Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience: Khan Review

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing, Planning and Building Safety (Lee Rowley)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I begin by thanking all hon. Members. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing the debate, for opening it in such a temperate and balanced fashion, and for asking some immensely reasonable questions relating to his own community and, more broadly, the importance that we all attach to ensuring that social cohesion is strengthened across the country and that we make progress on this hugely important agenda.

The first thing to say is that the battle against extremism and the rise of extremist ideology across our country is something that everyone here cares passionately about, as all hon. Members who have spoken today have articulated. In particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North powerfully underlined in his opening speech the need to counter the spread of extremist beliefs among young people in our schools, the importance of confronting issues when young people fall victim, the importance of the Prevent programme to ensure that communities are cohesive and strengthened and, more broadly, the importance that, as a Government and a country, we must attach to making progress on these hugely important issues over time.

That is one of the reasons why we commissioned the Khan review, why we gave Dame Sara Khan the space, the time and the support to look at these matters in the round, and why we welcomed the publication of her report a number of weeks ago. She was charged with examining these issues in greater depth, to investigate the scale, the causes and the impact of extremism in local communities, and to provide insights into how we can build resilience to better support those involved, local authorities and civil society.

As a number of Members have said, the report outlined some of the challenges we face, not because of decisions that the Government have made—I will come back to the point that the hon. Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) made in a moment—but, if we are going to have a mature debate about this, because of long-term issues that are impacting western democracies across the world and will impact this democracy whoever is in power. As a consequence, the hon. Lady should be careful about some of the statements that she makes. Those who seriously want to make progress will deal with the issues in front of them rather than calling others who are involved in the conversation names.

The report highlighted particular issues around disinformation, harassment and intimidation; the climate of self-censorship that hon. Members have outlined, not just among people in this place or associated with politics, but across all walks of life; a wider disillusionment with democracy that is starting to seep into parts of our civic society; and decreasing trust in politics, particularly among the young. All of that aggregates to create a vacuum that extremism and extremist ideology can fill.

The Government very much welcome Dame Sara Khan’s work and we thank her for it. We wholeheartedly agree that democracy is a precious asset. That is a view that all of us in this place—right hon. and hon. Members who have the privilege of representing communities up and down the land in Parliament—would share.

The report shines a light on some fundamental gaps in our system, and it clearly sets out Dame Sara’s view of what the Government should do to address those flaws. As has been articulated, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recently set out measures that will ensure that the Government do not inadvertently provide a platform to those who want to subvert our democracy and deny other people’s fundamental rights. That is just the first of a series of steps the Government will take in the coming weeks and months to tackle extremism and protect our democracy, including the publication of a full response to the Khan review before the summer break. While I am not able to go into the details at this stage, we have committed to publishing a response to the review in the weeks ahead.

I want to turn to some of the individual points that hon. Members have made. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North raised a number of hugely important points about the need to ensure cohesion, and drew upon the experience that he and his colleagues in Stoke-on-Trent have over the long term. I wholeheartedly endorse many of those points.

My hon. Friend has a specific concern with regard to Prevent funding. He will be aware that I am unable to speak absolutely about Prevent funding from the perspective of the Department that I represent, but he indicated that he has written to the Home Office, and I will certainly make sure that, yet again, those points are telegraphed to my equivalents in the Home Office. I recognise that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), and those involved in Stoke-on-Trent politics in general, feel very strongly about that.

I understand that part of the restructuring of the Prevent funding was about regionalising some elements of the funding, and there are still elements of the support that are available to all local authorities. I understand—at least from the notes that I have been given, accepting that I am not the lead for Prevent—that Stoke-on-Trent City Council may not have taken advantage of all the support that is available. I know that my hon. Friends will make sure that the council does that if it has not done so already, recognising the very valid points that they made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South outlined in even more detail the very long-term challenges that were created with the rise of some of these extremist ideologies in his home town, the time and effort that it took to try to beat those back, and all the work that was done to do so. He rightly highlighted the importance of giving space to very mainstream views that are shared in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, Bradford, the north-east and definitely in my part of Derbyshire. We must not suggest that it is illegitimate to be proud of this country and to celebrate its history, its culture, its institutions, its norms and representations of it. Those who over the past 20 years have tried to diminish those things, remove them and pretend they did not happen—those who suggest they are old-fashioned and have no place in our society—are absolutely wrong and do nothing for community cohesion. They do nothing to build the strength and tolerance that our country has thrived on for many decades.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South is absolutely right: like many others, I may not choose to go to the Proms or to indulge in “Rule, Britannia”, but it is vital that we have a shared understanding of the norms, culture, history, traditions and identity that we share in this country, which have brought us to the place we are today. We should be immensely proud of that.

