Baroness Warsi endorses government pulling funding from Islamophobia monitor

Former Conservative Party Chairman Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has publicly supported the Labour government's withdrawal of funding for an Islamophobia reporting service, which has been accused of severely underreporting hate crime cases. The Tell Mama organization, funded by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, was established in 2012. According to The Guardian, the organization will cease receiving grants from the end of March and faces closure.

Warsi stated on social media platform X on Tuesday: "I support the government's decision, and the reconsideration of how funding is allocated to monitor anti-Muslim hatred." Warsi is widely regarded as a significant figure on the issue of Islamophobia in the UK and was an early advocate for government funding of the Tell Mama organization when she served as a minister in David Cameron's cabinet.

Warsi said: "I was involved in the creation of Tell Mama, and despite opposition from government colleagues at the time, I fought for government funding." She added: "However, regrettably, over the years there have been too many problems, which in my view, render the organization no longer fit for purpose." Last March, the former Conservative government halted plans to appoint Tell Mama founder Fiyaz Mughal as an independent advisor on anti-Muslim hatred.

This decision was made after receiving notice of an investigation by Byline Times, which revealed that Mughal suppressed a Tell Mama-funded report on the Conservative Party's relationship with Islamophobic and anti-Semitic parties. In July 2024, Byline Times reported that Tell Mama underreported more than 90% of anti-Muslim hate crime cases between 2017 and 2022. Its published figures were "consistently lower than the Home Office's statistics on anti-Muslim hate crime, which are based on police data." The police data itself has also been found to systematically underestimate hate crime.

In response, Tell Mama insists that "it is impossible to record all hate crimes, especially given the size, nature, geography and nationality of British Muslims, who come from over 50 Muslim-majority countries." Warsi, who became an independent peer after leaving the Conservative Party last September, has complained that the party has become too right-wing. She said: "I am in frequent contact with the extremely diverse British Muslim community, which indicates that a significant proportion simply do not trust or choose Tell Mama to report their experiences of anti-Muslim racism and attacks."

Warsi added: "This is unacceptable at a time of rising anti-Muslim hatred." She stated: "The government should fund communities to report anti-Muslim racism and attacks in the same way that British Jews are funded to report hate crime through the Community Security Trust, but sadly, Tell Mama is not it." Police sources told The Guardian that the information provided by Tell Mama was "very valuable." Tell Mama stated that it received 10,700 reports of anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2024, indicating a sharp increase.

Founder Mughal told The Guardian: "More people will be targeted, and we know where they will go in the current environment?" He argued: "This is an injustice at a time when I have never seen anti-Muslim rhetoric so mainstream." A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: "Religious and racial hatred has absolutely no place in our society, and we will not tolerate any form of Islamophobia."

The spokesperson added: "This year, we have already provided Tell Mama with up to £1 million in funding to provide support to victims of Islamophobia, and we will announce our future funding approach in due course." Prior to this, the department announced the formation of a new working group last month to develop a definition of Islamophobia and "support wider work to address unacceptable incidents of anti-Muslim hatred." The government also supports a new British Muslim body, the British Muslim Network (BMN), which was launched in late February and in which Warsi is involved, aimed at engaging with the government.

Critics argue that the BMN lacks credibility and warn that the government may use the network to continue avoiding engagement with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). The Labour Party has adopted the former government's policy of boycotting the MCB, which is the largest umbrella body claiming to represent British Muslims, with over 500 member organizations. But the BMN leadership insists that its purpose is not to challenge the role of the MCB and argues that the government should engage with a "wide variety" of Muslim groups, including the MCB and BMN.

Warsi said before the launch of the BMN: "For too long, British Muslims have felt that their voices do not matter. The British Muslim Network is part of a much-needed effort to change that."