25
Examination of witnesses
Ruth Ehrlich, Joshua Rozenberg and Dame Sara Khan.
Q1 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to today’s meeting of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We are a cross-party Joint Committee, which means that we have members from both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
Today we are taking evidence from a panel of three witnesses on the Government’s proposals on countering extremism, following their Statement on Thursday last week. We will hear from Ruth Ehrlich, head of policy and campaigns at Liberty, Dame Sara Kahn DBE, the independent adviser for cohesion and resilience, and last but certainly not least, Joshua Rozenberg KC, the distinguished legal commentator. We are very grateful to all three witnesses for joining us today. We have about an hour and a half, because those of our members who are Peers need to be gone by 3.40 pm for an important debate on the Rwanda Bill in the Lords.
Without further formalities, I will ask the first question. I will direct it to you in the first instance, Joshua, but I invite Sara and Ruth to come in. We know that the Government have changed the definition of extremism, but it is not a legal definition as such. Can you explain for us, and for those watching, what change has been made, how the definition will be used, and what effect you think it will have in practice?
Joshua Rozenberg: The old definition said that extremism is “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs”. It was not really a definition; it was more a summary that appeared in the glossary at the end of the 2011 report.
The new definition says that extremism is “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance that aims to: negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results” of the above.
The third point can be summed up as enabling the spread of extremism. Then there is guidance, which defines ideology and intolerance, and detailed guidance from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities on what all this means. It is not a legal definition in that it is not in a statute; it is guidance for government departments, perhaps just for the Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities above all, which funds certain organisations in the community. So it is really a statement of intent on behalf of the Government rather than a strictly legal definition as you might find in a statute.
You also asked me about how it would be used and the effects in practice. The Government say that the definition will be used by government departments to ensure that they “are not inadvertently providing a platform, funding or legitimacy to individuals, groups or organisations who attempt to advance extremist ideologies”. In other words, the Government intend to test the organisations that they support.
On the effect in practice, last week Michael Gove told MPs that “organisations and individuals with views that are clearly extreme have nevertheless benefited from state engagement, endorsement and support”. That obviously includes money. He also said that there will be funding consequences for groups that fall within the extremism definition, so their money will not be provided by the state.
Chair: I think he also mentioned that there would be some sort of centre of excellence involved in deciding who fell foul of the definition.
Joshua Rozenberg: Yes, he did, and we have seen this before. Obviously, he does not have to decide this all by himself. He has his officials. I will just find you what he said about the centre of excellence in his Statement, but it makes sense that it is not something that he is simply doing by himself. Here is the definition: “We are also setting up a new counter-extremism centre of excellence in my department, as a world-leading authority on best practice, data and research”. That is really all he said about that.
Chair: My recollection is that he said the centre for excellence was going to be staffed by civil servants.
Joshua Rozenberg: Yes, he said that it “will also help us to understand the role played by state actors and state-linked organisations in extremist activity that is taking place in our country. The wider knowledge of what constitutes extremist behaviour and who is behind it, will … help all of us to identify potential threats”. He also said that “plans, drawn up in close collaboration with the Home Office, will enable the Government to express more clearly than ever before which groups fall within the extremism definition” and “support national efforts to counter the work of extremists who promote their ideologies both online and offline”.
Chair: One of his own Back-Benchers made a point about the importance of Civil Service impartiality in that respect, and that is something we might return to. Sara and Ruth, would you like to add anything? Do you think Joshua summed it up, or is there anything you would like to add?
Dame Sara Khan: He has summed it up very nicely, but I would add a couple of points. In my former role as the counterextremism commissioner, I felt that the 2011 definition, which Joshua just gave, was very broad. I spoke to operational partners who said that they did not find it useful or helpful in any shape or form. This definition is much narrower and clearer. The bar is higher in trying to capture clearly what I believe are neo-Nazi or neo-fascist and Islamist groups, some of which were mentioned by Michael Gove in the House of Commons last week. It is really important to recognise that.
What is the purpose of having a clear definition of extremism? I would put forward three important reasons. First, for those who work in the counterextremism sector, if you cannot define extremism, how on earth you are supposed to counter it or know what activity or behaviour you are countering? It is crucial, in order to counter extremism methods, that we are very clear about the narrow activity that we seek to counter.
Secondly—this is something that I do not think we acknowledge enough—by having a clear definition of extremism, the opportunity to include people who should not be included also becomes narrower. If the focus is on unlawful neo-Nazi groups and others, it becomes more difficult to include, say, people who may hold legitimate conservative religious beliefs or any other types of views that should be protected in a liberal democracy.
Finally, we have to recognise that the landscape of hateful extremism, as I call it, has changed substantially in the last decade. In all the reports that I produced when I was at the commission, it was clear that the nature of modern-day extremism has evolved substantially, even in the last 10 years, and there are a whole range of different statistics and data to indicate that. It is not just an issue that is facing our country; clearly, many liberal democracies across the world are facing the threat of growing mainstream extremism.
On a final point, when I was at the commission, we launched one of the only public consultations on extremism, where we specifically asked the British population, “What do you think of the Government’s 2011 definition?” Three quarters of respondents said that they found it unhelpful or very unhelpful. When we spoke to practitioners on the ground, they also found it unhelpful or very unhelpful. So there was clearly a growing problem of extremism, but the definition was not fit for purpose, and that was the definition that was supporting the counterextremism. I reviewed it and said that the whole thing needed to be overturned.
Chair: You think it is an improvement, as does David Anderson, the former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, and others, but I think it is fair to say that not everyone thinks it is an improvement. Ruth, tell us what you think about it.
Ruth Ehrlich: We still have concerns about this new definition. We believe that it remains vague and broad, particularly aims 2 and 3. We think that the word “undermine” is vague enough to potentially include strongly worded criticisms of government policy. It is unclear what would constitute a permissive environment or how intention would be assessed. We also have concerns about the new guilt by association risk, which risks people and organisations being labelled as extremists for simply engaging with other organisations, and it is not clear enough how that engagement is defined at this point.
Broadly, we fear this Government or future Governments having the power to define groups they disagree with as extremist. As it stands, the definition could sweep up broad social movements—I will not name them all, but there are many—and we worry about the chilling effect this might have on civil society as a whole. I hope we will have an opportunity to talk about this later in the session.
In terms of the practical impact, this definition applies mostly to DLUHC and how the Government should or should not engage with certain organisations, but we fear that it adds an extra layer of complexity to an already complex web of legislation and statutory and non-statutory guidance, and we worry about how other public bodies, including the police, would understand this definition of extremism when it comes to policing protest, for example.
Those are our broad concerns with this definition.
