Debate on the Address

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am going to make some progress, because I want to make this argument. Then I will happily take interventions.

Extremists hate that fact, because it challenges their whole world view—the preachers who say that Christians, Jews and Muslims cannot live together; the so-called community leaders who say women cannot travel more than a few miles beyond the city in which they live; the activists who insist on segregation at political meetings; and the religious schools that teach children not to mix with those from different religions, and that sometimes teach that Jews are the enemy. To those who say that pointing this out is somehow illiberal, intolerant or Islamophobic, I say, “Nonsense.” It is not real liberalism to walk on by and pretend that this is not happening, or to say that it is just part of someone else’s culture. Real liberalism means standing up for our liberal values, and that is what we need to do in our country.

I want to make one last point before giving way. It is certainly not the preserve of one party to make this point. Whether it is my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) on the Government side of the House or the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) on the Opposition Benches, I have heard powerful speeches on this from right across the House. So when it comes to our Queen’s Speech proposal for a counter-extremism and safeguarding Bill, whether we are disrupting the activity of the extremists or protecting young people in unregulated schools, I hope there will be all-party support to tackle the poisonous ideology that is at the heart of the extremist threat.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

rose—

[The Prime Minister]

I give way to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee.

[Keith Vaz]

I am most grateful to the Prime Minister. It is very clear that one of the areas that is used by the jihadists to recruit British citizens, especially young British citizens, is the internet. Does he agree that more should be done, and perhaps enshrined in legislation, to ensure that the internet companies do much more to take down these websites and to pursue those responsible for this hate?

[The Prime Minister]

I absolutely agree about that. It is fair to say that over 170,000 pages have been taken down under this Government because of the work we have done with the internet companies. I have great hope here, because the internet companies originally said that they could not work with us on tackling online child pornography, and then they did, and a huge amount of change has come about. They are now beginning to see that whether it is beheading videos, jihadist videos, or the rest of it, they need to act and demonstrate their own responsibilities. I am hugely hopeful that if we are clear in this House about what needs to be done and we work with internet companies, we can make a huge amount of improvement.