Contribution
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has explained, this group is largely about a concentration on efforts to combat non-violent extremism, about transparency and about efforts by the Government and police forces to counteract such extremism. He also calls for the appointment of a Commissioner for Countering Extremism.
The noble Lord particularly—and, I would suggest, rightly—recognises and is concerned with the importance of developing and fostering dialogue between police forces and religious communities, as well as a much wider understanding of the real concern and fear of religious communities in the face of extremism, not amounting to terrorism, that has become so much worse in recent years and particularly since 7 October.
This group gives us the opportunity to invite the Government to bring greater clarity and focus to their efforts in this area and to make it clear what it is that they plan. When Yvette Cooper, then the Home Secretary, directed the establishment of the rapid analytical sprint on extremism, she said that it was intended
“to map and monitor extremist trends, to understand the evidence about what works to disrupt and divert people away from extremist views, and to identify any gaps in existing policy which need to be addressed to crack down on those pushing harmful and hateful beliefs and violence”.
It is certainly right that the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, was directed to those ends—considering hateful and harmful beliefs and violence not necessarily amounting to extremism. The rapid analytical sprint was intended to be directed widely and, since then, publicity has been given to the concentration also on misogyny, racism, antisemitism and general community hostilities. It was commissioned last August, so perhaps the use of the word “rapid”, if we do not know when it is going to be produced, is not completely apposite.
The group is also concerned with the concept of youth diversion orders. We will debate youth diversion orders on a later group, but they are directed by the terms of Clause 167, as it is drafted, to terrorism and terrorism-related offences. It is certainly right that Clause 167(2)(b) talks about
“the purpose of protecting members of the public from a risk of terrorism or other serious harm”,
but serious harm is defined in, and our attention is directed to, Clause 168, which talks about harm from
“conduct that … involves serious violence against a person … endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person engaging in the conduct, or … creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or … the threat of such conduct”.
Serious harm in that context is, effectively, the threat of violence. As I understood the speech and the amendments, as a whole, by the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, they are also directed to the points that Yvette Cooper mentioned when the rapid analytical sprint was established. They go much wider and concern non-violent extremism, which is what this group is about. He talked about confronting ideologies and draining the swamp.
We would be grateful if the Minister, when he responds, clarifies what the Government’s target is in tackling non-violent extremism. How far is the government strategy for both government and police action aimed at producing an overarching strategy to tackle non-violent extremism as well as terrorism? We appreciate that it is perhaps more difficult in conceptual terms to develop such a strategy aimed at non-violence than it is to develop a strategy aimed at terrorism, which, while appalling, is relatively straightforward to define. The concept of non-violent extremism is altogether more difficult, and at the moment we are left in the dark about what the Government propose.