Q2 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Joshua, you talked about it being guidance, not statute. Who monitors this guidance? It seems to me to be quite broadly out there, but who monitors it? Who knows what is going on with this guidance? Guidance might be clear, but it still comes down to monitoring, in my view. The Government may put out guidance, but what does that mean?
Joshua Rozenberg: I can answer that and pick up the point that I failed to answer about the Civil Service. Michael Gove said, “Impartial civil servants with training in this area will be supplemented in their work by studies by academics and academic bodies, and we will work with the existing expertise in the homeland security analysis and intelligence unit within the Home Office in order to ensure that all our work is rigorous”.
Baroness Lawrence’s question is entirely right. Guidance is purely guidance. Ultimately, it is for officials. If groups are designated as extremist by the Secretary of State, they can challenge this by way of judicial review, but you are absolutely right: this depends on individuals making judgments as to whether an organisation and its activities come within this definition, which is clearly more precise than it was but is obviously open to doubt.
Q3 Chair: That leads me to my next question, which relates to protecting the right to freedom of belief under Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to freedom of expression under Article 10, and to freedom of association under Article 11. Many of us take the view that people’s right to hold and express beliefs, and their right to associate and demonstrate, are the foundations of our democracy. Ruth, do you think this new definition will strike the right balance between addressing concerns about the types of ideology identified by the Government and protecting the rights that I have just mentioned?
Ruth Ehrlich: The short answer is no. We are concerned about the focus in this definition on ideology rather than actions. The previous definition focused on opposition with an emphasis on action. The new definition focuses on the promotion or advancement of an ideology. We have real concerns about focusing on ideology. We believe that it is dangerous and risks interfering with people’s absolute right to hold a belief as protected under Article 9.
It is important to remember that it is not a crime to have violent thoughts, to hate someone, to be intolerant if it is not tied to a specific behaviour resulting in an offence, and although that is an uncomfortable concept, those are the protections that we have in human rights law. It is not just Liberty that thinks that. Jonathan Hall, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has highlighted similar concerns over the focus on ideas over action.
We also have serious concerns about the impact of this new definition on freedom of expression. The right to have views that shock and offend is protected in human rights law, but we fear that this new definition will create a chilling effect. Labelling organisations as extremist will delegitimise their views and exclude people from wider public conversation. It will discourage engagement with those organisations, and it could deter people from further exercising their fundamental rights to assembly.
Q4 Chair: Joshua mentioned that people who fall foul of this definition might judicially review decisions that affect them. Do you think that the potential interference with Article 9, 10, 11 rights could be grounds for judicial review?
Ruth Ehrlich: Yes. We have looked at this very lightly and we think it could be. We also have concerns about the public sector equality duty with this legislation.
Joshua Rozenberg: As you know very well, Chair, many of the articles in the human rights convention are qualified. In other words, the rights of the individuals have to be balanced against the rights of others. So if this were to come before a court, it is not clear how the rights of the people bringing the challenge would be balanced against the rights of others. Michael Gove said: “Our definition will not affect gender-critical campaigners, those with conservative religious beliefs, trans activists, environmental protest groups, or those exercising their proper right to free speech”. We will have to wait and see how the balance is struck, but again, one comes back to the point that this is a government definition for how the Government are going to operate. This is not new law.
Chair: Sara, what is your view on whether the Government have the balance right between addressing concerns and protecting the rights I have mentioned?
Dame Sara Khan: This is a very difficult subject area. Fundamentally, the question we have to ask ourselves is how, as a liberal democracy, we can counterextremism and extremist activity without undermining the civil liberties and hard-won human rights that our country has established over centuries. It is a very important question and one which many democracies struggle to answer. In my 2021 report, Operating with Impunity, with Sir Mark Rowley—he had gone into retirement by then—we were very struck by the fact that you can square that circle. You can go after extremist activity and at the same time ensure that you are also protecting freedom of expression, freedom of worship and all those things.
There is not enough discussion about how extremist activity itself undermines Articles 9, 10 and 11. There are neo-Nazi organisations in this country, such as Combat 18, which are openly neo-Nazi and openly spreading neo-Nazi ideology in this country but do not meet the threshold for proscription orders, which the Home Secretary has the power to make under terrorism legislation, and they are lawful. Other neo-Nazi organisations, like the Order of Nine Angles or the British Nationalist Socialist Movement, are spreading destructive narratives about Jews and Muslims and attempting to replace our democracy with a neo-Nazi state.
This is clearly intolerable in a liberal democracy. Take Combat 18, which is a British neo-Nazi organisation. Other western liberal democracies, such as Germany and Canada, have found ways of banning it. I know their context is different to ours, but they have banned those organisations, which are not necessarily terrorist organisations but are clearly extremist organisations in the sense that they share the same ideology as banned or proscribed neo-Nazi groups but are very careful not to cross over the threshold into terrorism.
We must be very mindful that a lot of extremist groups are at the forefront of creating a chilling impact on freedom of expression and the rights of women, homosexuals and Jewish people and Muslim people. I have seen this time and time again throughout my entire career in the human rights and the counterextremism sectors. That is why we argued in our Operating with Impunity report that Article 17 of Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act makes very clear that states have an obligation to protect themselves extremist and totalitarian organisations that attempt to use democracy to undermine democracy itself and the rights and freedoms of the Human Rights Act.
I disagree that the Government’s definition is an attempt to curtail belief. It clearly talks about action and activity, not just belief. It talks “promotion or advancement”. That is not passive; it is clearly active. Negating or destroying is active; it is not passive, and it is clearly not just belief. Footnote 5 is that it is based on an ideology that aims to “negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms”.
I am pleased that the Government took this from my Operating with Impunity report, which draws on Article 17 of Schedule 1 to the Human Rights Act. By including that, you set the bar incredibly high. Case law has shown that you cannot use Article 10 freedom of expression clauses as an argument to undermine Article 17, so there is case law and precedent around this issue. In that report, I put forward a definition that includes Article 17 as a way to protect human rights while trying to be narrower about the really dangerous extremist groups that seek to undermine the fundamental rights and freedoms of British citizens in this country, so looking at this work through the lens of human rights in order to protect liberal democracy in this country.
Q5 Dr Caroline Johnson: Dame Sara has, to some extent, answered my question. Ruth mentioned that it is not illegal to hold or to express hateful thoughts or ideas, provided you are not encouraging others to do the same. It seemed to me that the definition says that you have to be promoting or advancing, so actively encouraging others into these hateful beliefs and thoughts or trying to promote activities in relation to them. Dame Sara said that it was about action, but, Ruth, you did not seem to think so. Could explain your perception of it further?
