My hon. Friend makes a very important point as part of the debate about Prevent spending on combating extremism across the piece.
On the Government’s record with Prevent, it is striking that, while overall spending has gone up—it reached £40 million last year—spending on local delivery accounts for barely 10% of the total. Will the Minister confirm whether those figures are correct?
Local authorities are not the only bodies captured by the new duty. Universities will also be covered and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) has just addressed some of the concerns relating to the university sector. However, just because universities are included in this particular duty does not mean that they have not previously been included. My hon. Friend referred to work that was done many years ago to tackle these issues. A significant section of the Prevent agenda is devoted to universities, which are asked to agree Prevent action plans with local police forces. I have repeatedly asked parliamentary questions to find out how many universities actually have a Prevent plan in place, but the Government have repeatedly refused to provide an answer. I do not understand why, because it is not a matter of national security: the information requested is simply a number. Do the Government refuse to answer the question because they do not actually know how many universities have agreed a plan or because they are not willing to tell Parliament? Why are we not allowed to know?
The Bill also extends obligations on schools, which were also not excluded from the previous Prevent agenda. A significant thread of Prevent has always been aimed at schools. Indeed, the 2011 Prevent review identifies a significant number of threats to schools and suggests
measures to counter those threats. Given the conclusions of Oftsted’s investigations into Birmingham and Tower Hamlets, the 2011 review seems remarkably prescient. It identified a series of risks facing schools, including that posed by people with radical beliefs who were attempting to obtain positions in schools—that is, on school governing bodies.
The review also identified some challenges that needed immediate action in schools. For example, 70% of schools felt that they needed more training and information to build resilience to radicalisation. To address those issues, the Department for Education committed to a nine-point plan of action to prevent radicalisation in schools. However, it has provided no evidence on the delivery of that plan. I have asked it numerous questions—both written and on the Floor of the House—about the overall implementation of the Prevent agenda and the specific commitments contained in the 2011 review, but I have received no evidence in response to my inquiries. I have asked the Department to provide a general update on its work delivering the Prevent agenda, but to no avail. Will the Minister tell the House whether the measures in the Bill that relate to schools are a response to the failure of the DFE to deliver on previous commitments?
Also missing from the Bill are measures to address radicalisation outside public institutions. Local councils can of course try to counter radicalisation in public places and public bodies, and universities can try to counter it on campus, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles said, much more work needs to be done on broadcasting and the internet industries to reduce hate speech and extremism arriving directly into homes through social media and satellite television.
Last week, the Prime Minister announced international efforts in partnership with industry to tackle online child abuse. We all welcome those. However, equivalent measures on terrorist propaganda are in their infancy. Although the Internet Watch Foundation has forged vital links with industry to actively prohibit the dissemination of abusive images, my understanding is that the Home Office’s counter terrorism internet referral unit has never received a referral from a communications service provider about extremist conduct. I will be interested to hear from the Minister whether that is correct. Although we welcome the measures in the Bill, which are about the Government telling other authorities to do more, we should remember that there are areas where the Government themselves could do more and have failed to deliver so far.
I turn now to the specific provisions in the Bill, starting with clause 21, which puts a general duty on various public bodies to tackle terrorism; the bodies are numerous and are listed in schedule 3. The clause is complemented by the provisions in clause 24, which allow the Secretary of State to introduce guidance on how authorities should implement their obligations. The Secretary of State’s power in this area is strengthened still further by the provisions in clause 25 for her to direct public bodies to act in a certain way.
Parliament’s scrutiny of the Bill has been constrained, once again, because we are debating the principle without getting to see the specifics. It is extremely unfortunate that the Government have not published draft guidance to aid our considerations. We have no problem with the principle of a general duty to prevent terrorism, but
that could mean a number of things. It is therefore essential that we have access to the guidance, so that we can debate what is in it.
For that reason, the Opposition have tabled amendment 19, which would ensure that the Government must use their powers to issue guidance, and amendment 20, which would ensure that Parliament could scrutinise the guidance under the affirmative procedure. I would like to hear the Minister’s views on those amendments, but if he is not able to accept amendment 20 I will test the opinion of the House on giving Parliament an opportunity specifically to debate the guidance.
