Social Cohesion Action Plan

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Steve Reed)]

With permission, I will make a statement on the Government’s action plan for social cohesion entitled, “Protecting What Matters”.

Britain has faced global crises at many moments in our history; we got through them by staying strong and united. Today we navigate new threats to our communities and families. We must stand together once again against those who seek to divide and weaken us. They want to sow division in our streets, our neighbourhoods, our homes and our minds. They feed off deliberate misinformation, hatred and extremism, carried across social media by algorithms, and funded by hostile states and rogue billionaires determined to pull our communities apart.

Online echo chambers, hatred for those with a different point of view and an unwillingness to seek compromise have led to a politics that is more aggressive, polarised and toxic than we have seen before—certainly in our lifetimes. As a nation, we are proof that people from different backgrounds can live, work and contribute together—a multi-ethnic democracy where neighbours look out for each other—but the foundations on which this country was built have been rocked by the rapid change all around us. Economic shocks and austerity halted the once steady improvement in our living standards. Rapid technological change has transformed how we work and live our lives. Intergenerational unfairness, regional inequality, an ageing population, the Tories’ open borders experiment and the disruption caused by their asylum-seeker hotels policy—all of that—has left communities more fearful of the future and more susceptible to siren voices wrongly putting the blame on minority groups.

Today, through the publication of “Protecting What Matters”, which we laid as a Command Paper in both Houses this afternoon, we have set out our steps towards a more confident, cohesive and united kingdom. Patriotism means bringing our country together, never pulling it apart. It is not patriotic to target someone because of their religion or the colour of their skin. We will resist those who peddle that kind of hatred and division. We choose to celebrate our country and all it stands for. We choose to come together in the best of times and the worst of times. We choose to take on those who seek to divide us. That is patriotism.

Our action plan aims to build confident communities that have hope in the future. There is a direct link between declining high streets and a sense that the country is going backwards. People remember high streets from years gone by that were vibrant, buzzy, great places to socialise with friends and family. There is a real sense of anger, as well as of loss, that so many have been left boarded up and run down, covered in graffiti and full of dumped rubbish—bleak symbols of the wasted Tory years.

People deserve to feel proud of their neighbourhoods. Pride in Place is central to our plan to make that happen. We have now committed £5.8 billion to almost 300 constituencies and begun to set up neighbourhood boards so that local people can decide for themselves how that money is spent. Fair funding for councils means that funding now follows deprivation for the first time in over a decade. We are offering grassroots organisations £5 million through the common ground fund to tackle division in communities.

We will focus, too, on protecting young people from those who want to warp their minds with hatred and introduce more effective regulation of home education, with the first ever register of children not in school, stronger oversight where children may be at risk and the piloting of a new approach where new safety checks are carried out before a child can be taken out of mainstream schooling.

It is important that children grow up understanding the diversity of our nation, so we are investing £500,000 to link schools serving different communities in order to ensure that they know and understand each other better. We will establish a social cohesion measurement framework so that we can identify risks early and act quickly. We will set expectations on integration for new arrivals and the communities who will receive them, with a focus on learning English so that people have a shared language, can participate in the local community and have respect for British values, our democracy and our way of life. We will end the Tory asylum hotels policy and shape an immigration system that is fair and transparent, and that works better for all communities.

We will not allow hatred to distort the lives and life chances of those who are targeted. Right now, Muslim communities are facing shocking levels of abuse. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are at record levels and now make up almost half of all religious hate crimes—way out of proportion to the size of our Muslim population. Mosques, schools and businesses have been attacked. Women have been harassed. Families are living in fear.

We have a duty to act, but we cannot tackle a problem if we cannot describe it, so today we are adopting a non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility. This gives a clear explanation of unacceptable prejudice, discrimination and hatred targeting Muslims, so that we can take action to stop it. The definition safeguards our fundamental right to freedom of speech—about religion in general or any religion in particular—and ensures that concerns raised in the public interest are protected.