Ruth Ehrlich: Our key concern is with aims 2 and 3 of the definition, which is where the vagueness and broad definitions pose real risks to how groups can operate. We think that words like “undermine”, “permissive environment” and guilt by association are particularly risky. Aim 1 is much clearer—with the apparent reference to Article 17 in the ECHR, we are interested to know whether the Secretary of State will hold that definition to the same ECHR threshold—but our primary concerns are with aims 2 and 3. We also broadly take issue with the Government Minister being able to designate groups as extremist without the due process that is involved in other matters. We have talked about judicial review, which is an extremely costly and lengthy process. I do not think organisations should have to undertake that risk and that process. I hope that provides some clarity.
Dr Caroline Johnson: For number 3, where it says, “Intentionally create a permissive environment”, do you think that someone simply expressing a view could be considered to be creating a permissive environment for others to express the same view?
Ruth Ehrlich: It is extremely broad, and we do not fully know what it means. I do not know what a permissive environment is, and that is a problem for civil society and organisations that work with others or engage with others on social media.
Dr Caroline Johnson: Sara, do you have any comments on that?
Dame Sara Khan: The further context that the Government put out last week is really useful to read. From what I understand of the definition, you cannot read limb 2 or 3 on their own. There are clearly other parts to it. You have to include the fact that these are people who are clearly promoting and advancing an ideology. The definition of terrorism in the Terrorism Act 2000, for example, includes the idea of people motivated by or intending to advance a racial, religious, political or any other ideological cause. What makes extremism different to any other type of activity or criminality is the fact that people are motivated by or intending to advance a particular ideology. It is very much about dehumanising others. It is the us versus them narrative, which has existed as long as mankind itself, I am afraid; it is part of human civilisation.
If you read that alongside the other limbs, there is the idea of intentionally creating a permissive environment. So you have to have intent, but as the CPS will tell you, proving intent is pretty difficult. It is not an easy thing to do. So they would have to look at intent. They would have to bring out evidence. What is the evidence in aim 1 and 2? Can you demonstrate the attempt to destroy fundamental rights and freedoms and overturn, undermine or replace the UK system of liberal parliamentary democracy? I believe we should do as much as we can to protect against that, because, as I outlined, there are neo-Nazi and Islamist groups that are seeking to subvert our democracy and replace it with a neo-Nazi state or an Islamist caliphate, so it is incredibly important.
The notes alongside this definition make it clear that it is looking at persistent patterns of behaviour, not one-off actions, which is really important. In my report, I raised the fact that you have to look at intent, evidence of this type of behaviour or ideology, and that it is persistent behaviour. If you have those things, it makes it a lot more difficult to then lower the bar.
On a separate point, I agree that there should be an independent oversight panel or board as part of this unit. Michael Gove talked about academics and others, but as part of quality control or assurance process, there should be an independent oversight board to do the checks and balances. I understand that this is for government use only and it is in a very narrow context.
My personal preference, as I outlined in the 2021 report, is that if this is such a serious threat, which I believe it is, we should create a legal framework. One of my recommendations to the Government back then was that they should commission a legal and operational framework that is much more open and transparent. My preference would be for the judiciary make sure the checks and balances are in place, but I recognise that is quite different from what the Government are doing, which is making sure that they are not giving funding or legitimacy to extremist organisations.
Chair: It is not just giving funding or legitimacy; it is government not speaking to organisations. The consequences of governmental decisions not speaking to organisations could be far-reaching for our democracy.
Dame Sara Khan: On that point, in my current role as independent adviser on social cohesion, my view is very much that, to a certain degree, you have to engage with extremists and those sympathetic to extremist narratives. What is the purpose of counterextremism if not to turn people away from extremism, to win hearts and minds and to show how their narrative is so divisive? It is about moving people back into the mainstream. The purpose of engagement matters. If you are seeking to legitimise, that is very different. The purpose should be to engage and draw them away from extremism. Again, it is the purpose of the engagement that matters.
Chair: That is a point well made.
Q6 Lord Dholakia: My question is very straightforward. If the glossary or definition is a statement of intent, it will be very difficult to prove in court. If the Government wanted to bring proscription to any such organisation, would that justify a particular action in the courts of law in this country?
Joshua Rozenberg: If the Government were to proscribe an organisation, they would not rely on this definition; they would rely on existing or new law. So I am not sure that is a problem. As we keep saying, this is not law; this is merely guidance as to which organisations the Government deal with.
Q7 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: You have already indicated the importance of making distinctions in relation to our protection of people’s thinking and thought. Freedom of religion and belief is a fundamental right, so the idea of thought crime is abhorrent in a liberal democracy. An attempt is being made to move us to something that is not quite incitement but is somewhere in the middle.
Has there been any look at Scotland’s hate crime law that is going through Parliament at the moment? It has in it the offence of stirring up hatred, and I imagine that it is somewhat similar to this business of creating a permissive environment for certain kinds of behaviours that are deemed acceptable or that are written off as banter.
I want us to think about incel groups, whose ideology is very much misogyny. I will mention the Tate brothers, who are currently in custody abroad but who are wanted for crimes committed here, and there is an effort to extradite them. They are very open in their embracing of misogyny. They openly despise womankind and women’s aspirations to be in all places in our society, and they have huge followings among the young. There has been a creation of a permissive environment to hold hatred for women and women’s emancipation and participation as equals in society. Are they covered by this?
Dame Sara Khan: In our 2021 report, we used incels as an example of hateful extremism. We felt that they met our definition and threshold of activity, just because they clearly incite violence and rape against women. It is horrific. Incel ideology is so extreme in nature. It is about dehumanisation and incitement to violence. Again, I cannot say for definite whether this would meet the Government’s definition. It could, and it would be interesting to test that theory, and I hope it does get tested. Looking at it from a policy perspective, I absolutely believe that they are a hateful extremist organisation with hateful extremist narratives.
On your point about hate crime legislation, I looked at the existing laws on hateful extremism, and we showed that there are currently gaps in the legislation and that it is failing to deal with extremist organisations. We discovered, for example, that it is currently lawful in Britain to glorify terrorism, terrorists and their ideologies and actions as long as you avoid encouraging the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. What does this mean in practice? It means that if I decided tomorrow to praise Thomas Mair, who murdered Jo Cox, and say, “What a great guy he is. Look what he did”—I could say that to children, by the way—or if I wanted to praise Anders Breivik, or Brenton Tarrant, who carried out the attack in New Zealand, or Robert Bowers, who carried out the attack on the synagogue and murdered Jews in America, it is currently lawful for me to do so in this country and to glorify terrorists as long as I do not encourage the commission or preparation of acts of terrorism.
There are other gaps in the legislation at the moment, which is allowing extremists to operate with impunity. It is currently lawful to intentionally stir up racial hatred as long as you avoid being threatening, abusive or insulting. Again, what does that mean in practice? It could mean that tomorrow, if I decide to establish a neo-Nazi organisation, if I want to persistently praise the actions of Adolf Hitler, encourage members to spread Holocaust denial materials and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, that is currently legal as long as it is not abusive, insulting or threatening.
