Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential need for further legislative or operational measures to prevent, disrupt, and dismantle extremist networks that pose a threat to public safety.

The police have a range of tools and powers to counter the activities of extremist networks including Counter-Terrorism, hate crime, public order and wider public safety legislation. Where extremists breach criminal thresholds we will take action.Since the start of 2020, MI5 and the police have disrupted 19 late-stage attack plots and have intervened in many hundreds of developing threats.

The Prevent programme plays a fundamental role in protecting the public from the threat of terrorism and remains a vital tool for early intervention. Prevent is continuously improving to ensure it has the capabilities it needs to reduce terrorism risk.Since the introduction of the Prevent duty in 2015, just under 6,000 people have been supported to move away from violent ideologies that could have resulted in harm to themselves, or others, or taken them down a pathway to terrorist offending.

The Home Office has also commissioned an independent evaluation of Channel, Prevent’s multi-agency early intervention programme, to assess whether it is effective at reducing individuals’ susceptibility to radicalisation. The evaluation is expected to report findings in 2026.We are progressing activity to challenge extremist narratives including working to ensure dangerous overseas hate preachers and extremists are unable to enter the UK to spread their divisive rhetoric.

Finally, the Desistance and Disengagement Programme, which helps to manage the risk of individuals who have already been involved in terrorism or terrorism related activity, has been independently evaluated. The majority of recommendations from that evaluation have already been implemented.

We constantly review the evolving landscape and we are committed to ensuring we have the required tools and powers needed to address this issue.