Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point about proceeding on the basis of the evidence. I am grateful for his comments about remarks that I made earlier today about the necessity for us to develop a wider partnership to counter extremism across its broadest spectrum so that we can deal with the hateful beliefs that the extremists are propagating.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I too welcome the Home Secretary’s comments in her speech this morning. Only by working with communities are we able to tackle this problem. I also commend the Metropolitan police and Turkish authorities for bringing back to London the three young men from Brent. It is sad that we missed the opportunity of doing this with the four young girls from Bethnal Green. What is the message to families to get them to report areas of concern so that they do not feel stigmatised if they do so?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments about my speech. He is right. As I made clear in that speech, Government cannot deal with this alone; we need to work with families, communities and civil society. The message that the Government have given to families consistently in relation to those who might be travelling to Syria to get involved in terrorist-related activity, or to be with terrorist groups, is that the sooner they can give information to the authorities, the easier it is to work with them to ensure that their young people are not put into that danger.