King’s Speech

Baroness Berger Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and a privilege to have been here today to listen to the contributions so far in this debate, especially the valedictory speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and his important call to us all.

I stand in your Lordships’ House today reflecting on the King’s Speech, not just as a Peer but as a mother to two children who have to pass anti-car ramming bollards, high walls, five security guards, a gated air lock and, as of just a few weeks ago, a guard dog just to get into their primary school. Why do Jewish children experience the start of their school day in a way that is so different to millions of other children in this country?

Hate crime offences in the UK have risen nearly every year for the last decade, from just over 40,000 offences in 2013 to over 115,000 in 2025. Prevent referrals last year rose to 8,517. This is the highest ever—up by 27% in 12 months. All these offences and referrals are the result of extremism, online radicalisation and antisemitism. These three key issues coalesce to pose a toxic and destabilising threat to our domestic security and social cohesion. I welcome the measures to be presented in the national security Bill, which will criminalise the creation and sharing of the most harmful, violent material online. There is, though, no specific mention of counterextremism measures in the forthcoming legislative agenda, which I hoped would complement the Government’s recent social cohesion strategy, Protecting What Matters.

Anti-Jewish hatred is found within all extremist ideologies: far left, far right and Islamist. Antisemitism is also consistent with non-ideological extremism. It has often been referred to as a gateway for radicalisation, through conspiracy theories that so often lead back to deep-rooted anti-Jewish hatred. Our understandable focus on counterterrorism has left us without the capacity to address the growing volume of extremist activity that operates below the terrorism threshold. The report by the Home Affairs Select Committee concluded that we lack a meaningful, stand-alone counterextremism strategy, that we are overreliant on Prevent and that community-based early intervention approaches have been eroded through underfunding.

Prevent is also poorly equipped to detect online radicalisation, despite the internet being a hotbed for radicalisation, as other noble Lords have alluded to in this debate. An increasing number of young people are being radicalised online. X and Telegram are acting as key amplifiers of extremist ideas and movements. Their algorithms are designed to promote extreme content, which most people are not searching for, through bots and antisemitic accounts hijacking popular, neutral-content posts, turning them into breeding grounds for antisemitism. These are used to socialise and normalise hate and conspiracies.

The Antisemitism Policy Trust published research the other week, confirming again that TikTok is actively serving young people extremist content. A young person aged 15 interested in fitness and male lifestyle content was, within just one hour, being served antisemitic conspiracy theories. By his sixth one-hour session online, he was watching videos celebrating Hitler and denying the Holocaust. He did not seek or search for any of this content.

We cannot let these extreme ideologies and their increasing capacity to recruit more young people continue to infect minds, especially when we know that more things can be done. First, we need a new legal framework to address hateful and extremist groups that radicalise individuals and undermine our democracy, in the same way that Australia has done after the deadly Hanukkah shooting. Secondly, we need to urgently treat big tech, social media and messaging companies in the same way as we do our broadcasters in respect of regulation. People are not radicalised in a vacuum.

These online activities have real-world consequences. We cannot let this continue. We need urgent action.