Reports, analysis and op-eds covering the Prevent duty, global counter-extremism and other important news related to Prevent that could impact your context – just in case you missed it.
CategoriesLatest NewsDame Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner, calls for a range of curbs to be introduced amid concerns over a ‘fascination’ with violence and extremism on social media. Read full article at The Times (paywall) Related… The Guardian: AI-generated British schoolgirl Amelia is now a far-right social media star
CategoriesLatest NewsOur new Prime Minister is desperate to present himself as an ordinary, football-watching, pint-sinking bloke. He even took to Instagram to tell us he calls a bread roll a “barm”, writes Arthur Reynolds for The Critic. No matter how patronising I find this latter-day Bill Shankly routine, if the polls are to be believed, it’s tempting some wavering voters back into the Labour fold. However, the working-class communities Burnham’s targeting may baulk at the company he’s kept. As Mayor of Greater Manchester and in opposition, he repeatedly embraced figures and organisations that, at best, promoted a polarising politics of Muslim victimhood. Read more on The Critic. Related… The Guardian: Burnham calls for ‘toxic’ Prevent strategy to be scrapped
CategoriesLatest NewsReferrals to the government’s terrorism prevention programme hit a record high last year – with concerns about extreme right-wing ideology accounting for a fifth of Prevent cases. Latest data showed a huge 39% jump in overall referrals to Prevent, with concerns raised about nearly 10,000 people in the 12 months to September 2025. This was up from 7,279 a year earlier. And alarmingly more than a third related to children aged between 11 and 15. Home Office figures showed 20% of all referrals were in relation to ‘extreme right-wing’ ideologies – more than double those linked to alleged Islamic extremism. The data shows 56% of cases had no fixed ideology attached, while more than 400 were flagged because of a ‘fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks’. Read more on The Mirror. Related… Press Statement: Home Office Prevent statistics show that a record year is a record failure
CategoriesLatest NewsPrevent Watch responds to Home Office Prevent statistics published today. Home Office figures released today show a record 10,293 Prevent referrals — yet the majority of those referred had no ideology of any kind, and most cases were closed without any action. More than half of those referred were children, some of primary school age, and a striking proportion were autistic or living with mental ill-health. The programme has been turned inside out. The threat Prevent was built around — so-called ‘Islamist extremism’ — now barely features in its own caseload, while the largest group of people it processes fit no ideological category at all. Dr Layla Aitlhadj, Director, Prevent Watch, said: “These record numbers are a record failure — but instead of admitting it, the Government has relabelled these cases as ‘complex’, turning the programme’s failure into the justification for its expansion.” “Record referrals are proof the programme has […]
CategoriesLatest NewsIn a landmark Judgment handed down today, the Honourable Lord Fairley, President of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT), dismissed the University of Bristol’s appeal and found that Dr David Miller was discriminated against because of his anti-Zionist beliefs. The EAT upheld the decision of the Employment Tribunal and concluded that Dr Miller was discriminated against because of his philosophical belief that Zionism is inherently racist, imperialist, and colonial, and ought to be opposed. The EAT held that his anti-Zionist beliefs constitute a protected belief under the Equality Act 2010; he was dismissed because he manifested those beliefs and as the dismissal was tainted by discrimination, he was unfairly dismissed. This means that it is unlawful to discriminate against someone because they hold those beliefs. The successful appeal outcome reinforces that controversial beliefs are not excluded from protection under the EqA simply because they generate complaints or public controversy. Read more […]
“When states transfer more power to private entities, the public loses. The government becomes a body designed to service the needs and interests of profit-seeking private entities rather than its citizens. Worse, citizens lose much of their power to hold governments accountable: the government abdicates and transfers responsibility to private actors against which citizens have fewer rights.”[1] This piece examines the creeping infrastructure of AI-powered surveillance in the UK and its implications for the Prevent strategy’s pre-crime framework. Digital ID, Palantir and Oracle In January of this year, the UK government dropped its plans for a mandatory digital ID. This came after almost 3 million signatures on a parliamentary petition opposing digital IDs.[2] Several corporations were in talks of implementing the digital ID apparatus. Palantir Technologies, named after the all-seeing stone in The Lord of the Rings,[3] dropped out of the bid back in October, citing a lack of public […]
CategoriesLatest NewsThe Home Office has set up a cross-government taskforce to look at existing multi-agency and safeguarding arrangements, and how they interact with Prevent in the wake of 2024’s Southport killings and the murder of MP David Amess. Details of the taskforce emerged this week in the department’s formal response to peer David Anderson’s Lessons for Prevent report, which was submitted to ministers in July last year. Among his recommendations to government last year, Prevent reviewer Lord Anderson said a Cabinet Office task force should be established to lead exploratory work into the possibility of formally connecting the programme to a broader safeguarding and violence-prevention system. Anderson said the work “cannot be done by any single line department” and that the taskforce should be “answerable to a senior Cabinet Office minister and the cabinet secretary. In her formal response to the report, which was published yesterday, home secretary Shabana Mahmood says […]
CategoriesPrevious Events23 June 2026 – Director of Prevent Watch, Dr Layla Aitlhadj spoke at the BRISMES panel on Academic Freedom, Governance and Student Agency Under Colonial Constraints, presenting “Student Political Agency and the Governance of Palestine in UK Education.” Drawing on 850+ cases documented by Prevent Watch, she set out how Prevent operates on two levels – flagging individuals, and giving institutions a lawful basis to cancel events and vet speakers before anyone is ever referred. She traced this back through decades of UK state responses to student activism – from the Special Demonstration Squad’s surveillance of anti-apartheid students in the 1970s, to today. The point was to show that Palestine is the latest, not the first, target and that Prevent is the latest tool, the one with the most bureaucratic teeth to try and silence student activism. My argument: education isn’t targeted because it’s weak. It’s targeted because it’s powerful. […]
CategoriesPrevious EventsWhat would Prevent look like under Reform? To discuss this, Dr Layla Aitlhadj joined Sophie Stowers from More in Common and Richard McNeil-Willson from the University of Edinburgh for a roundtable chaired by Larry Attree from Rethinking Security, as part of the British International Studies Association (BISA) conference. She said that the Prevent strategy is already open to abuse — by any government. Although a Reform government would be dangerous, the problem is Prevent because the infrastructure for harm already exists and has already been used. The question isn’t only what Reform would do with Prevent. It’s what any government can do — and already has done with it. If you would like us to speak about this topic, or any other topic related to Prevent, or run a workshop for your organisation, please contact us or fill in the form on this page.
CategoriesLatest NewsFunding for the Prevent programme has plummeted since the pandemic despite Britain’s growing problem with extremism, according to figures that show parts of London and Birmingham have faced the biggest cuts. The amount spent by the Home Office on the government’s counterterrorism strategy fell from £41 million in 2021-22 to £25 million this financial year, a 39 per cent drop. Read more on The Times. Related… Read our Response to the Home Affairs Select Committee report on New Forms of Extremism