There are a whole range of other activities that are currently not being captured by hate crime or counterterrorism legislation—the two areas of law that we said were the most relevant to what we called hateful extremism—and, in that gap, because of that lack of legislation, you are seeing neo-Nazi groups and others operating with impunity in our country.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: We have rehearsed a lot that argument of whether glorifying terrorism is permissible or not. Some Irish Republicans, for example, might say that what happened under the whole period of the Troubles was a valuable and worthwhile thing because it brought about an endgame, which they would say was beneficial to the nationalist community.
It is a very difficult area, but I specifically want to deal with the business of stirring up. Incitement, as you know, requires a high level of specific intent—that you intend the person to do the things that you describe. Stirring up is more generally about creating the permissive environment that is described here. Therefore, I wondered whether you had thought through all this. To what extent has there been serious thought about the implications of it all?
Dame Sara Khan: But that is exactly where extremists are operating. They are creating a climate of incitement. We very much agreed with the Law Commission’s view that we should be strengthening the incitement laws, as they do not go far enough in capturing extremist organisations, which are very careful not to cross over into existing stirring-up offences.
Chair: The English Law Commission also recommended that, if that was to be done, tailored freedom of speech defences would also have to be strengthened to make sure that legitimate speech was not caught.
I want to say something about the Scottish legislation. In your report with Sir Mark you recommended extending the stirring-up offences under the Public Order Act to include the protected characteristic of sex, and you gave the incel example. The Scottish legislation does not include the protected characteristic of sex—that is a subject of some debate in Scotland, in which I am engaged—but it is worth pointing out that you recommended it down here as well for public order. As things stand in Scotland, the legislation being brought in on 1 April does not include the protected characteristic of sex. It may be important to make that point.
Q8 Lord Alton of Liverpool: Thank you to the panel for helping to drill down into what we can do, what is reasonable and what is not. Dame Sara, I hope you will be able to help the committee further by giving us a note on the kind of mechanism, either stand-alone or legislative, that could address the reasonable concerns of people such as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York—they are not normally regarded as extreme in their views—in their statement last week about freedom of religion or belief. Others have pointed out, as Ruth mentioned earlier, that judicial review is a cumbersome, costly and time-consuming process. I would like to see more about this idea of having independent oversight, some way of ensuring that the right balance is struck to achieve the objectives that you so eloquently outlined, so perhaps you could let us have more on that.
Going back to the Prevent strategy, some of us feel that we have been here before, first with the Labour Government who introduced it and then with the coalition Government in 2011, and their genuine attempts to try to tackle some of the worst kinds of extremism. I was struck by Sir William Shawcross’s review from 2023. Is this new definition going to tackle some the things that he identified in his recommendations and conclusions? For instance, he said there should be a return to the overarching objective of stopping individuals becoming terrorists or supporters. He pointed to what he called a double standard. He talked about the funding of groups that promoted extremist narratives, including those that appear sympathetic to the Taliban. He said that there was a lack of training and a concerted campaign by some, including Islamist groups, to undermine and delegitimise Prevent.
How far have we travelled in dealing with his concerns? What improvements have been made between Prevent and what the Government have now come forward with?
Dame Sara Khan: Interestingly, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom I deeply respect, completely endorsed my 2021 report. He agreed with the idea that we should have a legal framework for hateful extremism, as did the Chief Rabbi and Qari Asim, the chair of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board. So the archbishop and other faith leaders supporting a legal framework and yet the archbishop coming out against this is a very interesting situation. That is just a side note.
On the issue of Prevent and what William Shawcross wrote, he was right to talk about counterextremism. He obviously looked at it through the lens of when extremism leads to terrorism. The harms of extremism are incredibly broad. Extremism can lead to terrorism, genocide and ethnic cleansing at the very worst, but it can also undermine social cohesion and the democratic rights and freedoms of other people. That is something to bear in mind. Some of this definition will address some of his concerns about funding not being given to organisations and others, and rightly so; taxpayers’ money should not be given to organisations and others who legitimise extremist narratives. Some of that will be dealt with, but I do not understand how far this definition will influence Prevent as an operational strategy. That is not clear. It is a question for the Government. I do not have an answer for that.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: That is helpful. Thank you.
Joshua Rozenberg: Michael Gove did say that most extremist materials and activities are not illegal and do not meet the terrorism or national security threshold, but that extremism could lead to terrorism. Obviously Prevent, which deals with terrorism, is connected with what we are talking about now, which is extremism.
As you will recall, William Shawcross was very critical in his report on Prevent last year. He said, “Prevent is not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism. 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”. He was very critical of the focus of Prevent; he said, “Prevent is out of kilter with the rest of the counter-terrorism system”. He points out that, in his view, “Islamist extremism represents a primary terrorist threat to this country”, that “80% of the Counter Terrorism Police network’s live investigations are Islamist”, but, “Only 22% of Prevent referrals for the year 2020-21 concerned Islamism”, which, “suggests a loss of focus and failure to identify warning signs”.
He only reported last year but, in his view, there is clearly a problem with Prevent. Again, with extremism, you are perhaps talking about a pre-crime, which is not necessarily a crime at all but it leads to the crime of terrorism. It is important to keep the two apart, but I do think Prevent has a lot to answer for. Certainly Shawcross does.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: Thank you. What do you think, Ruth?
Ruth Ehrlich: Echoing what has been said by the panel already, we are not yet clear how the new definition will impact the Prevent strategy from 2011. It is unclear how you could replace a statutory definition with a non-statutory one. Liberty’s view is that this new definition is still very broad, and we fear that it will continue to compound the existing harms of the Prevent duty, which has a particular impact on the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, thought, conscience and religion, particularly of Muslims, children, and people who are neuro-divergent.
The panel has mentioned the conveyor belt theory, where people are presumed to move from having an extremist ideology to engaging in terrorist activity. This theory has been widely discredited, including by the JCHR itself in 2016, which pointed out that, “It is by no means proven or agreed that religious conservatism in itself correlates with support for violent jihadism”. There were documents leaked from the British Government in 2010 that revealed a clear assessment that people do not progress from non-violent extremism to violent groups. As an organisation, Liberty has a fundamental problem with the Prevent strategy. We think it needs an independent review, and this is a good opportunity to have those conversations.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: Looking back at what Sir William wrote, it was interesting that there were some softer points as well. I mentioned the training of people, but he also referred to Prevent being used to help people who have mental health problems. In fact, he said, “Prevent is carrying the weight for mental health services. Vulnerable people … are being referred to Prevent to access other types of much-needed support”. Does this new definition take into account cross-government or cross-departmental aspects? They are softer questions, I know, but they have a relevance.
