Council

Julian Smith Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look at what the hon. Gentleman has said, but from what I have seen, particularly after announcements made in the light of Woolwich, Prevent funding has increased and the money is there. As I said, we have tried to divide that money between the Prevent work, which includes a programme of channelling people who have been radicalised away from radicalisation, and a lot of community work that is about integration and supporting things such as the Big Iftar, and encouraging mosques and community centres to open themselves up and for others to come in. That has been a great success.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Following the criticism over the weekend, does the Prime Minister agree that our intelligence and security services are doing the most amazing job in incredibly difficult times, and that we should pay tribute to every woman and man working in those services?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the chance to say thank you to those people, because they are working round the clock to try to prevent plots against this country. They are having to prioritise whom they should be keeping the closest eye on—they have to make those judgments all the time and we cannot expect them to get it right every single time. What is so remarkable is how they do get it right, and even in the last three or four months they have prevented as many as three different plots, for instance to behead a police officer on British streets. We should pay tribute to those people and thank them for the amazing work they do.