I thank the members of the independent working group chaired by Dominic Grieve, who have provided advice to me on this matter. They have been targets for abuse because they carried out that work. That is utterly unacceptable. I am grateful for their patience and their wisdom. We will now work with groups across society to consider how the definition can be used most effectively and what comes next in disseminating it. We have deposited a copy of the definition in the Library of each House.

We also remain absolutely committed to stamping out antisemitism. We have witnessed murderous antisemitic terrorist attacks both here in the UK and abroad. Sickeningly, those have led to spikes in antisemitic abuse. Since coming to power, the Government have taken decisive steps to combat antisemitism, with record funding for security at synagogues and schools, millions of pounds to tackle antisemitism in schools and universities, and new laws to stop abusive protests outside places of worship.

Today we are going even further to tackle antisemitism in schools and colleges and in the healthcare system and, crucially, clamping down hard on the extremism that so often targets Jews first of all. Work is under way across Government as we continue to root out antisemitic hatred from every part of British life. We also hear concerns about hatred and discrimination in the workplace. We are building on protections in our landmark Employment Rights Act 2025, rolling out training across the civil service and working with major employers such as the NHS. This will include training to prevent and respond to religious hatred across the entire workforce.

Confronting extremism in all its forms requires more resilient communities. We will implement the anti-extremism policies that the previous Government announced but never brought into force, embedding the 2024 extremism definition, producing an annual state of extremism report and improving our ability to monitor and stop extremist influence online and offline. We will introduce a state threats designation power to disrupt hostile state and proxy organisations. We will also strengthen the Charity Commission’s powers to tackle extremist abuse and ban visas for extremists and hate preachers.

Our universities should always be beacons of free speech, where students feel safe to learn, to disagree and to explore how they see the world, but in recent years this has been undermined and we will not tolerate that. We are introducing new measures to tackle the rise of extremism on our college and university campuses, particularly since the 7 October attacks, which include strengthening the monitoring of extremism on campuses, improving oversight of compliance with the Prevent duty and taking more robust enforcement action where it is needed.

We will also protect people from hate content online. The Government will not stand by as rogue platforms push divisive and aggressive hatred on social media. We are looking at how we can make platforms give their users more control over the algorithms that determine what they see, and we will make full use of the powers in the Online Safety Act 2023.

We have all grown up in a United Kingdom that is, by global standards, remarkably cohesive. That cohesion underpins our economic strength, our democratic freedom and our national security. It is a fundamental part of the Britain we love. We have made our choice. In place of division, we choose unity, and we know that the people of Britain have made the same choice. The division and hate spewed by a small minority will never reflect our country.

The real Britain is where parents put on after-school clubs and summer fêtes to bring their kids together, where towns come out in the pouring rain to support their local football club with the same passion as they would support their country’s team in the world cup, and where neighbours hold street parties and set up mutual aid groups to look out for each other during covid. This is a Britain to be proud of, and I commend this plan to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. However, I had no prior notice that he would overrun the 10 minutes that he was allocated for his statement by more than two minutes. He has taken 12 minutes, so the shadow Front Bencher will get their time extended to six minutes. I call the shadow Minister.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement, although the Government leaked it on Friday and his Department briefed it to the press yesterday. Parliament should not learn the details of Government policy through newspaper reports. This House deserves transparency.

There are some measures in this strategy that we welcome. Efforts to tackle extremism in charities and universities are important and necessary, and we welcome them, but the strategy lacks ambition and action to deliver tangible change. The Secretary of State spoke for two minutes over his allocated time, which is ironic because there is absolutely nothing new in the measures that the Government are announcing this evening.

The strategy claims that the Government intend to embed the anti-extremism principles adopted by the previous Conservative Government in 2024, but if that is the case, why have this Government reversed the position on naming extremist organisations? We now have the ridiculous situation where the Government claim they have a policy of non-engagement with extremists but refuse to say who that policy applies to. Last month, we saw this confusion laid bare when the Home Office was asked whether it engaged with the Muslim Council of Britain. Two Ministers gave contradictory answers. When asked whether the MCB had given written evidence to the Macdonald review into hate crime, the Minister for Policing and Crime, the hon. Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), stated:

“The Government’s policy of non-engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain has not changed.”