Joshua Rozenberg: Michael Gove certainly said that he has consulted with the Home Office. But you have the Home Office, which is responsible for counterterrorism, Prevent and so on, and you have the Department of Levelling Up and Housing Communities, which is responsible for extremism. I presume it is DLUHC that funds the organisations that now stand to lose their funding. It seems strange that separate departments are dealing with two aspects of the same problem.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: Joshua, would you include in that the lack of training and confidence, because people have not been prepared or do not have the knowledge to deal with some extremist organisations?
Joshua Rozenberg: There are certainly problems about training. Shawcross 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, right-wing leaning commentary that have no meaningful connection to terrorism or radicalisation”. If you will forgive me, an example that Shawcross gives in a footnote, which is meant to refer to right-wing leaning commentary, refers to Rod Liddle, Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips, who happens to be my wife.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: I understand. Thank you.
Q9 Bell Ribeiro-Addy: The Government published the counterextremism strategy in 2015 and proposed an extremism Bill on a number of occasions, which never materialised. Have there been any shortcomings with the Government’s previous approach to countering extremism?
Joshua Rozenberg: It is Sara who complained that they did not bring in this Bill, so Sara should answer.
Dame Sara Khan: Funnily enough, when I gave evidence to this committee about nine years ago, I spoke out against that extremist Bill, partly because there was no definition provided by the Government. Despite having wet towels wrapped around lawyers’ heads, they could not come up with a credible definition or at least narrow the activity and behaviours they were concerned about and wanted to outlaw. From that time onwards, there has been a sense of paralysis inside government and they have thought, “We don’t want to go back there and look at whether we should be legislating again on this”. That is one reason why we did the legal review in 2021. We tried to narrow the activity, raise the bar about what we are looking at and why we need to do it.
As I said, we need a legal framework. It is the right thing for us to do as a liberal democracy, but also because we are failing in the struggle against extremism in this country. That is quite clear from the statistics on Prevent referrals. Counter Terrorism Policing says that the rate of young people being referred and convicted for terrorist offences is the highest on record. Online extremist content and propaganda, including glorifying convicted terrorists who have carried out bombings—we can all agree they are clearly terrorists—is incredibly shocking and literally off the scale. There are a whole range of different activities happening and, in my view, it requires a legal framework, but like I said, there is a way to do it that squares the extremism circle, which the Government in 2015 just could not do.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy: Ruth, were there any shortcomings in the Government’s previous approach to countering extremism?
Ruth Ehrlich: Given the number of terrorism and hate crime laws that already exist, we are concerned about the Government introducing further policy and legislation. We would echo Robin Simcox, the Commissioner for Countering Extremism, who says that we have reached the limit of what legislation can achieve in this area now. This is a broader point, but we think that one of the most important ways to combat hate is by having more speech, challenging views and having debate, as we risk pushing some conversations further underground and making those groups harder to reach.
Dame Sara Khan: Can I give you a very quick example of anti-Semitism? If I decided to send an anti-Semitic tweet to a Jewish MP, that would rightfully be caught under hate crime legislation. If somebody decided to blow up a synagogue, that clearly falls under counter terrorism legislation. However, as I said earlier, if someone decided to create a neo-Nazi group that was praising Adolf Hitler, spreading dangerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and so forth, that is not currently captured by hate crime or counterterrorism legislation for the reasons outlined in the 2021 Operating with Impunity report. So it is not true that we have enough legislation. We looked at this extensively. There is clearly a lack of legal provision to deal with the types of activities that I am talking about.
Chair: Having said that, both David Anderson, the previous independent reviewer of terrorism, and Jonathan Hall think that we have enough legislation in this space. David Anderson gave a very good lecture called “Extremism and the Law”, where he concluded that just because extremism is a word does not mean that it is a useful legal concept. Could that explain why the Government have had such difficulty in coming up with a legal definition as opposed to this guidance?
Dame Sara Khan: I attended that lecture in 2019. It was very good, but this report came after it. Again, I would urge the committee to read the report to see where the gaps in legislation are. Counter Terrorism Policing has endorsed it, as I said, as have many free speech activists, because they recognise that we have been able to protect freedom of expression and other civil liberties while also ensuring that we go after currently lawful but dangerous extremist activity.
Q10 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: To be frank, do you think the protests that have taken place since October over the conflict in the Middle East demonstrate a need for new legal tools or a new approach to tackling extremism? Is that what has generated this?
Joshua Rozenberg: I think Michael Gove has said that it has generated this. He accepts that this has spurred the Government into announcing what they have done. There is also the Criminal Justice Bill, which is at or is about to reach Report stage in the Commons. No date has been fixed for that, but the Government will bring in a new offence to stop people purposely concealing their identities or possessing flares, fireworks and other pyrotechnics at protests. The Prime Minister made it very clear that these proposals were firmly rooted in the pro-Palestinian protests. Rishi Sunak said that, since the 7 October attacks, we have witnessed “appalling examples of anti-Semitism, violent intimidation, and the glorification of terrorism” at protests across the country. Certainly, this is a response by the Government to what has happened, as is the proposal to bring in more legislation. Whether it is the right response is another matter.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws: I would like to hear from others. The difficulty is with this is that many in the Muslim community go on those marches every week because they are horrified by what they see on their televisions and shocked at the extent of the deaths of children. They have a humanitarian objection but are somehow being tarnished with the same brush as the extremist elements—by far the smaller part of those who go along—but the impact of this is problematic. There is no Muslim around these tables today, but the Muslim community is likely to feel that this as a way of crushing their entitlement to protest.
Dame Sara Khan: I can speak as a Muslim. Matt Jukes, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing, said that 7 October was a “radicalising moment”. It will be “unprecedented” in relation to the risk of increasing hate crime, extremism and even potentially terrorism in our country alone, so there has clearly been a problem. I would argue that these issues well pre-date what happened on October 7 and the subsequent protests we have seen in our country. That is my position in a nutshell.
I agree with you, and I have made my position clear, that attempts to talk about the pro-Palestinian protests being extremist or hate marches are incredibly dangerous, as this will marginalise mainstream voices. This is a very polarised issue anyway. We need to bring people together, not make the debate even more polarising. That is important. We do not talk enough about the scale of censorship that is happening on both sides, and I do not think that academia and others collect enough evidence on this. We know that around 89% of British Jews do not feel comfortable going into the centre of London and other places where protests are being held.
Equally, I do not think we understand the scale of censorship that is being felt by those who support the pro-Palestinian side. In my current role, I am very aware of academics and people working in the arts and culture sector who are frightened to talk about what is happening in Palestine or Israel because of the impact it may have on their jobs, friendships and all kinds of things. We do not talk about that level of censorship, and we should, because there is no place for that in a free and liberal society like ours.
