The 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 public funds are allocated annually.
Without the transparency that exposed these allocations in 2009, there is no way to verify whether public money continues to support organisations whose views run counter to Prevent’s objectives.
Read more on The Taxpayers Alliance.
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