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The political framing of the Southport atrocity as a Prevent failure ignores the counter-terrorism mechanisms beyond the Prevent framework.
Following the revelation that Axel Rudakubana was referred to Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021, there has been much discussion about Prevent’s role in relation to the atrocity in Southport.
Prior to the wider public inquiry under the new independent Prevent commissioner Lord Anderson, a review focused on Prevent had been commissioned by the Home Office and Counter Terrorism Policing, the “Prevent Learning Review: Southport Attack”.
Media coverage of its publication reports serious failures in the government’s Prevent strategy.
These are associated with the fact that no appropriate action seemed to have been taken, despite Rudakubana having been reported to Prevent three times.
The claims are firstly that these should have been treated cumulatively, rather than as three separate incidents.
Secondly, it is claimed that three referrals warranted him being moved onto Channel, a voluntary “deradicalisation” programme (only around 10% of Prevent referrals are considered by a Channel Panel and around 63% of that number go onto Channel itself).
The implication is that he was not treated seriously as a terrorism risk, and that requires Prevent to be strengthened, especially the criteria for a recommended Channel intervention.
This argument is misleading for at least five reasons which this article will unpack.
A desk review that missed crucial contextual details
Firstly, The Prevent Learning Review was desk-based and time-limited (it began on 7th August and the final report delivered on 2nd September).
The reviewer conducted no interviews and was limited to following the Prevent paper-trail.
This means that key contextual factors in this case were not considered.
The review relied only on a narrow range of information, without any further investigation.
Rudakubana was known to police
Secondly, Prevent was not the only intervention nor authority involved; Rudakubana was known to police in relation to previous criminal activity.
However, it appears that details of this were not made available to the Reviewer because of the ongoing criminal case against him.
For example, the key Prevent referral was on 5th December 2019 from Acorns school where Rudakubana had moved after an incident at a different school he had attended.
At the same time, police were also aware of him in relation to a knife crime incident associated with the previous school for which, on 12th December, he was offered police bail.
This would have involved legal conditions, details of which were not made available to the Reviewer.
It is possible that Rudakubana was noted as a terrorism risk
Thirdly, it is implied that the lack of a Channel intervention meant there was a lack of continuing opportunity for Counter Terrorism oversight in this case. However, this is not the case.
As part of the assessment of the Prevent referral, the multi-agency team involving counter terrorism police evaluated Rudakubana as “unsuitable for [Channel] intervention at the initial assessment stage”.
This is because he was judged as having a “vulnerability present but no ideology”.
The burden of the Reviewer’s report is that this was a mistaken judgement and Rudakubana should have been seen as a Counter Terrorism risk and recommended for Channel, which is the next stage from Prevent.
This was an error of judgement that was compounded on two further occasions when a Prevent referral was made (these are made by members of the public – teachers, social workers, etc – to the police without knowledge of any current ongoing engagement).
The implication of this assumption is that the Prevent process had been mistakenly closed and this is a key issue.
But, in this case, there was further involvement by counter-terrorism officers.
CT would have engaged Rudakubana through a Vulnerability Support Hub
The Reviewer notes that Rudakubana was referred for assessment by a Vulnerability Support Hub on 6th December 2019; that is, in the day after the first Prevent referral.
However, the Reviewer does not enquire further into the outcome, nor provide any information of what might have been involved.
As Medact has shown, three of these Hubs were set up as a collaboration between counter-terrorism services and the NHS on a pilot basis in September 2016.
One of them, the North Hub, also known as the Northern Mental Health Team (NMHT), was based within Counter Terrorism Policing North West, with staff from Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (and latterly Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust in addition).
The referral of Rudakubana would have had to have come from the Counter Terrorism Clinical Consultancy Service, which would have included counter-terrorism officers.
With a referral to the North Vulnerability Support Hub, Rudakubana would no longer be under Prevent, but he would have been monitored as a terrorism risk.
In fact, Rudakubana could have been subject to a greater level of compulsion, which may have derived in part from his bail conditions.
No reason to expand a new and broad Prevent ‘risk’ category
The Reviewer recommends greater scrutiny be applied to Prevent referrals that indicate a “vulnerability present but no ideology or CT risk”.
However, this contradicts Prevent’s own data and introduces a fifth reason as to why this Review and its recommendations are misleading.
The latest Prevent data shows that “vulnerability present but no ideology or CT risk” is the highest category for referrals, making up just over a third (1296 out of 3728) of all referrals.
In these cases individuals experience all the anxieties of being made subject to a referral, but their cases are rightly closed.
The Reviewer implies that this may be mistaken.
But the case of Axel Rudakubana does not fall under this category.
He was treated as having a vulnerability present and no ideology, but he was not considered as having no CT risk.
He was referred to the Vulnerability Support Hub precisely because of his CT risk.
Conclusion
We do not know precisely how the engagements with health services unfolded, but we should beware of jumping to rapid conclusions based on this case.
The political framing of this case as a Prevent failure ignores the reality of how counter-terrorism mechanisms interact beyond the Prevent framework.
The focus should be on understanding how different counter-terrorism measures operate in tandem rather than using Rudakubana’s case to justify further expansions of Prevent’s already controversial and harmful reach, mainly over children.
Related…
Prevent and the Political Performance of ‘Justice’ (Expert View, 2025)
