Southport Attack

Shockat Adam Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement. Despite the attacker’s three referrals to Prevent, five referrals to the local police force and multiple referrals to multiple hubs, we still did not protect Elsie, Alice and Bebe. We have failed them. We must ensure that this never happens again. Does the Home Secretary agree that whoever the perpetrator is, the victims are always terrorised, and that an obsession with ideology may have been an underlying factor in why we missed this perpetrator? Should we not look again at the Shawcross recommendations on ideology obsession?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Member is right that the Prevent learning review identified that in this case, the focus on ideology may have meant that some of the vulnerabilities to radicalisation were missed. We also have to recognise that cases in which there is ideology are different from cases in which there is not, and may require a different kind of response. The assessment of risk, and of the danger that a young person poses, may be the same, but the action that the state takes may need to change, depending on what is driving that danger and risk. For too long, though, some of those mixed-ideology cases—those unclear cases—may have been missed because we have not had sufficient focus on them. That focus is what the inquiry needs.