Britain’s former top counter-terrorism officer has said parts of the government-backed review of Prevent appear to be driven by a rightwing ideology and are “insulting” to professionals fighting to stop attacks on Britain’s streets.
Neil Basu, the head of counter-terrorism policing until 2021, revealed his concerns after a review of the official scheme to divert people from terrorism said it had concentrated too much on the far right and not enough on Islamist extremism.
William Shawcross’s review of Prevent made 34 recommendations, which were all accepted by the government. It concluded that the Prevent programme “is not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism” and “has a double standard when dealing with the extreme right wing and Islamism”.
Other groups including experts in countering far-right terrorism criticised the findings, and Amnesty International said the report was “deeply prejudiced” and had “no legitimacy”.
The home secretary, Suella Braverman, praised the 188-page report, saying the programme had shown “cultural timidity” when tacking Islamism.
Basu, a former Metropolitan police assistant commissioner and senior national coordinator for terrorism, said claims of overly focusing on rightwing terrorism, allegedly at the expense of Islamist terrorism, were wrong.
“That is in my view driven by a rightwing viewpoint that XRWT [extreme rightwing terrorism] is either unimportant or doesn’t really exist. The head of MI5 says it’s 20% of the work they do, so I would listen to him,” he said.
He added that the threat from the far right, while less than from Islamist violence, was very real and the system had been too slow in the past to realise the danger it poses. “It’s insulting to any counter-terrorism professional to suggest they’d put any particular ideology over another,” he said. “It’s about how they risk-assess the initial intelligence of the potential for violence and how it is then dealt with afterwards.”
Basu said Prevent’s work tackling mental health and other vulnerabilities was essential to stem the flow of terrorists, not a diversion from that mission as Shawcross claimed.
Some officials feel the strong evidence they are seeing of mental health and other vulnerabilities among people feared to be at risk of radicalisation – up to 70% of casework – has not been given due weight by Shawcross, whose selection to lead the review led to a boycott by some Muslim groups.
Counter-terrorism policing’s national Prevent lead, DCS Maria Lovegrove, said police would study the recommendations. “The terrorist threats we face now are very different to when Prevent began, and a strong collective approach is absolutely vital if we are to keep up with this changing landscape and its growing dimensions,” she said.
Amnesty International said the report was “riddled with biased thinking, errors and plain anti-Muslim prejudice”.
Amnesty International UK’s racial justice director, Ilyas Nagdee, said: “William Shawcross’s history of bigoted comments on Muslims and Islam should have precluded his involvement in this ill-starred review in the first place. There’s mounting evidence that Prevent has specifically targeted Muslim communities and activists fighting for social justice and a host of crucial international issues – including topics like the climate crisis and the oppression of Palestinians.”
The findings have prompted concern among those who monitor the far right. Nick Lowles, of Hope Not Hate, said:“Counter-terrorism policy should not prioritise one form of extremism over another. There must be an evidence-based approach that takes action based on the level of risk posed by extremists, regardless of ideology.”
Addressing the Commons, Braverman said Prevent needed to better understand threats and the ideology underpinning them. She said: “Prevent has shown cultural timidity and an institutional hesitancy to tackle Islamism for fear of the charge of Islamophobia.”
Later, she added: “Prevent’s focus must solely be on security, not political correctness.”
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The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said Braverman was trying to create a “hierarchy of extremism”, which she said would make the jobs of counter-terrorism police harder.
The review indicated that Prevent had failed to stop terrorist acts in the past. It said: “All too often, those who commit terrorist acts in this country have been previously referred to Prevent. Prevent apparently failed to understand the danger in these cases and this review demonstrates how such failures might be avoided in the future.”
Despite these strong criticisms, there will be no major change in the personnel at the top of Prevent, who have accepted all of the recommendations.
According to Prevent’s own statistics, from April 2021 to March 2022, for the second year in a row, referrals because of extreme rightwing radicalisation (20%) were higher than Islamist referrals (16%).
Among its findings, the report said: “Challenging extremist ideology should not be limited to proscribed organisations but should also cover domestic extremists operating below the terrorism threshold who can create an environment conducive to terrorism.”
Echoing previous criticisms from Conservative commentators, it said: “Prevent takes an expansive approach to the extreme right wing, capturing a variety of influences that, at times, has been so broad it has included mildly controversial or provocative forms of mainstream, rightwing-leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation.
“However, with Islamism, Prevent tends to take a much narrower approach centred around proscribed organisations, ignoring the contribution of non-violent Islamist narratives and networks to terrorism. Prevent must ensure a consistent and evidence-based approach to setting its threshold and criteria, and ensure it does not overlook key non-violent radicalising influences.”
Concerns in government that legitimate rightwing views, such as about the scale of immigration, could be viewed as a sign of extremism were backed by Shawcross. His report claims counter-radicalisation material he saw “listed a prominent Conservative politician and former member of the government” as being among figures “associated with far-right sympathetic audiences, and Brexit”.
Prevent receives £40m to help steer people away from extremism. A review was ordered after the Guardian revealed that the terrorist who murdered Sir David Amess had been referred to the programme several years earlier, but then plotted his attack in secret.
