---

Prevent Strategy

I am rather disappointed in the tone that the right hon. Lady has taken in her response. On the one hand she said that she recognised that the Prevent strategy needed review, but on the other hand she has completely rejected the review that has taken place. She claims that no change is taking place, but clearly there is. On Hizb ut-Tahrir, the Government are concerned about that group's actions and keep it under constant review. She asked me to confirm that that is a very difficult area in which to work, which I am happy to do. It is difficult to make the proper judgments in this area. When we came into office we looked at the previous Government's approach and found that they had not looked at the issue of extremism but focused instead on violent extremism. We believe that it is important to look at extremism, because people involved in it can be led on to violent extremism and terrorist acts. We believe that it is also important to look at extremism because it can create an atmosphere in which people can more easily be radicalised towards terrorism. That is a key change that we are bringing about. We are looking at all forms of terrorism and have made that clear in what we are doing. I have identified a number of areas where I think not enough has been done to look at radicalisation. The right hon. Lady said that Universities UK had rejected the review's statements relating to universities, but I have to say to her and to Universities UK that I consider one of the problems to have been a degree of complacency in universities and their unwillingness to recognise the radicalisation that can take place on their campuses and do anything about it. We aim to work with universities to ensure that in future, with regard to their pastoral duty of care to students, they take radicalisation seriously and act accordingly. There will be real differences in the approach we are taking. It has been a problem in the past that, because Prevent covered both integration and the counter-terrorism aspects of the strategy, it was perceived to be the securitisation of integration, so it is right that the Department for Communities and Local Government will take on the integration aspect of our policy and work on aspects of community cohesion. Finally, I think that it is absolutely right that the Government should look very carefully at the groups that are being funded, analyse and evaluate them properly and carefully monitor how money is spent. The previous Government did not do that.