Q11 Jill Mortimer: You have touched a little on the impacts of being designated an extremist group. Sara, you said that it could have a positive impact, because it means that we can engage with them and explain what they are doing wrong. Joshua, you said there was a negative impact; we could withdraw funding. I assume there will be some sort of list. Do you foresee any other impacts happening to these groups or their members from being designated and put on that list?
Dame Sara Khan: As a country, we currently struggle with dealing with Islamist extremist groups. There are a number of them, but I will name CAGE, because Michael Gove did. There has been long-standing concern about CAGE, which portrays itself as a human rights or civil liberties organisation. It uses the argument of civil liberties as a cover for its Islamist activity, but this is an organisation that has supported convicted terrorists. It has published and invited al-Qaeda ideologues to speak at its events. It has advocated violent jihad overseas. Its senior leaders have refused to condemn the stoning of women. When giving evidence to the Home Affairs Committee a couple of years ago, it talked about the need to establish an EU-style Islamist caliphate. I could go on and on and on. There is a professor of human rights at LSE—
Chair: We need to know what the effect of being designated as terrorist would be on a group like that.
Dame Sara Khan: I find it shocking that, to this day, there are human rights and civil liberties organisations that choose to align themselves with organisations like CAGE. We would not align ourselves with neo-fascist organisations, for example, but when it comes to Islamist extremist groups we appear to have a binary double-blind view. It is almost as if people say, “They’re a minority community. We should treat them differently”. I have to say as a Muslim that that is incredibly patronising. Extremism is not confined to one particular ilk of people. It is a human ill, so you will find across different races, religions, ideologies and so forth. So you will find Islamist extremists present.
Chair: This definition is only about the Government saying, “We are not going to engage”. It will not stop other people from engaging with them.
Dame Sara Khan: That is true, but one outcome will be that, if they are named, it will be very difficult for environmentalist groups and others to suddenly give legitimacy to an organisation that is doing a lot of harm to Muslim communities first and foremost.
Jill Mortimer: They would be helping to create the permissive environment by normalising it.
Dame Sara Khan: Exactly.
Joshua Rozenberg: News organisations will presumably refer to them as extremist organisations or perhaps organisations designated by the Government as extremist.
Chair: That is a very good point. There might be a chilling effect, because if news organisations and others refer to them as an organisation designated as extremist, MPs and others may be quite reluctant to engage with them, so it will have a wider effect than just non-governmental engagement.
Joshua Rozenberg: It is a label around their neck.
Q12 Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Do you think there should be an appeal process that groups could use to challenge the designation as extremists? You mentioned judicial review, but that takes time. If there was process that could be used to challenge, what would that look like?
Joshua Rozenberg: As a matter of principle, if an organisation is designated as extremist by the Secretary of State, the first thing it would do is write back to the Secretary of State and challenge it. No doubt, the department would have some sort of internal appeal process. It expects judicial review, so it would have prepared its documents. It would be in a position to provide a witness statement to the court.
As for whether you need a separate, independent way of dealing with the question, you could. You could simply say, “Why have a middleman? Why have an intermediate process? Why not go straight to the courts after somebody else in the department has looked again at the decision?” Ultimately, it is for the Secretary of State to decide, and if the Secretary of State is firm, you go to the courts.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Would you like to see an independent process?
Joshua Rozenberg: I can see the advantages of that. It would save the cost of going to court, and maybe an independent process would be better able to decide whether an organisation was extremist or not. But you need a mechanism to decide who will be on the independent organisation and what criteria they operate and so on. It may be simpler just to say that it is a matter for the courts.
Dame Sara Khan: I would hope, and suggest, that the new unit announced by Michael Gove, after it has collected all its evidence, goes to that organisation and gives it the right to reply: “This is all the evidence we have. Is this the position you hold? Do you stand by it, or do you no longer hold it. Has it perhaps changed?” Giving those organisations a right to reply has to be part of that process. That is only fair. Like I said, there should be an independent panel or board that looks at it in the final stage or round. That is how I would do it. It is really important to give organisations the right to reply, put the evidence to them and allow them to give their thoughts and views on it.
Joshua Rozenberg: I agree.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon: Ruth, do you have anything to add? Where would Liberty sit with all that?
Ruth Ehrlich: Again, in principle, we do not agree with creating power for a Minister to designate certain groups as extremist, but if such a power existed, of course we think that those people or organisations should benefit from due process, a proper appeals process that is independent. Certainly, when we get to looking at judicial review, there are, as we well know, questions of inaccessibility and cost will be simply prohibitive for lots of smaller organisations in particular.
Q13 Lord Murray of Blidworth: On the question of an appeal, I rather agree with Dame Sara about there being a mechanism by which evidence is presented to a party before they are named so that they can make submissions on it. I think that would be consistent with open justice. But it is possible the Home Secretary would be relying on closed evidence, which I can see giving rise to certain issues in that context. So any system would need to be flexible enough to admit that possibility.
I probably agree with Joshua too, and I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this. If there were to be an appeals process, it seems to me that the only way that could be done would be to have some sort of legislative framework, and then we come back to the question of whether we need legislation. If we simply have a guidance definition, as we have now, there cannot then be a statutory appeal process on top of guidance. It seems to me that we have to decide one way or the other which route we will adopt. We have gone down the non-statutory route, so there cannot be a statutory appeal process, so we are left with judicial review. Is that an assertion you agree with, Joshua?
Joshua Rozenberg: The Crown Prosecution Service has a victims’ right to review a decision not to bring a prosecution. That means that the decision not to bring a prosecution is reviewed by somebody more senior in the Crown Prosecution Service—on the same criteria, but it is a fresh pair of eyes. It is not statutory; it is just another chance for somebody else to look at the papers and think, “Did the person ranked one below me get the wrong decision?” But ultimately it is for the Director of Public Prosecutions to decide.
So you could say that, in the government department that designates somebody as extremist, which I presume would be the DLUHC, senior officials take a decision that may be endorsed by the Secretary of State. If you were to challenge it, a more senior official or a separate official from another part of the department would look at it again. Ultimately, though, the Secretary of State has to take the decision on the advice of officials, but you could at least have different officials reconsidering it if there was effectively an appeal by the organisation.
Lord Murray of Blidworth: Ruth, would that satisfy Liberty’s concerns to have an internal, non-judicial appeal system?
Ruth Ehrlich: We disagree with the fundamental principle that the Minister has this power, so it is not one for us to comment on in detail.
Chair: Lord Dholakia has another question about the risks and the implications of potential legal challenges here.
Q14 Lord Dholakia: Would there be a possible risk if groups or individuals were to bring challenges on the basis of reputational damage, particularly in relation to being designated as extremists?
