Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department has made on implementing the 2015 counter-extremism strategy; and if she will make a statement.

The Government is committed to tackling all forms of extremism under its Counter-Extremism Strategy published in October 2015. The strategy sets out a programme of action to build our understanding of extremism, to challenge extremism and disrupt extremist activity and to strengthen communities and institutions so that they are better able to resist extremist narratives by building partnerships with all those opposed to extremism.

Three examples of progress we have made in implementing the 2015 strategy are as follows. This list is not exhaustive;

1. Strengthened communities and challenged extremist narratives and ideologies through our Building a Stronger Britain Together programme. An evaluation of the programme was published in October 2019;
2. Strengthened institutions, including working with the Charity Commission and local authorities to make it much harder for extremists to exploit charities and gain a foothold in communities;
3. Published an independent Sharia review in February 2018 and an extremism funding review in July 2017.

The independent Commissioner for Countering Extremism has assessed that the Government has delivered the majority of commitments in the 2015 Strategy in her report published on 7 October 2019. The Government will publish a final assessment of the strategy when it comes to an end.