My Lords, Amendment 103B in this group is in my name. Widespread concerns have been expressed about Prevent becoming a statutory duty, and it has been suggested that Clause 21 be left out of the Bill. My preference would be for it not to become statutory, but I recognise that the Government have thought about that carefully and come to a view. I declare an interest as one of three joint presidents of London Councils, the umbrella organisation for the London boroughs. Like others, it is concerned.
I have two main, and rather different, points to make about the amendment. It would mean that the duty would not apply to any of the specified authorities—those listed in Schedule 3, and any more that are added,
“unless the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report regarding the operation of the duty”.
I shall come back to the term “operation” in a moment.
My first point is to ask whether imposing the duty is appropriate to all specified authorities, and for all the functions of those authorities. My second point is about funding, particularly in the case of local authorities. As my noble friend has said, authorities will have a statutory duty, as set out in Clause 21, to “have due regard”—and in talking about activities leading to terrorism, she has identified an important issue. My amendment would require each authority to be considered separately. The authorities are different, and they operate differently. That is why I have used the term,
“the operation of the duty”.
The scheduled authorities range from local authorities through a great variety of educational institutions, the police, prisons, health services and health service providers. Even if the duty is appropriate for a higher education institution—we will be paying a good deal of attention to that aspect today—is it appropriate for a primary school or a nursery school?
Of course, preventing people being drawn into terrorist activities is immensely important. However, I wonder whether our great arts institutions, which get a lot of public funding—although not as much as most of
them would like—have more opportunity than a nursery school does to deal with this issue. A nursery school may have a responsibility, but it is a responsibility to make kids aware of the difference between violence and talking about things. That is much more important than closing off the issues.
I do not think it is enough to say, as I suspect the Minister may suggest, that there will be a proportionate light touch, because having the duty creates work and bureaucracy, and requires record-keeping. The Secretary of State will have the power to issue directions and, in the case of educational institutions, Ofsted will apply them. As has been suggested to me by some of those concerned—especially by those from the Muslim community, although my concerns are not limited to that—the records may then show that there is disproportionate criticism of schools in areas with a large Muslim population. That will give the alienating message—I believe “alienating” was the term my noble friend used—that we are concerned about.
I suspect that others will talk about the principle of applying a statutory duty to local authorities, as distinct from a function and a power, as has been the case, and would be the case. I want to ask my noble friend about services that are contracted out by local authorities, as many services are. If an authority is in the middle of a contract, it cannot change it; it certainly cannot change it unilaterally. How should it deal with that? New and renewed contracts would have to tie organisations into the new duty. That is in part why I have used the term “operations”, because I am unclear how this will work in practice.
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My noble friend has an amendment concerned with contracting out in another group. However, as I read it, it deals only with the education aspects of this issue. It took a little bit of tracking down. I could not find the schedule referred to; I had to google it and the Google result took me straight back to that amendment, which was not very helpful. Therefore, if my noble friend could explain how this measure would work in practice in the local government world, which has changed a great deal since I was directly involved in it, that would be very helpful.
My second issue is about funding. I am grateful to London Councils for its briefing on this. Noble Lords will not be surprised to hear that it raised the need to have sufficient funding for the new duty, as it put it,
“in accordance with the new burdens doctrine”.
In other words, if a new burden is to be imposed, one should ensure that money is provided to implement it.
The Home Office currently funds dedicated Prevent activity, including Prevent co-ordinators in specific areas. I understand that there are currently 17 Prevent priority areas in London. The new guidance will cover all principal local authorities in England and Wales— 353 of them, I think. However, as the briefing explains, the impact in London will be more keenly felt by the boroughs which are not currently funded as Prevent priority areas.
The impact assessment estimates that the total cost of the measures for England and Wales will be around £14 million, although within that the cost of placing
Channel panels—the subject of the second chapter of this part of the Bill—on a statutory footing has been estimated as nil. However, local authorities are understandably concerned that the estimates are inadequate, and are keen for them to be kept under review and revised as necessary. They believe that there needs to be an urgent upscaling of the projected costs. London Councils believes that addressing radicalisation in London effectively could require an extra £6 million of new investment. In short, reviewing the mechanism of how Prevent activity is funded is a very keen concern in their minds and, indeed, in mine.
I return to the formal status of Prevent. I have to say that it feels like a very top-down approach, and alienating in the ways which have been referred to, to which I am sure we will return. Two very different programmes have been established in other countries: the Aarhus model in Denmark, which is quite formal and structured, and the Hayat programme in Germany, which is very much a grass-roots approach and is very nuanced and sensitive. Both programmes are regarded as successful and both are publicly funded, but I think that neither is a creature of statute, unless my research is inaccurate. We could learn lessons from those.