My hon. Friend highlighted some of the read-overs to other areas. Fundamentally, there is an ideology—postmodernism—that has seeped out of our universities over the past 50 years, and which seeks to dismantle the nation state as a concept. There is absolutely no underpinning logic to it; it is essentially a play—a game, an attempt to twist things—and it does not actually help us build communities. It does not seek to build things up; it seeks only to tear down institutions that have worked so well for centuries on end, and to eliminate the concept of the nation state.

Too many people in this place and elsewhere do not understand the incredibly nefarious effect that postmodernism will have on our society if we are not clear about it. That ideology seeps out of universities, moves into our institutions and infects parts of our public sector, and then moves out into civil society as a whole. It explicitly encourages people to have no shared understanding of our history—it effectively wishes to abolish history—to have no shared lexicon and to play with words to such an extent that reality is completely subverted because we say something is one thing on one day and then pretend it is something else on another. There are entirely arbitrary rules underpinning it, which change based upon the fashion, whoever shouts the loudest, and the time of the day and the day of the week. That is an ideology that will fail, and if we allow it to infect our institutions, our civil society and the work we do in this place and elsewhere, our country will be much weaker, poorer and less able to build the kind of cohesive society that we want.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we have not had a discussion in this place or elsewhere about what we must do. When people play with the building blocks of civic society, words, institutions, basic concepts and shared endeavour, how can we build the kind of cohesive society that we want? Whether it is expressed in a temperate way, like my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South did, or in a more emotive way, like the hon. Member for Bradford West did, we have a shared endeavour, but postmodernism absolutely prevents that from happening. We should call it out, stop it and say it has no place in our country and our academic and civil institutions, because it will fail and will lead to a less cohesive society.

[Naz Shah]

I was just thinking about the Minister’s warning that I should be careful. I am just trying to work this out. There is this idea that we should have a shared history, but we are not teaching our history in its entirety to our children. We are not talking about togetherness. The Minister might want to read the lecture by the first Muslim Cabinet member, the former Tory chairwoman, Baroness Warsi, who talked about the idea that Muslims do not matter. Does the Minister agree that, if we want a cohesive society, language is key, and the message has to come right from the top in 10 Downing Street? Muslims must not be otherised. Does he not include Muslims in that conversation, because it certainly feels like that?

[Lee Rowley]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, because she articulates yet again the care that is required in language and assertions, which has been sadly absent from her contributions to the debate, both a moment ago and previously. Of course Muslims matter. Of course people of all faiths matter. It is frankly outrageous that there is a suggestion that that is not the case. Of course they matter.

Those of us who are trying to build a cohesive society—an endeavour that I know the hon. Member for Bradford West shares—believe that such statements should not be made. They send a message to people who are listening today that, for some reason, there is some kind of fundamental difference and that those of us who have the privilege to sit in this place do not believe in cohesion and want to separate people out on the basis of the skin or the religion they have, and that is fundamentally untrue.

What I find most offensive, most outrageous and most egregious in this culture of grievance that is perpetuated by comments such as the ones put forward a moment ago is the separation of people within our community into backgrounds or experiences or skin colour.

[Naz Shah]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

No, I will not give way.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order. The Minister talks about being temperate and using temperate language. Could I please remind him to observe that when he makes his comments?

[Lee Rowley]

With absolute pleasure, Sir Mark. I absolutely intend to do so. As has been outlined, my concern is that it is important that we are very clear and very careful about the language we use, which I have sought to be, and about suggestions as to the motivations of others, which I have sought to be. Equally, it is important that we are robust about calling out cases where that care is not taken. All of us have a responsibility in this place and elsewhere to utilise the best and most careful language, assertions and arguments. Today has been an indication of where that is not occurring in places, and I will come on to that more in a moment.

[Naz Shah]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I will make some more progress before doing that.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised a number of important points and made some very strong points about social media. We are all dealing with our interaction with social media, its importance now and its pervasiveness in daily life, as well as with the opportunities and challenges it brings as a whole. The reality is that social media is entirely embedded in our daily lives, in the way it was not even a few decades ago when I was growing up. The situation is extremely different, most obviously for children, who are having to learn how to deal with it as they grow up, but also across society as a whole. That is something we will have to grapple with for the rest of our lives, and it will not be immediately clear for many years exactly what that means. We are all going to have to learn, and to take things extremely carefully, as we try to understand how we ensure that social media is embedded in our life in a way that accentuates the positives and minimises the negatives.

The hon. Member for Strangford also talked about the challenges of cynicism about democracy, and I accept that point as well. From my personal perspective, one of the challenges in recent years is that there has been a baselining of issues in our country that we actually need to debate much more often. The rights that people talk about quite freely—often too freely in many instances—which I support, and which I know everybody in this place and beyond supports, do not just appear; they are not guaranteed.

