The mayor of London is being urged to investigate the role of the police in referring babies and toddlers to Prevent, the Home Office’s counter-terror scheme, in response to data exclusively uncovered by Hyphen.
Sadiq Khan, who oversees the Metropolitan Police — Britain’s largest police force — will be quizzed at mayor’s question time on Thursday over new data that shows children aged three and under in London were referred to Prevent 77 times between 2016 and 2025, more than anywhere else in Britain.
The Home Office has resisted telling Hyphen how many of these referrals were made by the Met, but higher-level data obtained through multiple freedom of information (FoI) requests shows that police in England and Wales — including the Met — were responsible for more than half (125) of the 216 such referrals over the nine years.
Read more on Hyphen.
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