Counter-Extremism Strategy

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, I add my gratitude and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, on not only securing this debate but on his continued leadership on this issue. I shall conclude the Back-Bench contributions to this debate with two key questions for the Minister.

The first stems from the confusion, which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, set out so eloquently, over the Government’s position on a definition of counterextremism. Can the Minister confirm that the focus on attacking democratic institutions and democratic values, which was written into the last definition produced by the previous Government, is still in this Government’s remit on tackling counterextremism? Following on from that, do the Government believe that we should be seeking a legal way to bar public funding to any organisation that demonstrates or promotes extremism or seeks to systematically undermine our democratic values and institutions?

Secondly, related to that, will the Government—the Minister can speak for the Labour Party—set a political lead by pledging not to engage with institutions that seek to systematically undermine our representative democracy rather than to engage with it? This second question echoes much of the concern expressed today around whether the Government will adequately acknowledge and lead in countering Islamist extremism as part of a wider extremist strategy.

I draw the attention of the Minister and noble Lords to the document released by the Government in December last year, entitled Antisemitism: Recent Government Actions and Next Steps. In that document, the Government say that we must be bolder in “calling out … hateful ideologies”. That is absolutely the case, but I think noble Lords might be able to guess the number of times Islamist extremism is mentioned in that entire document. It is zero. So many parts of our society, not only the Jewish community but across society, are looking at the Government to make tackling Islamist extremism, the biggest driver of extremism in our country, in my view, publicly central to a cross-government, cross-departmental effort to keep our citizens safe.