The Secretary of State could introduce guidance of potentially enormous scope, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central said, could have a bearing on free speech and academic freedoms—I would go so far as to say it could even affect patient-doctor relationships—yet at the moment Parliament would have no role in debating that guidance. My understanding is that only one set of guidance will be issued. It will apply to the numerous bodies set out in schedule 3, and will therefore have to apply in disparate settings. It is important that the implications of the guidance are discussed fully in Parliament to allow potential implications for different sectors to be raised and debated fully.
The guidance will also be important in ensuring that the policies implemented are both efficient and effective. Thousands of similar bodies will be implementing policies under clause 21, and it is important that they do not all start from scratch in deciding how to comply with their new duty. The issues that bodies will need to address are complex and disparate, ranging from the far right, as my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) just mentioned, to the intra-religious issues that have been discussed this afternoon. The Home Office needs to support organisations in dealing with those disparate issues, particularly intra-religious conflicts of the sort we see in Syria, which are the driving force behind the rise of ISIL. They are particularly difficult to address, and public bodies need full support in tackling them.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles talked earlier about the counter-narrative issue and the Muslim community is trying very hard to combat sectarianism with a narrative of peace and unity. Public bodies should be supporting community bodies in doing that, but they need guidance on how best to achieve it. That is why the Opposition think we must have guidance and that it must be properly and effectively scrutinised. I hope that the Minister will therefore agree to accept amendments 19 and 20.
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I want now to turn to the cost of the Government’s approach. The impact assessment presumes that a local authority with high risk will face costs of about £40,000. It also estimates that about a third of local authorities will be in this high-risk category—that is, just about the 90 local authorities that Labour deemed priority areas when Prevent was introduced. As I said at the outset, that number reduced when the Government had their review in 2011. I want to be clear whether the Minister is now acknowledging that the 2011 Prevent review got the numbers wrong and that 90 is nearer the mark for the number of areas at high risk. The £40,000 compliance cost is about the level of support provided to those
areas under Labour, so will the Minister confirm whether the Home Office will meet those costs? Or is it a cost that local authorities will have to meet?
I have spoken about the problems in the Department for Education in delivering on the Prevent agenda and I want to talk a little about the cost to schools. The impact assessment now seems to put the onus on schools to bring in people to help with training and says that that will cost £62 for every 20 people trained. That seems a rather low figure to me. For example, if a school in my constituency wanted to bring in an individual to provide Prevent training in Hull it would probably need to bring in someone from an area with expertise—let us say Leeds. That person would have to travel for an hour from Leeds and then deliver the programme. A cost of £62 to cover the travel costs, travel time, the presentation and the preparation seems very low for 20 people. Will the Minister explain how he reached the figures for the additional costs that will be put on the police, prisons and the probation service?
Schedule 3 lists the bodies to which the duty will apply and clause 22 gives the Secretary of State powers to add to that list. Schedule 3 is extensive and includes health bodies, education bodies, prisons and probation services. I note that local NHS trusts and foundation trusts are included but there is no mention of the clinical commissioning groups. Why has no duty been put on the commissioners of services to fulfil their duties on Prevent? I also note that there is no mention of general practitioners, or some of the social enterprises that have been set up to deliver NHS services, such as community health partnerships. We know that more privatisation is coming into the NHS, so will the Minister explain how private health care providers will be covered by this provision? Similarly, the Government are in the process of privatising probation services, so will the Minister explain how G4S, Serco and others will be covered by this duty?
In theory, the Government can extend the duty to other bodies as they see fit subject to the limitations of clause 22(2), which lists legislative and judicial bodies as exempt, as are the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service. Why cannot the intelligence bodies be included in a duty to prevent people being drawn into terrorism? It seems the type of provision destined to fuel conspiracy theorists.
More importantly, I want to turn to the implications of clauses 21 and 22 for the devolved Administrations in Wales and Scotland. While counter-terrorism is a retained power, clause 21 will cover a number of bodies that are otherwise entirely accountable to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament. The Opposition welcome provisions in clauses 23 and 24 that would demand consultation with the Scottish and Welsh Governments, but can the Minister confirm that, regardless of the specific set-ups in Scotland and Wales, devolved bodies will be covered by the same guidance as English bodies? It is noticeable that no Scottish institution is included in schedule 3. Presumably that is because consultation with the Scottish authorities has not yet concluded. Is the Minister expecting, or intending, to add to schedule 3 while the Bill is going through the remaining stages?