Counter-Terrorism: Home Secretary Theresa May Launches "Radically Different Prevent" Strategy
Source: eGov monitor - A Policy Dialogue PlatformPublished Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - 11:59
The Government has unveiled it much awaited revamped counter-terrorism "Prevent" Strategy that looks to promote integration and targets both violent and non-violent extremism that "pose the greatest risks to our national security".
The Home Secretary announced the new measures in the House of Commons yesterday following a review which revealed serious flaws in the existing strategy. She pledged not to "make the same mistakes".
According to Mrs. May, the previous Labour administration's strategy had failed to target the "non violent" extremist culture within our communities that ""inspires would-be terrorists to seek to bring death and destruction to our towns and cities".
The Home Secretary told MPs that some of the funding from the £63 Million budget had reached "the very extremist organisations that Prevent should have been confronting".
The new strategy has identified 25 areas as priorities which include Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester along with some boroughs in the capital.
“Our new Prevent strategy will challenge extremist ideology, help protect institutions from extremists and tackle the radicalisation of vulnerable people. We will not fund or work with organisations that do not subscribe to the core values of our society,” the Home Secretary told MPs.
“Above all, Prevent will tackle the threat from home-grown terrorism.”
She also announced that legislation for a replacement regime for Control Orders is close to becoming law. This new regime known as T-Pims ((Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures). The Home Secretary claims this is a "more focused and targeted" regime than the ineffective system under the previous administration.
The Shadow Home Secretary Labour's Yuvette Cooper accused the government of hollow "rhetoric".
Ms. Cooper argued "there is a massive gap between your rhetoric today and the reality of your policies". She pointed out that the spending cuts would be make it difficult for police and other security services to tackle extremism.
She also accused the coalition government of political point scoring and failing to produce "actual proposals" on how it would tackle extremism. Ms. cooper also took the government to task over failing to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir. However, the labour government had pledged to do so but did not.
The Government's strategy got full fledged support from ACPO and received a cautious welcome from the Quillam Foundation.