However, just two days later, when asked whether the Muslim Council of Britain was on the list of organisations subject to that policy, the Minister for Security, the hon. Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), replied:

“The Home Office does not comment on specific groups.”

So which is it?

This lack of transparency also applies to the review itself. Will the Minister now publish the full report provided to him by the working group? Will he publish a list of every external organisation that the working group met, and every organisation his Department has subsequently consulted on that report? Will he confirm whether organisations deemed extremist or subject to the Government’s policy of non-engagement were permitted to submit evidence? So far, this review appears to have been conducted largely in secret. The Government even had to be dragged kicking and screaming into publishing an email address so that evidence could be submitted.

The proposed definition still raises serious questions. Jonathan Hall KC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has warned that any definition should include clear examples of free speech that are not considered anti-Muslim hatred. He says it is important that people can still openly discuss difficult but significant topics such as migration and Islamism. The definition risks undermining free speech within the law, it risks hindering legitimate criticism of Islamism and it risks creating a back-door blasphemy law.

The strategy also claims that the Government want to promote the English language, but they will not say whether they support the guidance issued to councils in 2013 by the then Secretary of State, Eric Pickles, which advised against routine translation into foreign languages. We should be investing in English language training, not endless translation. Translation undermines integration, it wastes taxpayers’ money and it ultimately harms equality. There is no legal duty on councils to translate documents into foreign languages, yet too often officials gold-plate the Equality Act 2010 and do so anyway.

Meanwhile, around 1 million adults in this country cannot speak English properly. This fundamentally limits their life chances and perpetuates separate communities. If the Government truly believed in equality, they would not turn a blind eye to practices such as family voting, where husbands effectively take the votes off their wives. Neither would they tolerate the misogyny and segregation that occur when men prevent women from learning English—[Interruption.] Labour Members might want to listen to this, because I am about to talk about antisemitism and I know that they have had a problem with that.

On the question of antisemitism, will the Government challenge anti-Israel boycotts and divestment campaigns in local government, as we have seen recently in Bristol, advocated by a party in this House? Such campaigns fuel hostility towards Jewish people and contribute to the rise in antisemitism. Local procurement boycotts of Israel are supposed to be unlawful, yet Ministers do nothing to enforce the law. They will not even compile a list of the councils pursuing such boycotts.

Added to these fears, separatism is on the rise in our country, as the Leader of the Opposition rightly set out in her speech last week. She said that

“for too long, Britain has been complacent about our culture and too tolerant of those weaponising identity politics for their own gain…Britain is a multiracial country, we must not be a multicultural one.”

[Interruption.] That was in the Secretary of State’s statement, by the way. We must reject the absurd idea that culture is something imported from somewhere else. For integration to work, people must know into what they are integrating. That means a culture that is confident, that is strong and that believes in itself. That is what this Government still seem unable to understand and unwilling to defend.

[Steve Reed]

I thank the hon. Gentleman—I think—for his comments. The reason this is the first social cohesion strategy that any Government have published for many years is that the Conservatives did not bother when they were in government. No, there has not been proactive engagement with the MCB in the work carried out by the Government or the taskforce. The previous Government did not publish a social cohesion strategy, but they did sow division in our communities. Their asylum seeker hotel policy, which we are having to clean up, caused all sorts of problems all over the country. They actively stripped money out of poorer communities and then boasted about it, leaving high streets to fall into decline and the people living in those communities feeling that the country was going backwards and was offering them nothing.

