Prevent under renewed scrutiny over Southport attack failings

The UK government's controversial "Prevent" counter-terrorism program is facing renewed scrutiny. This comes after revelations that a teenager, convicted for a knife attack last year that killed three young girls, had been referred to the program three times during his time as a student.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the appointment of Lord David Anderson as the new independent "Prevent" Commissioner. Anderson, who previously served as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, has previously called for "clarity and restraint" in the application of the "Prevent" program. His appointment appears to undermine another Home Office body, the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE), which had previously overseen the "Prevent" program.

Robin Simcox, the current head of the much-criticized CCE, was appointed to oversee the "Prevent" program by the previous Conservative government. His appointment was widely criticized due to his previous work for a think tank accused of Islamophobia. It remains unclear how his role will interact with Anderson’s. In December, Middle East Eye (MEE) asked the Home Office and CCE how the new independent "Prevent" Commissioner role would integrate with the CCE's role, but received no clear answer.

Speaking on Tuesday, Starmer said that the UK was facing a "new and dangerous" threat. This came a day after 18-year-old Axel Rudakubana admitted to charges relating to the attack on a dance class in Southport last July. "In the past, the main threat was highly organised groups with clear political intent, like Al-Qaeda," Starmer said. He added, "But now, alongside that, we also see lone actors, people who are disaffected, young people in their bedrooms online, who are looking for notoriety, committing acts of extreme violence."

Starmer said that if laws need to be changed to deal with this new dangerous threat, they will be changed quickly. He also said that there will be a public inquiry into the Southport attack, pointing to failings in some state agencies, using the "Prevent" program as an example. "I am not going to let any state agency shift the focus from its own failings. Frankly, in this case, the failings are obvious," he said, noting that the perpetrator had been referred to the "Prevent" program three times, once in 2019 and twice in 2021.

Starmer announced a review of the UK's "entire counter-extremism system" and said he had tasked Anderson to "hold this system to account, to shine a light into its darkest corners, so that the British people can have confidence that action will follow". Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced the independent "Prevent" Commissioner role last month, but Starmer's speech was the first formal confirmation of Anderson’s appointment.

Cooper, in a statement to the House of Commons later on Tuesday, said that the government and counter-terror police had commissioned a "rapid Prevent learning review" last year to look into Rudakubana's referrals to the program and why they were closed. Cooper said that the review concluded that Rudakubana should have been referred to the "Channel" de-radicalisation program. She also said that "the three referrals occurred three to four years before the Southport attack, including after he had expressed an interest in school shootings, the London Bridge attack, the IRA, MI5 and the Middle East."

Cooper confirmed Anderson's appointment and said that his first priority as independent commissioner would be to carry out a thorough review of the Rudakubana case to identify what changes need to be made to ensure serious cases involving "mixed or unclear ideologies" are not missed. But she also said that she has ordered her department to review the threshold for "Prevent" referrals, saying that previous referrals for Islamist extremism were "too low".

Anderson, who has been a member of the House of Lords since 2018, is a highly respected lawyer who previously served as the UK government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation. He has previously acknowledged concerns raised by critics - including human rights and civil liberties groups, as well as Muslim advocacy groups - that the "Prevent" program is discriminatory and disproportionately targets Muslims.

Anderson told the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2016 that there was "deep concern" in Muslim communities about the "Prevent" program. As a counter-terrorism legislation watchdog and a member of the House of Lords, he has been an active advocate for the need for an independent review of "Prevent" to address concerns and criticisms surrounding the program. His appointment appears to further negate the findings of a controversial review of the "Prevent" program, led by William Shawcross under the previous Conservative government, which was boycotted and subsequently widely rejected by critics of the program.

Cooper said on Tuesday that the government had implemented 33 of 34 recommendations made by Shawcross. But she said that Shawcross’s conclusion that the scope of the "Prevent" program should be narrowed to focus on terrorist cases "would have the effect of reducing cases like this, where the ideology is less clear". Simcox, the commissioner for the Commission for Countering Extremism, has endorsed Shawcross’s conclusion that "Prevent" should focus more on Islamist extremism.

John Holmwood, emeritus professor of sociology at Nottingham University and co-author of the People's Review of Prevent, told MEE: "Anderson's appointment is interesting. He has expressed scepticism about 'Prevent' and its potential to infringe civil liberties. But he has further questioned the extension of legislation under the label of terrorism." This places Anderson in stark contrast not only to Simcox but also to Starmer’s suggestion on Monday that laws may need to be changed to recognise new "terrorist" threats without clear political intent.

Anderson wrote in 2013 that the label of terrorism "has the potential to distort, by its powerful emotive force, whatever it attaches to". He argued that "terrorism can make the careers of political leaders, prosecutors, journalists, lawyers and activists. All of these people, simply by using the word 'terrorism', are taken out of the normal vocabulary of crime, government, business or academia and into a mental space occupied by Robespierre, Irish bombers, Russian anarchists, Olympic hostage-takers, jihadists, desert emirs and, on the other side, special forces, undercover agents, navy seals and drones." He argued that the word "terrorism" was more of an impediment than a help in fighting crime.

Holmwood said: "I suspect Anderson would be more inclined to reduce the size of 'Prevent' rather than expand it into a new area." This would be a radical overhaul of the counter-extremism approach advocated by the CCE.

Rudakubana on Monday admitted to murdering six-year-old Bibi-Jayne King, nine-year-old Alice Lawler and seven-year-old Elsie-May Dot Stankom and admitted to attempting to murder eight other children and two adults in a knife attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July. Rudakubana, who was 17 at the time, also admitted to possessing an Al-Qaeda training manual and making ricin, a biological toxin.

Reports released on Monday after his conviction revealed that Rudakubana was first referred to the "Prevent" program in 2019, when he was 13, because he used a school computer to search for material related to US school massacres. But he was deemed not to be motivated by a terrorist ideology and not to pose a terrorist threat. He was referred to "Prevent" twice more in 2021. After one referral, it was recommended that he receive mental health, special educational needs, and other services.

Merseyside Police said in a statement that Rudakubana was "known to a range of services" before the Southport attack and described him as "a person with an unhealthy obsession with extreme violence". The statement said: "We know he did online searches of a vast amount of material which showed his obsession. What we can say is that from all of that material, there was no ideology identified, and that is why this was not treated as terrorism."

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said on Tuesday that the Southport attack showed that the "Prevent" program had failed and suggested that the program should be strengthened. Holmwood disagreed, telling MEE: "There's no real evidence that 'Prevent' works, but that doesn't mean that the Southport incident shows that it doesn't work. Cases that don't go into de-radicalisation interventions go back to local authority safeguarding services for consideration of other interventions. If there is a failure, it is the failure to invest in young people and mental health services over the last decade."