The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. In protecting people from being groomed and exploited, we all have concern about three main areas. In communities, we need to make sure that people are not groomed by radicalisers and not seduced once they have latched on to what they have seen on the internet from online preachers or elsewhere. That is why the Prevent programme is there. There is also the question of the cause of what drives people to feel that they are lesser or outside the support of the state, which is why we need to do a lot more around Islamophobia; we must challenge Islamophobia. It is happening; it happens in Lancashire and around the country, and if we do not tackle it as a Parliament and a Government it will give some cause and grievance that will be used to recruit people. We probably all dealt in the past in our inboxes with ridiculous BNP-sponsored emails about veterans getting less than an immigrant, with photographs of soldiers and comments like “This veteran gets nothing, but the immigrant gets more,” which turned out to be complete fiction. We must work on that, and where there is a genuine grievance we must make sure it is not hijacked by those who want to exploit that into terrorism or violent extremism. There is also the question of the method of delivery of grievance and grooming, which is the internet. We need to make sure that Ofcom works alongside the Government, but it is of course independent and can make its own judgments. Organisations like Ofcom are there to regulate what is being broadcast to us. The last stage is what part of this legislation does—recognise that where legislation is written for broadcasters and the internet, it moves with the times. Often when Ofcom has banned people they have flipped on to Facebook and launched a broadcast channel, without any controls. So we must be much more agile to do that.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Ben Wallace
(Conservative)
in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 22 January 2019.
It occurred during Debate on bills on Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
653 c174 
Session
2017-19
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2019-01-23 18:07:16 +0000
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