On the definition, there is absolutely no question of blasphemy laws by the back door. We will not do what the Conservatives did and stand by and simply watch while Muslim communities face targeted abuse in ways that any decent country would consider to be absolutely intolerable. As for English language teaching, they cut funding for it by 60%, and then have the cheek to stand there and say there is not enough of it going on. When I was a student, I volunteered to teach English to refugees. I suggest the hon. Gentleman does the same thing, because it is enriching for the volunteer and beneficial for the person learning English. Speaking the same language is fundamental to social cohesion.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Highgate) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I welcome the narrative he has spoken about, because I think it will give a lot of strength to people in my constituency. Can I ask him a practical question, though? I hear a lot from people with Muslim-sounding names that when they apply for jobs—research also shows this—they are three times less likely to get a positive response than someone with a western-sounding name, even if they have the same CV and qualifications. Of course I will be speaking about the narrative that he has talked about from the Dispatch Box, which will be welcome in my constituency, but what does he want me to say to the young Muslim and black men on the Kilburn estate in my constituency who are rejected when they are looking for jobs because of how their names sound?

[Steve Reed]

Many Members across the House will recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes, which will have been communicated to us by our own constituents. There are laws against outright discrimination, and those must be properly enforced, but we hope the definition will help the vast majority of employers—people of goodwill—who may not understand the nature of hostility towards Muslims or people who appear or sound like they are Muslim to see how employers contribute to that hostility. The intention of the definition is to enable those individuals and employers to better understand the circumstances, so that Muslim people are given the same opportunities and chances in life as anybody else.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Marie Goldman (Chelmsford) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Liberal Democrats are pleased to see the Government present this social cohesion strategy, partly because we have consistently called for its publication without further delay—it was promised last year. This should not be a political matter. We all witnessed the scenes during the 2024 riots. To suggest that a community cohesion strategy is unnecessary is to be blind to the very real challenges facing our country—challenges that have regrettably been inflamed by certain politicians who should know better. Given that almost 140,000 hate-related offences have been recorded in the year to March 2025, it is clear that action is definitely needed at a national level.

To support community cohesion, we must first build community itself and the kind of community that comes from access to shared spaces—youth clubs, green spaces and the everyday places where, regardless of background, we come to recognise how much we have in common with each other. Will the Secretary of State outline how faith communities will be properly supported and involved in proactively preventing division?

The Government also previously committed to promoting local faith covenants as a way of strengthening partnerships between councils and faith groups. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether the new strategy will provide practical support for local authorities to implement those covenants, especially given that many councils are on the brink financially?

[Steve Reed]

I thank the hon. Member for her comments and her party’s welcome of the strategy. It is important that we give it as much backing as possible because there is an awful lot to fix in what the previous Government left behind.

On help to build communities, our Pride in Place funding makes available £5.8 billion across nearly 300 constituencies. The intention is that the communities themselves will take the decisions about how that money is spent. I have been to visit some of those communities already. Frequently, there is multi-faith engagement in taking those decisions on the neighbourhood boards. That brings groups together and gives them a role, together with other community organisations, in taking decisions about how they can build cohesion and, indeed, community in their localities.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

The reality is that the abhorrent rise in inflammatory rhetoric from national figures, including in this place, has normalised Islamophobia to the extent that it is now open season on British Muslims. This scapegoating feeds a hostile environment, and recent violent attacks on British Muslims show the real-world consequences. Let us be clear in this House: this is not just an attack on British Muslim communities; it is a direct challenge to the British values of fairness, respect and the rule of law. We must stand united in saying that British Muslim communities deserve safety, dignity and the freedom to exist without fear, like every other community. Can the Minister set out how the strategy will directly address this open season of hatred against British Muslims?

[Steve Reed]

I of course recognise what my hon. Friend says. We have a situation where over 40% of all recorded religious hate crimes target British Muslims. That is wildly out of proportion with the number of Muslims in our country. The reason we are publishing this strategy today, and the reason that it includes the anti-Muslim hostility definition, is so that we can better tackle the problem by describing it and then reviewing how we disseminate it with partners, institutions and groups across the country to give Muslims access to the freedom and rights they deserve, just as much as anybody else in this country.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Like a number of other right hon. and hon. Members, I come from an immigrant family and grew up in a household where a foreign language was primarily spoken by my grandparents, my father was bilingual and I was monolingual with the language of the country that my family had come into. The key to it all working is a willingness to integrate. Can the Secretary of State confirm that there are measures in this overall plan, which seems to have much to commend it, that are designed to prevent separatism and ghettoisation in society? Where that exists, a community becomes impossible to navigate in the way that we would all want it to be navigated.

