Radicalism: Coronavirus

(asked on 8th December 2020) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the report by the Commissioner for Countering Extremism COVID-19: How hateful extremists are exploiting the pandemic, published in July, what new financial provision and resources are being made available, and to whom, to prevent extremists capitalising on the impacts of COVID-19.


Answered by
Baroness Williams of Trafford Portrait
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)
This question was answered on 22nd December 2020

The Government engages closely with the Commission for Countering Extremism on their work on COVID-19 and extremism. After publication of their initial findings in July, we have supported further work undertaken by them on this subject.

The Home Office has undertaken work to counter the spread of hatred and extremism during the pandemic, both online and offline, including working with the National Police Chiefs’ Council on additional hate crime support and community work and working with civil society partners and social media platforms to encourage victim reporting of online hate crime.

The increased use of the Internet as a result of Covid-19 has brought into sharp focus the need to be vigilant against those seeking to exploit the situation to radicalise others into terrorism. We are working closely with tech companies to ensure preventing terrorist use of their platforms continues to be a priority and that companies are responding quickly to any emerging threats. As well as engaging with companies, we are working with our Five Country partners to deliver a joint assessment on the impacts of Covid-19 on the online process of radicalisation, as agreed at the Virtual Five-Country Ministerial meeting in June. We also continue to support efforts by DCMS to work alongside social media platforms to analyse and quickly remove Covid-19 disinformation content.

Reticulating Splines