Social Cohesion and Democratic Resilience: Khan Review

Liz Twist Excerpts

Tuesday 30th April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark, and I thank the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) for securing this important debate.

Dame Sara Khan’s report does not make for easy reading, but it is vital that we tackle extremism and radicalisation head on. I hope the Government will take this opportunity to reflect, and to consider how we can work constructively to build more cohesive, resilient communities. At its heart, this is about how we as a society live well together. It is not only a matter of security, but a matter of public health, and speaks to our fundamental wellbeing.

I thank all those who have contributed to the debate. We heard from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who talked about the importance of the review; from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who looked the experience of his own constituency, and talked about the importance of democratic resilience and social cohesion; and from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who also talked about the Khan report and the situation in his constituency. Finally, we heard a very spirited speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), who talked about the importance of language and how people speak about things, as well as the need for a national strategy. She also discussed Islamophobia, and, in a very passionate speech, said that the Government needed to walk the walk.

To say that this has been a challenging period for our communities would be an understatement. We continue to see the impact of the ongoing conflict in Gaza on community relations. Meanwhile people are finding it tough to make ends meet, and our public services have been struggling. The Khan review’s position on this point is clear: these difficulties risk undermining our social contract, fuelling disillusionment with our democratic system, and allowing extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories to take root. The House can, and should, work together to tackle these serious issues, and the Minister can be assured that my party is ready and willing to engage in good faith with these discussions. We are here to represent our constituents, and we should come together to reject extremists who seek to undermine these efforts.

That involves recognising the shortcomings in the Government’s work on this to date. As the Khan review clearly outlines, those shortcomings have left local authorities to deal with the fallout following the most challenging incidents of community conflict. We must remember that it is councils that are dealing with these issues on the frontline, whether that is fulfilling their statutory duties by organising community safety partnerships and safeguarding boards, or developing more bespoke partnerships in response to local issues. The unprecedented levels of demand that councils currently work with have made it more difficult to carry out the broader upstream work that is desperately needed.

Meanwhile many councillors face appalling levels of abuse and harassment simply for serving their communities. We heard about the impact on Members of Parliament, too, as they go about their work, and how sadly, in two cases, Members have lost their lives. It is imperative that central Government work as a supportive partner with local government on this, providing the space for local authorities and other agencies to come together to share best practice. The reality, as Khan says, is that

“there is no strategic approach within Whitehall’s machinery to deal with these threats to social cohesion and our country’s democratic resilience.”

We have had review after review, and still no sense of where tensions are, how to prevent them, or how to rebuild after conflict. The constant political turbulence certainly has not helped matters. The integrated communities action plan has had some success, but of 70 commitments listed in it, just 14 have been delivered. We were told that the cross-ministerial group responsible would meet every six months, but in the end, it met only once. This is part of a wider pattern: we are still waiting for an update on the hate crimes strategy, promised in 2020, and it seems that the anti-Muslim hatred working group and the antisemitism working group are no longer meeting. I hope that Sara Khan’s review gives the Government an opportunity to refocus and demonstrate the political will needed to make lasting preventive change. Actions speak louder than words. We need to see that this is made a priority.

The review also invokes the Government’s record on housing asylum seekers and the Home Office’s failure to communicate effectively with local authorities before placing asylum seekers in their areas. Shockingly, some local authorities told the reviewer that far-right groups knew about local asylum hotels before they did. We desperately need a new approach, which has to include new strategies on counter-extremism and community cohesion. The Secretary of State has said that the Government will be publishing a more detailed action plan, which will include funding commitments to support organisations on the ground working to build community resilience. I look forward to hearing about the progress made on that, but in the meantime, I want to ask the Minister the following questions.

First, the review is clear that we must take a more proactive approach to community cohesion. That includes learning more about what makes local areas particularly vulnerable or resilient to extremism. Will the Minister say what his Department is doing to address those knowledge gaps? The recruitment of a new Islamophobia adviser continues to be in doubt. Will the Minister shed some light on any progress made on that issue?

Technological innovations have created further challenges in maintaining cohesive communities. What steps is the Minister’s Department taking to tackle new forms of radicalisation, including radicalisation that takes place online? The tensions that we are currently seeing are playing out at all levels of our society, including in our classrooms. What discussions has the Minister had with colleagues in the Department for Education about providing the support that teachers need to manage difficult conversations? Finally, can he tell us whether the Government have given up on refreshing the hate crime action plan?

Social cohesion is not a “nice to have”. If we do not show leadership and support local authorities to address concerns within their communities, extremists will fill the void. We must start thinking about how we approach proper preventive work that engages communities, rather than waiting for flashpoints to occur. I hope we can work together on these most fundamental issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.