Patel to overhaul Prevent to address ‘broader’ terror threats
An overhaul of Britain’s counter-terrorism programme will include adapting it to address a rise in extremists with “blended” ideologies and mental health problems, Priti Patel has indicated.
The Home Secretary said “things have moved on” since the Prevent scheme’s inception in 2006 in response to the threat from violent Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda, and a “very different approach” was needed.
William Shawcross, the former chairman of the Charity Commission, is carrying out a review of the scheme and is expected to report shortly.
Last week, David Cameron accused some Muslim groups who criticise Prevent of “enabling terrorism”, amid concerns a “grievance culture” against the programme has “undermined” its work.
But Ms Patel said that “what we are seeing more and more is much more of a blended ideology. And that does not necessarily lead into automatic [terror] incidents or threats”.
She added: “Public risk exposure is changing, the types of threat are changing. There are many other issues now involving mental health.
“Prevent has been around for some time now. When you look at the causes of people presenting, or some of the manifest issues now, they are much broader than just Islamist ideology, or one particular strand.
“I’m not going to prejudge the review. It’s important that we just have ourselves a very different approach.
“Things inevitably will have to change because we’re seeing changing patterns of behaviours, changing factors around attacks, for example. As a result, the police and intelligence services work differently and they’re looking for different things.”
Prevent’s initial guiding principles said it “must deal with all forms of terrorism and not just with al-Qaeda. But the allocation of resources will be proportionate to the threats we face”.
The conviction of Ali Harbi Ali for the murder of Sir David Amess, the Conservative MP, raised fresh questions over Prevent’s efficacy.
Terror experts said those involved seemed to have too often been fooled by “sophisticated extremists concealing their intentions”.
Ali, who said he targeted the MP because he voted for air strikes in Syria, was referred to Prevent in 2014. In his trial, he boasted about how he easily managed to seem compliant when engaging with authorities.
A source familiar with the discussions over changes to Prevent said now, it is less common to see “big terrorist organisations masterminding things with foot soldiers on the ground. It is more disparate, with people doing things off their own back”.
If a person is deemed at risk of radicalisation, their case is passed to a “Channel panel” of relevant authorities.
Statistics released in November, of 688 such individuals in the last financial year, said 30 per cent were said to have a “mixed, unstable or unclear ideology”, while 22 per cent involved concerns over “Islamist radicalisation”. Concern over extreme right-wing radicalisation accounted for 46 per cent of cases.