The public is being put at risk because the flagship Prevent programme is failing to identify extremists, according to the man chosen by the government to review it.
Sir William Shawcross, who was asked by the Home Office to assess the scheme, said that key recommendations he made last year, including clamping down on Hamas support, had been ignored.
Prevent places public bodies, including schools and the police, under a legal duty to identify people who may turn to extremism, and intervene in their lives before it is too late.
This week ministers marked a year since Shawcross’s review and James Cleverly, the home secretary, declared in a progress report that “thanks to the work undertaken in response to [the] review, we have a first-class Prevent programme that can play a central role in [counterterrorism]”.
However, Shawcross told the BBC that the “glass is still only half full”.
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He said: “The government has published a report saying that they have made some of those changes that I asked for, that I proposed — but not enough.” Shawcross added that ministers had “ignored” some of his key recommendations “and I think as a result the public is at risk”.
He said that Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel left him feeling more worried about extremism in the UK and that the government, through Prevent, “should pay much more attention to the Hamas support network”.
“There are unfortunately quite a lot of Hamas sympathisers and some operatives in this country,” Shawcross said. “Prevent and the police should have been working much harder against those Hamas people in this country.”
In 2021, following concerns about Prevent’s effectiveness, ministers asked Shawcross, a former chairman of the Charity Commission and well-known critic of Islamist political influence in Europe, to review the programme.
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He found that it had lost its way and was unable to identify how many of the community organisations receiving some of its £49 million budget were having any impact. In one instance, he said, Prevent had funded a group whose head was sympathetic to the Taliban.
Speaking to the BBC, he added: “The public are more at risk because of the events of 7 October and subsequently — and many, many people in this country are much more frightened than they have ever been.”
Last week three women were convicted of a terrorism offence after displaying “paraglider” images at a pro-Palestine protest a week after the attack, which were likely to “arouse reasonable suspicion that they were either members or supporters of a proscribed organisation, namely Hamas”.
When he was appointed to lead the review into Prevent, Shawcross was criticised by some civil rights campaign groups, including some who accused him of having anti-Islamic views.
The government, whose actions he is now questioning, had always defended his review. A Home Office spokesman said that the government had made “significant progress to deliver a strengthened Prevent”.
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“William Shawcross’s review was critical to ensuring Prevent is fit for purpose, which is why we accepted his recommendations in full,” they said. “One year on, we have delivered 30 of the 34 recommendations he made, and we are making rapid progress on delivering the remaining four.
“The government agrees that extreme Islamist ideology presents the greatest threat to the UK, and has moved swiftly to update Prevent duty guidance and training.”
