The UK government has been called upon by community leaders, academics and more than 200 civil organisations to withdraw a controversial Prevent review.
This comes after the Home Office accepted all 34 recommendations from William Shawcross who concluded that the Prevent Programme should focus on Islamist rather than far right-terrorism.
An advisory collection of lawyers and academics looked over the findings and in a counter report found:
- ‘Implementing Shawcross’s findings means endorsing ideologically led policy with no legal accountability or parliamentary oversight.
- Implementing Shawcross’s findings means supporting claims about increased threats of Islamic extremism without including data to back up these claims in review.
- Continuing to implement the Prevent programmes will lead to perpetuating further harms agisnst children and vulnerable adults.
- The argument that Prevent should focus less on right-wing extremism and more on “Islamist” extremism is explicitly discriminatory.’
