Extremism

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary to make a statement on her conduct regarding the Government’s action on preventing extremism.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The Government take the threat of extremism—non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism—very seriously. That is why, in line with the Prime Minister’s Munich speech in 2011, I reformed the Prevent strategy that year, and it is why, in response to the killing of Drummer Lee Rigby, the Prime Minister established the extremism taskforce last year.

The Prevent strategy we inherited was deeply flawed. It confused Government policy to promote integration with Government policy to prevent terrorism. It failed to tackle the extremist ideology that undermines the cohesion of our society and inspires would-be terrorists to murder. In trying to reach those at risk of radicalisation, funding sometimes reached the very extremist organisations that Prevent should have been confronting. Ministers and officials sometimes engaged with, and therefore leant legitimacy to, organisations and people with extremist agendas.

Unlike the old strategy, this Government’s Prevent strategy recognises and tackles the danger of non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism. Unlike the old strategy, the new strategy addresses all forms of extremism. Unlike the old strategy, there is now a clear demarcation between counter-terrorism work, which is run out of the Home Office, and the Government’s wider counter-extremist and integration work, which is co-ordinated by the Department for Communities and Local Government. Unlike the old strategy, the new strategy introduced explicit controls to make sure that public money must not be provided to extremist organisations. If organisations do not support the values of democracy, human rights, equality before the law and participation in society, we should not work with them and we should not fund them.

Turning to the issue of the unauthorised comments to the media about the Government’s approach to tackling extremism and the improper release of correspondence between Ministers, the Cabinet Secretary undertook a review to establish the facts of what happened last week. As the Cabinet Secretary and Prime Minister concluded, I did not authorise the release of my letter to the Education Secretary. Following the Cabinet Secretary’s review, the Education Secretary apologised to the Prime Minister and to Charles Farr, the director general of the office for security and counter-terrorism. In addition, in relation to further comments to The Times, my special adviser Fiona Cunningham resigned on Saturday.

[Yvette Cooper]

The Education Secretary will shortly make a statement about Birmingham schools, but last week the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary turned this instead into a public blame game about the Government’s approach to tackling extremism. There are important questions about the oversight and management of these schools, which the House will debate shortly. There are also real and separate concerns about the Government’s failure to work with communities on preventing extremism and about the narrowness of the Home Secretary’s approach.

Both issues are complex and require a thoughtful, sensitive approach and for Ministers to work together, just as Departments, communities, parents, local councils and the police need to do. Instead of showing leadership on working together, the Home Secretary and Education Secretary chose to let rip at each other in public, making it harder to get the sensible joint working we need. That is why the Home Secretary needs to answer specific questions about her conduct in this process, particularly about the letter she wrote to the Education Secretary, which the Home Office released and which has made it harder to get that joint working in place.

The Home Secretary has said that she did not authorise the publication of the letter on the Home Office website, but why did she not insist that it be removed, rather than leaving it in place on the website for three days? She wrote that letter and sent it after she had been advised that The Times newspaper had briefing from the Education Secretary. Did she write that letter in order for it to be leaked, and did she authorise its release to the media? Section 2.1 of the “Ministerial Code” makes it clear that

“the privacy of opinions expressed in Cabinet and Ministerial Committees, including in correspondence, should be maintained.”

Did she and her Department breach the “Ministerial Code”?

Secondly, the Home Secretary made it clear in her letter that she disagreed with the Education Secretary’s approach. She said:

“The allegations relating to schools in Birmingham raise serious questions about the quality of school governance and oversight arrangements in the maintained sector”.

Does she stand by her claim that the oversight arrangements for Birmingham schools under the Education Secretary were not adequate?

Thirdly, the Home Secretary’s strategy on preventing extremism has been criticised from all sides—not just by the Education Secretary—for failing to engage with local communities and for having become too narrow, leaving gaps. She now needs to focus on getting those policies back on track, because it matters to communities across the country that there is a serious and sensible approach to these issues and joint working at the very top of the Government.

The reason why the Home Secretary needs to answer these questions about her decisions last week is to assure us that she and the Education Secretary will not put their personal reputations and ambitions ahead of making the right decisions for the country. We cannot have a repeat of the experiences of last week. It is shambolic for the Government, but it is much worse for everyone else.

[Mrs May]

On the specific allegations of extremism in schools in Birmingham and the wider question of how we confront extremism more generally, there are very important issues that I will come on to, but I should perhaps first remind the shadow Home Secretary of a few facts.

Under this Government, foreign hate preachers such as Zakir Naik and Yusuf al-Qaradawi are banned from coming to Britain. Under her Government, they were allowed to come here to give lectures and sermons, and to spread their hateful beliefs. In the case of al-Qaradawi, he was not just allowed to come here; he was literally embraced on stage by Labour’s London Mayor, Ken Livingstone.

I have excluded more foreign hate preachers than any Home Secretary before me. I have got rid of the likes of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. The Government do not give a public platform to groups that condone, or fail to distance themselves from, extremism. For the first time, we are mapping out extremists and extremist groups in the United Kingdom. We make sure that the groups we work with and fund adhere to British values, and where they do not, we do not fund them and we do not work with them. None of these things was true when the Labour party was in power.

The shadow Home Secretary asked about the “Ministerial Code”. I can tell her that, as the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister concluded, I did not break the code. As she has no evidence for suggesting I did, she should withdraw any allegation of that sort.

The right hon. Lady asked about the letter, its presence on the website and why action was not taken, but action was taken immediately, because the Prime Minister asked the Cabinet Secretary to investigate, and he did.

The right hon. Lady referred to schools in Birmingham. I am afraid she will have to wait for my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary to make his statement; he will do so shortly, and answer questions about school inspections and oversight arrangements.

I would just say this to the right hon. Lady: I am responsible for the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy and, within that, the Prevent strategy, but she seems to misunderstand how the Prevent strategy works, so I think I should perhaps explain it to her. The Home Office sets the Prevent strategy and it is up to the rest of Whitehall, including the Home Office, as well as the wider public sector and civil society, to deliver it. There is always more to be done, things we can improve and lessons we can learn, but we have made good progress under this Government. Yes, we need to get to the bottom of what has happened in schools in Birmingham, but it is thanks to this Education Secretary that the Department for Education has, for the first time, a dedicated extremism unit to try to stop this sort of thing happening.

The shadow Home Secretary repeated her complaint that Prevent has become too narrowly drawn under this Government, but she does not seem to realise that we took a very clear decision back in 2011 to split Prevent into the bit that tackles non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism and counter-terrorism, and the Government’s integration strategy, which is quite consciously run out of the Department for Communities and Local Government. If what she is suggesting is that Prevent and integration work should go back to being together and being confused, she needs to think again because her Government’s approach was damaging and caused a lot of resentment among many British Muslims.

As the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the former Home Secretary, said at the time we made that change, it follows

“the eminently sensible objective of keeping the ‘prevent’ strand of counter-terrorism separate from the ‘integration’ initiatives of DCLG.”

He continued:

“I completely agree with what the Home Secretary has said about Prevent.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 1011.]

The shadow Home Secretary should listen to her right honourable colleague.

What has happened in Birmingham is very serious indeed, and the Education Secretary will set out his response in due course. We need to do everything we can to protect children from extremism and, more generally, to confront extremism in all its forms. The Government are determined to do that. However, it is quite clear from what the shadow Home Secretary has said today that on extremism, like on so many other things, the Labour party would take us backwards, not forwards.