Keith Vaz
Main Page: Keith Vaz (Labour - Leicester East)Department Debates - View all Keith Vaz's debates with the Cabinet Office
(9Â years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For too long in some European countries, Governments have felt that the way to handle community relations is to leave people in different silos and listen to self-appointed community leaders rather than engage directly with people. When it comes to this battle against extremism, we should not be neutral. We should be very clear about the groups we will engage with because they back the values we share, and those that we do not agree with and frankly think might be part of the problem. Greater clarity on this is probably not just necessary in Britain; I expect it is going to be necessary in other parts of Europe too.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
Last Friday evening at Wembley stadium, when the Prime Minister shared a platform with Prime Minister Modi, he made a speech about being proud to be the leader of the most multi-cultural country in the world. Does he agree that in order to protect and preserve that, we need to be very aggressive in our counter-narrative, and that that means the internet companies doing much more than they are currently to take away the most important method of recruitment, while internationally it means working with Europol and Interpol and giving them the support they need, as this is an international issue?
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the support that he gave to the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to our country last week. What I said standing alongside Prime Minister Modi is that while of course we still have to fight discrimination and racism in our country, I think we can lay some claim to being one of the most successful, multi-racial, multi-faith, multi-ethnic democracies in our world. India aspires to do that as well, and it should link us. The right hon. Gentleman is right about working with internet companies. Just as we have worked with them to try to take paedophilia and child pornography off the internet, so there is more we can do to get this extremism off the internet as well.