Joshua Rozenberg: There is a risk to the Secretary of State in designating an organisation as extremist and in deciding not to designate an organisation as extremist. It is a matter of judgment, which is what Ministers have to exercise. It is not going to lead to libel if their decision is privileged. If they say things about an organisation outside the protection of parliamentary privilege, presumably they could be sued, but the Government would presumably pay for them to be defended in court. It is a reputational matter for Ministers because they have to make difficult choices, but that is what Ministers do.
Dame Sara Khan: I agree with Joshua. One challenge for those working in the counterextremism is that a tactic is increasingly being used by clearly extremist organisations to sue and use libel law to silence anybody, including sections of the press. I have heard countless examples of journalists who, in their lawful business of reporting and investigating extremist groups, have met abuse, threats, threats of taking legal action against them, trying to censor and silence them. A legal framework is more helpful, because you overcome the issue of libel law, which at the moment is constraining parts of counterextremism efforts in this country at the moment.
Chair: On the other hand, people have a legitimate right to defend their reputation. If somebody feels they have been wrongly labelled an extremist when they are merely trying to contribute to the democratic debate, surely they have a right to seek redress.
Dame Sara Khan: I completely agree. The challenge is that the tactics of extremists have changed substantially in the last 10 years. As I said, they use the language of human rights, civil liberties, and freedom of expression as a cover to promote their hateful language and extremist narratives. It is incredibly complex and difficult. In my career, I have seen the neo-Nazi side and the Islamist side do that repeatedly—regularly use libel law to try to shut down any attempt to investigate or report on their activity, which is why a legal framework would be a better way of managing this issue.
Chair: Ruth, do you have a different perspective on this? Some organisations might not be able to afford to take a libel action.
Ruth Ehrlich: Libel law is definitely not our area, but we do think it would be possible for individual groups to bring challenges on the basis of reputational damage. As I alluded to earlier, there may also be challenges on the basis of the Equality Act 2010. The policy could be at risk of breaching the public sector equality duty under Section 149(1)(b) and (c) of the Act on the basis that the Government must “have due regard to the need to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”.
Q15 Lord Murray of Blidworth: Going back to the libel point and focusing on the issue before the committee of this definition, if the Secretary of State were to designate a certain group as being extremist for the purposes of this policy, and instead of challenging it by judicial review they decided to bring a libel claim, saying that the reputation of those involved had been lowered in the eyes of right-thinking people, it would not be very difficult for the Secretary of State to run a defence of fair comment and produce the evidence. A libel claim is highly unlikely to prevent the Secretary of State from designating, and the Secretary of State is not short of resources to defend that libel claim.
Joshua Rozenberg: I agree, and there may be a political advantage to the Secretary of State if they do manage to limit extremism, which, after all, is what we are talking about.
Lord Murray of Blidworth: Exactly.
Q16 Sarah Dines: Dame Sara, you made it clear that your preference is for a tighter non-statutory definition, but your real preference is for there to be more statutory involvement in this area. Are the Government rather nebulous by doing this sort of non-statutory guidance? What does it really mean? As a society, are we forgetting that we should be working through civil society first? Are these issues just a symptom of what we have not been doing for years? Why go for your preference of further statutory involvement? Why not concentrate on rebuilding civil society, allowing people to say outrageous things and not effectively criminalising them all the time?
Dame Sara Khan: The definition is just one tiny aspect. When we talk about what counterextremism looks like, it is multifaceted and there have to be legal and non-legal measures. I have talked a lot about the legal framework needed, but ultimately you also need a counterextremism strategy where you engage with people who are sympathetic to extremist narratives. You do not criminalise them or push them into a corner and say, “We don’t want to engage with you”. Like I said, it is about engaging with them and bringing them back into the mainstream.
I strongly believe that we need to focus much more on social cohesion efforts. They have fallen by the wayside in the last couple of years, which is really disappointing. Even with the recent debates about the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the tensions between Israeli, Muslim, Jewish and other communities in this country, there has been so much focus on the policing and the downstream issues, rather than the upstream social cohesion efforts and what we are doing to overcome the tensions that clearly were there prior to 7 October. We need a much more rigorous social cohesion approach and strategy, a legal framework, and we need to deal with a non-statutory counterextremism strategy.
The Government scrapped the 2015 counterextremism strategy in 2021. Nothing has replaced it since. So there are clear gaps in the way we deal with extremism as a whole, and the definition is just one tiny part of that. As I said earlier, unless we have all the other jigsaw pieces, I am afraid our approach to counterextremism is behind the curve unless.
Q17 Sarah Dines: So rather than focusing on extremists, should we not be focusing on wider society, our education, and how we rebuild relations?
Dame Sara Khan: You need both. You cannot focus on one or the other. I always envisage terrorism as three nets: counterterrorism initiatives, counterextremism initiatives, and social cohesion. Some people will just go past the cohesion issue. No matter what you say or do, they will never feel they belong to this country and will always view our country as being an enemy and hostile. You have to capture them through other means, such as the counterextremism net, but you need a different strategy and approach. The counterextremism strategy has to be different to a cohesion strategy. They are two different things. Unless you have all that alongside a definition and all the other issues I have raised, you will get nowhere near to doing anything more than scratch the surface in dealing with extremism.
The social cohesion side is imperative, and we do not talk about it enough or about how we bring people in, how we build and promote the fundamental rights and freedoms about the rule of law, all the things we celebrate as a nation and what it means to live in a diverse democracy such as ours. As I said earlier, these are really important questions that sadly seem to have been ignored in the last couple of years, and I am looking at publishing more details on them in the forthcoming weeks.
Chair: I think you told the Home Affairs Committee you have not had substantial responses to your reports. Is that fair?
Dame Sara Khan: I have had no response from the Home Office to any of my counterextremism reports.
Chair: This has come along across the piece, but you have still not had a response.
Dame Sara Khan: No.
Sarah Dines: It is not just what has happened in the past couple of years. This is a post-war journey of 30 to 40 years. Are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater to think that just a definition or even a new law could solve this? Is it not more fundamental?
Dame Sara Khan: I agree. That is why I think we need to focus on social cohesion. Since 2001, there have been 20 years’ worth of social cohesion reports in this country and numerous recommendations. The last report was done by Dame Louise Casey in 2016. All those reports were incredibly important. How far have we come in devising a really credible social cohesion infrastructure in this country? What are we doing to make sure that, despite our differences, we can get along well together? The tensions that we are seeing, such as the abuse parliamentarians are experiencing and the growing climate of censorship and harassment, are becoming increasingly quite worrying and we are not addressing them fully. I will be highlighting some of this in my forthcoming report, which I will be very interested to hear your thoughts and views on once published.