[Naz Shah]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I will give way in a moment. Those rights are hard won and hard fought for—people have died for them—and we must continually repeat and confirm that in order to ensure that people recognise that these rights are not automatic. All of us involved in politics and the political process have work to do. The situation we are in, including the relatively benign environment we have grown up in, and our right, when we go home to our respective communities, to have the kind of debates and discussions we want, need to be nurtured. If they are not, they wither on the vine; they ossify, and they do not work. We cannot get away from this principle—this indulgence—that if we do not accept that all of that is built on the concept of the nation state, the United Kingdom and the values our country has, ultimately it will not work in the long run.

[Naz Shah]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He is right, and everybody has that right, including me. I represent the great people of Bradford West, and 60% of my constituency is Muslim, as I myself am. I find it really offensive that the Minister is offended that I am stating facts. I am demonstrating that the Government are not walking the walk when delivering on their so-called cohesion policies or their so-called attempts to deliver equality. In fact, I am even more offended at any suggestion that my interventions are about a grievance narrative, when they are actually all about Muslims just wanting equality. We are not talking about special treatment; nobody in my constituency wants special treatment. What they do want—will the Minister give it and agree?—is equality.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions are meant to be short.

[Lee Rowley]

I thank the hon. Lady, who makes some of my case for me. However, turning to her comments, I agree with some of what she says. It is important that we build a shared understanding and a shared set of values in this country. I agree that we should be temperate with language. Where she has called out inappropriate behaviour—I do not agree with all her points—I accept that no party is perfect. I accept that some of my colleagues will have made mistakes. I accept that some words have been looser than they should have been.

However, I hope the hon. Lady will accept that that is not limited to my party or to the Government—there have been multiple examples. However, if we just trade off on the basis of who said what where, or make some kind of case that one political party is worse than the other, when we know that they have all had significant issues with community relations over many years—only one party got into the place it did with regard to antisemitism a number of years ago—we will be much poorer in the debate about this issue.

The hon. Member for Bradford West referenced facts, and I am happy to talk about some of the challenges around the facts she provided a moment ago. She knows that the Inter Faith Network’s funding was withdrawn because of a decision to appoint somebody who had a background in a particular organisation—that was a choice that the organisation made, and it appointed that person. The policy of non-engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain has been in place since the Labour party was in power. Indeed, it was the former Labour Member for Salford—the Secretary of State in the predecessor to my Department—who started that policy of non-engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain in 2009, which my party continues to this day. It is perfectly logical to extend a policy that was introduced and endorsed by the Labour party, on the basis of logic put forward by the Labour party, because of the challenges that we now have. The hon. Member for Bradford West shakes her head, but those are the facts on the assertion that she made.

[Liz Twist]

Will the Minister give way?

[Lee Rowley]

I am afraid I will make progress. I have given way a number of times.

The hon. Member for Bradford West made a number of comments about populism and raised a number of concerns about extremism and its definition. When she next speaks in debates like this, she needs to define the specific issues she has with the definition of extremism, because that was not part of her speech when we strip back all the criticisms about individuals. We can always have a robust debate, but if we want to have a mature one, which the hon. Lady claims she does, it would be better to focus on concerns about the specific definitions the Government are trying to bring forward, and what they do and do not achieve, as opposed to spending much more time talking about individuals.

I will probably leave it there. I have many more things I could say about the hon. Lady’s speech, but maybe it is better to deal with those in another forum at another time. I will just say that I do not agree with much of her speech, and I hope that, in time, she will reflect on many of the points that were made.

Putting aside some of the challenges mentioned in Members’ speeches, and what was contained in at least one of them, I think today has shown that all of us feel extremely passionately about ensuring that we build a society that is cohesive and resilient for the long run, and about seeking to utilise what the Government can do to move forward the things we see in our individual communities, whether that be Stoke-on-Trent, Blaydon, North East Derbyshire, Bradford, Strangford—the hon. Member for Strangford is no longer in his place— or elsewhere. We also want to identify the issues that we need to deal with in the years ahead, which is exactly what the commissioning of the Khan review sought to do.

Despite the robustness of the debate, and despite my fundamental disagreements with some of the points that were made, I think it has been a useful debate and a good debate. Again, I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North for giving us the opportunity and space to have the debate, and I am glad that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South have had the opportunity to raise specific they are concerned about within their great city. I hope that such robust debates—next time, the language will hopefully be slightly more cautious and temperate—highlight the interest and need of everybody, wherever we sit on the political spectrum, in terms of getting this matter right and making progress for the long run, which is something we all want to achieve.

[Sir Mark Hendrick (in the Chair)]

I call Jonathan Gullis to wind up the debate.