Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will conduct an independent review of how the Prevent programme is currently operating before placing any additional responsibilities on local authorities as recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights in its report, Counter-Extremism, published on 20 July 2016 (HL Paper 39), and since; and if not, why not.

The Government’s work to counter extremism is distinct from, but complementary to, its work to counter terrorism, which includes work that aims to prevent people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.

Prevent is implemented in a proportionate manner that takes into account the level of risk in any given area or institution. The Prevent programme is continually reviewed and updated to reflect the current threat level and it has taken account of other recent reviews, both internal and independent, across the breadth of our counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST.

As committed to in CONTEST we will increase the transparency of Prevent delivery and open it to public scrutiny. For example, last November, we published data on Prevent and Channel referrals for the first time to increase transparency of the programme, and we published further data on Prevent and Channel this March. We will continue to publish data on an annual
basis.

We do not believe that an independent review of Prevent is necessary.