[Steve Reed]

There is an awful lot in the report, and I cannot go through all of it because I will further annoy Madam Deputy Speaker by using up too much time, but if I might point to one area, we are allocating £500,000 to link together schools from different communities so that children growing up, perhaps with their friends from the same community, can get to know and better understand children from other backgrounds as well, and to understand that they live in and are part of a thriving, diverse community.

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

I recently attended an anti-hate crime seminar organised by the Rochdale Council of Mosques. It struck me that it was clear that innocent Muslim men, women and children are subjected to vile Islamophobia in the street and blamed for terrorist outrages, just as Jews are subjected to vile antisemitism and blamed for the actions of Israel. I welcome today’s new definition of anti-Muslim hostility, which is needed every bit as much as that existing definition of antisemitism. I note that the definition of antisemitism has not had a chilling effect on free speech either.

[Steve Reed]

I thank my hon. Friend for his points, which are well made. It is important that, even going beyond this strategy, our existing laws against abuse and hate crime are properly enforced up and down the country, but we expect and hope that the definition will help organisations and individuals to better understand what causes anti-Muslim hostility and therefore how we can prevent it from happening.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

All forms of abuse are appalling. All forms of targeted abuse—be they against Muslim, Jewish or black communities—are even more appalling. I would be interested to know why the word “Islamophobia” does not appear in the statement, when that is clearly an enormous problem in our society. I am unclear about whether the Secretary of State took any advice from the Muslim Council of Britain, which has often been very helpful in explaining to the wider community the consequences of Islamophobia. Does he not think that there must be much greater concentration on the role of the racist far right in our society, which, on social media and elsewhere, continually incites—subliminally and overtly—violence against identifiable minorities all over the country, with devastating consequences for the security, safety and wellbeing of many people on our streets?

[Steve Reed]

The right hon. Gentleman is correct: it is important that we tackle all forms of abuse and discrimination, no matter which minority group they target. That is why, in the case of the Muslim population, we have included the anti-Muslim hostility definition as part of our report. The language for that came from the working group itself, which of course included many senior and well-respected figures from the Muslim community.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South and Walkden) (Lab)]

My constituents tell me about the increased level of hate crime against Muslims. I hear stories of women being abused or having their hijabs pulled off. That is a direct result not just of most of the coverage in our right-wing media, but of politicians in this place, some of whom have held the highest offices in the land, including the Leader of the Opposition. They feed into this narrative and cause anti-Muslim sentiment. What more will we do to counter the level of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment?

[Steve Reed]

I recognise well and with deep sorrow the situation that my hon. Friend describes. It is outrageous that over 40% of all recorded religious hate crime targets Muslims—that is way out of line with the Muslim proportion of our population. We have published the report, the entire plan and the definition to encourage and support organisations in tackling the forms of discrimination that blight the lives of British Muslims up and down the country.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister very much for his positive statement, in which he described the society we all wish to live in. It is the society that I wish to live in, too. As he will know, I chair the all-party parliamentary group for international freedom of religion or belief, which speaks up for those of the Christian faith, those of other faiths and, indeed, those of no faith. Respect is core to realising that we can all live together. In Northern Ireland, the past 34 years have shown that Protestant and Roman Catholic can live together. We have seen that in my constituency of Strangford. In Ards, the local mosque is side by side with the Presbyterian church, and there are no problems and no attacks—nothing happens. Christian Syrian refugees came to Ards for sanctuary under the refugee allocation of the last Conservative Government. Has the Secretary of State had the opportunity to see what has been done in Northern Ireland, as he considers the pluralistic society that he desires? Will he ensure that all religious beliefs are treated and respected equally?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He is right: there will be much to learn from the experience of Northern Ireland in bringing back together disparate communities, particularly in the period since the troubles came to an end with the Good Friday agreement. I will ask my Department to reach out and make sure that we take those lessons on board.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State and his Ministers; the previous Minister, Lord Khan, who started the process; and the working group for all their hard work. The Centre for Media Monitoring launched its landmark “The State of British Media 2025: Reporting on Muslims and Islam” report today. It is the largest study of its kind ever conducted in the UK, analysing more than 40,000 articles across 30 outlets. It finds that nearly 50% of all UK media coverage about Muslims contained measurable bias, and 70% associated Muslims or Islam with negative behaviours or themes. This is not a fringe problem; it is systemic. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the definition of anti-Muslim hostility will be taken seriously by Ofcom, so that media outlets that spread conspiracy, target Muslim communities and actively undermine the social cohesion of this country are held to account?

