A collection of news reports that feature the Prevent duty, global counter-extremism and other related issues.
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 […]
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 […]
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
CategoriesLatest NewsThe UK’s counter-terrorism scheme Prevent has been blighted by well-publicised failures and accusations of prejudice. Is it fit for purpose? Developed after 9/11 and during the Iraq War, Prevent is the first of four pillars of the government’s counter-terrorism strategy for England, Scotland and Wales (together, they make up the “four Ps”: Prevent, Pursue, Protect, Prepare). It has three main objectives: tackling the ideological causes of terrorism, intervening early to stop people becoming radicalised, and enabling those who have engaged with terrorism to “disengage and rehabilitate”. Prevent is, in theory, not about getting people “into trouble”, but about helping those “susceptible to radicalisation” with early intervention. Even so, the programme has faced repeated criticisms, from a range of perspectives: both that it stigmatises Muslims, and is too soft on them; that it chills free speech; and that, ultimately, it fails to prevent terrorism. Read more on The Week. Related… The […]
CategoriesLatest NewsThe Prevent strategy represents one of the UK’s core branches of counter-terrorism with £36 million in annual expenditure. Yet after two decades of operation, it remains largely unclear how these funds are being spent and whether it delivers value for money. When the TaxPayers’ Alliance last examined Prevent in 2009, detailed funding breakdowns and recipient information were available through freedom of information (FOI) requests to local authorities, enabling proper scrutiny of public expenditure. That note revealed that over £12 million was distributed to community groups with insufficient monitoring of how it was spent between 2006-07 and 2008-09, including £850,000 to Muslim Council of Britain affiliates, an organisation that the government subsequently designated as a ‘non-engagement’ group due to previous leaders taking positions that contradict fundamental British values. Now, the Home Office and local authorities routinely refuse FOI requests on national security and commercial sensitivity grounds, preventing taxpayers from understanding where […]
CategoriesParliamentary Work Latest NewsPrevent Watch submitted to the HASC that it was difficult to assess levels of extremism in the UK, since the primary tool for measuring it is the Prevent duty, which is inherently flawed and biased. In response, the HASC made several recommendations related to the Prevent duty. The full report from the HASC on New Forms of Extremism is available here. The Committee stated that Prevent: is becoming saturated with non-ideological cases, many of which would be better supported through health, education or community-based interventions rather than through a counter-terrorism lens. is also poorly adapted to identify individuals being drawn into extremism online. Its main recommendation to note was that: “The Home Office embed Prevent within the wider safeguarding system and introduce a triage structure that sits above Prevent to ensure that cases suitable for the types of intervention that Prevent offers are funneled to Prevent and cases more suited […]