Q18 Sarah Dines: If the Government are just taking a guidance route, what more could they do by way of non-statutory measures?
Dame Sara Khan: In the House of Commons last week, Michael Gove said the definition was the first in a series of announcements on counterextremism.
Sarah Dines: What will the next steps be?
Dame Sara Khan: He mentioned religious hatred and social cohesion, which I was pleased to see. I am interested to see what they will say about those things, and I am glad that they have at least acknowledged the definition is just one part, but it is definitely not the whole part. We have to see what else the Government will do on these incredibly important issues.
Q19 Sarah Dines: You mentioned your work with Sir Mark Rowley. What do you think the problem with the marches has been in the way they have whipped up upset from all communities? Operationally, what could be done differently in your view?
Dame Sara Khan: The Home Affairs Committee did an excellent report on this. My concerns have been about the initial celebratory events on 7 and 8 October onwards. They were clearly not protests; they were something of a different category celebrating the horrific attack and the murder of Israelis and Jewish people in Israel on 7 October.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is an Islamist extremist organisation that has been lawful in our country for 40 years and has actively opposed democratic norms. It believes in the establishment of a theocratic caliphate and does not subscribe to any idea of human rights or civil liberties. We saw them chanting “Jihad” out on the streets. If we had hateful extremism proscription orders separate from terrorism proscription orders, my view is that we would not have seen them chanting “Jihad” on the streets and creating that kind of climate and incitement against Jewish people and others. We could have handled this better if we had a legal framework.
As I said earlier, many of these protests are overwhelmingly peaceful. The Met Police have made that clear, and it is really important that people in this country have the right to protest. It is a fundamental right that we have to protect. We have to make sure we do not conflate them or suggest they are all hate marches or extremist marches, which is completely counterproductive.
Q20 Sarah Dines: Is it a question of numbers rather than glorification? As a society, are we able to accept a certain sort of protest that veers on glorification if it is smaller in number? Is it the way they take over the whole city that is so overwhelming and why people say they are frightened to go out at the weekend?
Dame Sara Khan: That is possible.
Joshua Rozenberg: Numbers are important. One could restrict the number of people who attend a march or a demonstration; the police have various powers. It is a bit difficult to say, “Well, a lot of people are protesting, but we are only going to let some protest”.
On the other hand, you have the practicalities. It is a matter of concern if Members of Parliament cannot get into or out of this building, or if I cannot walk past Parliament to go from the tube station to the BBC studios because there are too many protesters outside. It is widely that known I am Jewish, and I certainly would not go anywhere near one of these demonstrations. I would not wander around that part of London on a Saturday afternoon, because I have no wish to encounter the people who might be on that demonstration. I presume I would be perfectly safe, but I do not want to give it a chance.
You also have the whole question about projecting a slogan on Victoria Tower, on Big Ben. It does not harm me; it offends me. It is support for a proscribed terrorist organisation according to any definition of the slogan there and should be prevented. I think it frightens and disturbs members of the Jewish community, as well as the wider community, so it is a matter of concern. Equally, Sara is entirely right: people are entitled to protest.
I would like to make a final point to endorse what Sara said about the demonstrations immediately after the attacks on 7 October. There was one the following day, a Sunday. That demonstration and those that followed immediately afterwards cannot have been to protest against Israel’s response to the murderous attack on people in Israel—1,200 were killed, kidnapped, raped; they were appalling atrocities—because the response did not happen for another three weeks. So it is clear to me that those people must inevitably have been supporting these murderous attacks on people in Israel.
Ruth Ehrlich: I have much to say on this and am wondering how to narrow it down. Obviously, the events of 7 October and subsequent events in Gaza have caused immense pain for many communities across the country. We have seen an astonishing and distressing rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, and rhetoric from many places has not been particularly helpful in encouraging cohesion, including from some past and present Members of the Cabinet. It is extremely dangerous to enter into a territory where we are conflating all protesters with a minority who hold extremist views.
At Liberty, we feel concerned about the Government using a moment of deep crisis and hurt for many communities to push through further restrictions on our civil liberties. In relation to public order in particular, the Government have passed two enormous pieces of legislation that restrict rights to protest—the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023—and the subsequent serious disruption to the life of the community regulations. We disagreed with many parts of these pieces of legislation, but it is shocking that the Government are now using this moment to try to push through even further powers through the Criminal Justice Bill.
It is really important that people are alive to the fact that our civil liberties are being eroded, because there is a highly febrile, stressful and upsetting external environment going on, and I would exercise caution. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets. Communities are not monolithic; lots of different people are out there, and it is really important that we do not allow this moment to be monopolised and used to strip back our civil liberties.
Q21 Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws: Is the timing not likely to accelerate the concern amongst our Muslim communities up and down the country that this is disproportionately responding to them, that this is about them? Many Muslim organisations have a sense that this is about a taking of sides and, therefore, far from creating community cohesion, which is needed particularly given the divisions in our society. There is in particular the timing, how it is put together and who will be on the list? Will this not be seen as being disproportionate to one section of our society?
Dame Sara Khan: In my view, the definition is ideologically blind. It is very hard to try to pin this down.
Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws: The timing is of the essence here.
Dame Sara Khan: I cannot comment on that. Can I just make a point about Muslim communities?
Chair: The difficulty I have is that I have to let the Peers go to the Chamber for the Rwanda debate or they will not get to speak. I want to bring Joshua in, and then I will have to draw the session to a close. We may send follow-up questions to you, because this is such a rich area.
Joshua Rozenberg: The short answer to Lady Kennedy’s question is yes, this is about them. The Secretary of State named the British National Socialist Movement and Patriotic Alternative. I do not think they get much funding from the Government. The others were not Muslim organisations but Islamist organisations in the Secretary of State’s definition.
Dame Sara Khan: I disagree. It is much more complicated than that. As Ruth mentioned earlier, communities are not monolithic. Many Muslim voices in this country feel threatened by Islamist extremism and very disheartened by the fact that the Government have not done enough about Islamist extremism, because it is their children who are being radicalised and dragged into all kinds of conflicts where they are targeted by hate preachers.
Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws: Their children are also being demonised, which they are feeling very anxious about at this moment in time.
Dame Sara Khan: That is true. I agree, but what the Government are doing about anti-Muslim hatred is a legitimate concern. I do not think the Government have done enough on this issue, and I would like to see them do more, but that does not mean that we should not tackle the threat of extremism, including Islamist extremism.
Chair: I will have to draw this very interesting session to a close because of the timing of the debate in the House of Lords. If you feel there was anything you wanted to say and have not had the chance to, please feel free to write to us. We may also write to you if realise that we have left something crucial out. We will definitely be revisiting this issue. Thank you very much for your time today.