[Steve Reed]

I thank my hon. Friend for her support today and for her advice on these issues over many years. I recognise what she says: the vast majority of coverage of Muslims in the media is negative and completely misrepresents the experience and contribution of Muslim communities. Yes, it is important that we engage with Ofcom, broadcasters and indeed other public institutions to ensure that they take on board the definition and work to improve their performance.

[Blake Stephenson (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

The Secretary of State said:

“There is a direct link between declining high streets and a sense that the country is going backwards.”

I agree with those sentiments. Will he therefore consider encouraging the Chancellor to reduce taxation on high street businesses to support job creation and help them to thrive?

[Steve Reed]

We already have the fastest growing G7 economy in Europe thanks to the Chancellor, so I do not think she needs the hon. Gentleman’s advice.

[Gurinder Singh Josan (Smethwick) (Lab)]

In times of increasing division, there is no place for divisive rhetoric, and the Government clearly have a role to play in supporting cohesion. The Tories clearly failed in that respect; we have heard again of their inability to embrace the United Kingdom of today. I welcome the definition of anti-Muslim hostility. Racism against Muslims, Jews and people of all backgrounds, including Sikhs, is sadly increasing and needs to be tackled. Many hate attacks on Sikhs are recorded as Islamophobia or anti-Muslim hatred, and it is important that that data is disaggregated. However, the United Kingdom is a very diverse country, so can the Secretary of State outline how his proposals will support people of all backgrounds, including in less diverse communities such as rural and coastal communities and smaller towns?

[Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the response of the official Opposition was disappointing, because it implied that they have learned nothing since their historic election defeat a year and a half ago. Pride in Place—£5.8 billion distributed to almost 300 constituencies—will give some of the most held-back communities in the land up to £20 million each, and local people will choose how that money is spent. Whatever the demographic make-up of individual communities—be they more or less diverse—that will bring local people together to make decisions for themselves. The restoration of power to communities will help to build resilience within them, for whatever challenges we may face.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

Does the Secretary of State believe that echoing Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech strengthens community cohesion?

[Steve Reed]

That did not happen.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester Rusholme) (Lab)]

The publication of the definition of anti-Muslim hostility has been almost a decade in the making. I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Faith for their determination to define the hate and prejudices that Muslims face. As the Secretary of State knows, the definition must command the confidence of the Muslim communities that it is meant to support, so will he commit to an extensive outreach programme with a diverse range of Muslim community groups to ensure that the definition has the necessary community buy-in to begin tackling the deep-rooted hatred faced by Muslims in Great Britain?

[Steve Reed]

I thank my hon. Friend for his years of leadership and advocacy on this issue. To have his support makes me even more proud that we are bringing forward the report and the definition today. Of course, it is critical that we carry out the work to ensure that the definition is disseminated widely, through local government, schools, universities, the NHS and broadcasters—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) implied—so that it can have the biggest impact possible in protecting Muslims from abuse and discrimination.

