Agenda item

To consider the Prevent duty Guidance consultation issued by the Government and considered by the Havering Community Safety Partnership at its meeting on 21 January, 2015.

Officers informed the Sub-Committee that the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, which was currently before Parliament, sought to place a duty on specified authorities (identified in full in Schedule 3 to the Bill and set out in the guidance) to ‘have due regard, in the exercise of its functions, to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’. Preventing people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism also required challenge to extremist ideas where they were used to legitimise terrorism and were shared by terrorist groups. In carrying out this duty, the specified authorities must have regard to guidance issued by the Secretary of State.

The Sub-Committee were advised that the Prevent strategy, published by the government in 2011, was part of our overall counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST. The aim of the Prevent strategy was to reduce the threat to the UK from terrorism by stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. In the Act this has simply been expressed as “prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”.

The Prevent strategy had three specific strategic objectives:

•   Respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat we face from those who promote it;

•   Prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and ensure that they were given appropriate advice and support; and

•    Work with sectors and institutions where there were risks of radicalisation that we need to address.

There were three themes throughout the sector-specific guidance: effective leadership, working in partnership and appropriate capabilities.

1.    Leadership: 

For all specified authorities, it was expected that those in leadership positions:

•   Establish or use existing mechanisms for understanding the risk of radicalisation;     

•   Ensure staff understand the risk and build the capabilities to deal with it;

•    Communicate and promote the importance of the duty; and

•    Ensure staff implement the duty effectively.

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2.    Working in partnership:

Prevent work depended on effective partnership. To demonstrate effective compliance with the duty, specified authorities must demonstrate evidence of productive co-operation, in particular with local Prevent co-ordinators, the police and local authorities, and co-ordination through existing multi-agency forums, for example Community Safety Partnerships.

3.    Capabilities:

Frontline staff who engaged with the public should understand what radicalisation means and why people might be vulnerable to it. They needed to be aware of what we mean by the term “extremism” and the relationship between extremism and terrorism.

Staff needed to know what measures were available to prevent people from becoming drawn into terrorism and how to challenge the extremist ideology that could be associated with it. They needed to understand how to obtain support for people who might be being exploited by radicalising influences.

All specified authorities subject to the duty would need to ensure they provided appropriate training for staff involved in the implementation of this duty. Such training was now widely available.

The Metropolitan Police, in consultation with partners had prepared an action plan designed to ensure key personnel were trained.

The response to the consultation submitted by London Councils was supported by the Sub-Committee.

The sub-committee agreed that any response to the consultation should be co-ordinated by officers. Any member wishing to contribute to the response should contact officers by the end of the week.