[Peter Fortune (Bromley and Biggin Hill) (Con)]

I welcome that the strategy acknowledges that antisemitism, an increasingly concerning issue, is being normalised in many corners of society. Indeed, 2025 saw the second highest annual total ever recorded for anti-Jewish hate incidents, at 3,700. What action is the Secretary of State taking to protect the Jewish community from those who may see Israel’s involvement in Iran as an excuse to attack British Jews?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Gentleman is right to point to a danger and threat that we all recognise, and much in the action plan will cover the issues he is talking about. For one thing, we are reviewing the visa watch list to ensure that extremists and hate preachers are not given visas to enter our country. Secondly, the Charity Commission will get new powers to close down charities that are promoting division, including antisemitism.

[Mr Connor Rand (Altrincham and Sale West) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the social cohesion strategy as we seek to unite our communities. In Altrincham and Sale West, we are fortunate enough to have some fantastic interfaith groups and organisations, and I give a special mention to “The Rabbi and The Imam” project. With antisemitism and Islamophobia on the rise, the project brings together local Muslim and local Jewish leaders to talk about their faiths, focusing on shared humanity, understanding and unity, including going into local schools. Is that exactly the kind of initiative that the Government and society need to get behind to counter extremism and hatred?

[Steve Reed]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent example from his constituency; interfaith projects such as that will make the difference. Communities will be supported to take action to tackle the division that is trying to be forced on us, and on all of them, by hostile actors who want to weaken our communities and thereby weaken our country.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

In 1979 my father took me to Newton Stewart cinema to see “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, and I recall my father being more upset by a spoof travel documentary that preceded the main film, because there was swearing in it, than he was about the supposed slights to Christianity. It was an early lesson to me that no one in this country, in a modern democracy, has the right not to be insulted or offended, so why are we in this place, the cockpit of democracy, discussing a blasphemy law by the back door?

[Steve Reed]

I am sorry that the hon. Member has chosen to misrepresent the definition. It is intended to protect Muslims from abuse that we know is shrinking people’s lives and life opportunities. One would hope that everyone in this House would get behind actions intended to give Muslim people the same chances as anyone else in our country.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the community cohesion strategy, which the Labour group of Hope not Hate, which I chair, has been calling for. The Secretary of State will know that the other side of the coin when building community cohesion is the counter-extremism work to stop people being radicalised in the first place, whether that is people on the far right with anti-Muslim hatred, or people on the far left with anti-Jewish hatred. What action will be taken to address those who perpetrate such myths about people, whether they be Muslim, Sikh, Hindu or Jew, and what resources might come from the Department to achieve that?

[Steve Reed]

The Government are intending to bring into force and fully utilise the powers available in the Online Safety Act 2023. By doing that, we think we can tackle some of the worst online sources of disinformation and hatred that are being spread around to sow division in our communities.

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Muslim people across the country face intensifying, dehumanising and often violent racism every day. Now that we have a definition, I am desperate for the conversation to move towards action. How quickly will the Government now move from definitions towards a clear and funded road map for action, including proper monitoring and accountability?

[Steve Reed]

The hon. Member is right to call for action, and I agree with her point. We will now engage in a review of how best to disseminate the definition, and put it into action so that it makes a difference to people’s lives. There is £5 million of new funding in the report, but Departments across Government will have sources of funding that also can be used to disseminate the new definition. We are committed to appointing an anti-Muslim hostility tsar, who can advise and be a critical friend to the Government in doing the work that we need to do. We will engage widely across local government, schools, universities, broadcasters, the NHS and others to agree on how we can best utilise the definition in order to support the Muslim community.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

I have long been arguing that we need an overhaul of charity regulation to tackle rogue operators who are exploiting charity status to peddle extremism and hate, so I am thrilled that the Government have listened and are starting that today with new powers for the Charity Commission—I look forward to seeing the detail. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Charity Commission will have a range of sanctions to impose where needed, and that there will be clear communication with HMRC to ensure that sanctioned and shutdown charities can no longer abuse public money through Gift Aid?

[Steve Reed]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Charity Commission will be getting new powers so that it can close down those organisations that purport to have charitable objectives but are really cover for promoting hatred and division. With the changes we are announcing today, that will no longer be allowed to continue.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

We all agree that there is no place in our society for hatred or discrimination against anybody, anywhere. Islamophobic incidents in the UK are at record levels; there are thousands of incidents each year, with many more likely to be unreported. Abuse is increasingly normalised and politicised through media, TV and online, at institutional as well as street level. Police data shows serious undercounting, making specialist monitoring essential. Islamophobia in the UK is not limited to fringe behaviour, and data shows a pattern of escalating hostility and normalisation in public discourse, including in this place and the other place. How will this definition be integrated into the Nolan principles, and what sanctions will apply to Members of this House and Members of the other place?

[Steve Reed]

It is for the House authorities to determine what happens with Members of this House, but the hon. Member is right to point to the huge concern that we should all share about the unacceptable level of hostility and abuse directed at Muslims. It is under-reported, in all likelihood, because we know that not all instances of such crime are reported.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Steve Witherden—[Interruption.] I mean Dr Scott Arthur.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, I think we are easily confused.

Yesterday I attended Open Heavens church in Wester Hailes, and a man told me how he had faced open racism from his colleagues and had been forced to resign, take his employer to court, and win his tribunal—a fantastic achievement. It was a shameful episode, but what made it worse was that he was an NHS consultant, and it was the NHS that he took to court. The point he made to me on the floor of the church was that too often society views hate as a series of events, rather than a culture. Will the Secretary of State confirm that what he has presented today will result in a change of culture, rather than simply addressing events? How will we measure that as we proceed through the remainder of this Parliament?

[Steve Reed]

We will measure the outcome of the report through new measures as part of the social cohesion framework that is described in more detail in the action plan, and we will be engaging directly with major employers, including the national health service, to ensure that they are taking every possible action to eliminate discrimination in the workplace, whichever groups might be targeted.

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

I thank the Secretary of State for introducing this definition of anti-Muslim hostility. Many facets contribute to causing division in society, not least the cost of living. When we saw the march in London, a large number of the audience there were racist, but a large majority of the people attending were not racist, they were just concerned about the cost of living. How does the Secretary of State see this definition incorporated, in terms of holding our far-right media and social media platforms to account, and how do we balance that with addressing the cost of living crisis?

[Steve Reed]

Part of the action that the Government are taking is the allocation of £5.8 billion to some of the most held-back communities in the country—over 300 constituencies will benefit from that funding. It will be local communities, through neighbourhood boards, who will decide for themselves how that money will be spent, directly addressing poverty but also directly addressing the lack of power that many of those communities feel. That will deliver the kind of change that the hon. Gentleman is describing and that we all want to see.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call Rachel Taylor to ask the final question.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

As part of my work on the Women and Equalities Committee, I have heard at first hand from victims of horrific hate crimes, who have been targeted just because of how they looked and who they were. Will the Secretary of State confirm that this Labour Government will finally deliver the funding, resources and a call to action to empower communities like mine in North Warwickshire and Bedworth, to bring people together and to combat those seeking to create division and hatred across this country?

[Steve Reed]

There is much in this report, and I hope that Members will take the opportunity to read it in full, including the definition and the many other proposals. This country is strongest when it is united, and the intention of this report is to bring this country back together in the face of those who have tried to pull our communities apart.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 8 January 2025 (Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Programme), as varied by the Order of 17 March 2025 (Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: Programme (No. 2)):

Consideration of Lords Amendments

(1) Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 9.00pm at today’s sitting.

(2) The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order: 2, 5, 16, 17, 19, 21, 37, 38, 41, 42, 44, 102, 105, 106, 1, 3, 4, 6 to 15, 18, 20, 22 to 36, 39, 40, 43, 45 to 101, 103, 104, and 107 to 121.

Subsequent stages

(3) Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.

(4) Proceedings on the first of any further Messages from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement.

(5) Proceedings on any subsequent Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement.—(Gregor Poynton.)

Question agreed to.