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Web ban on hate preachers

HATE preachers will be banned from using the internet or working with children under a crackdown on extremism to be unveiled by David Cameron tomorrow.

The prime minister will publish plans to create a blacklist of radicals and extremist groups subject to banning orders.

Last night he vowed to plough £5m over the next six months into funding moderate Muslim groups and charities in a move to counter the “poison” peddled by militants.

Some of the money will be spent setting up a newspaper to be run by moderate imams to counteract Isis propaganda.

Ministers will also join forces with internet companies to form a group to tackle the proliferation of extremist content online.

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The prime minister will signal that the government will revive the so-called “snooper’s charter”. This will give greater powers to the intelligence services to monitor the activities of suspected terrorists.

Ministers say that it will be voted on early next year.

In a speech tomorrow the prime minister will also announce plans for a new extremism bill which will:

■ Outlaw groups that foment hate
■ Force public sector organisations to boycott those on the blacklist
■ Slap “extremism disruption orders” on those seeking to radicalise young people online, banning them from using the internet or communicating via social media
■ Close mosques where extremist meetings have taken place
■ Let employers check whether an individual is an extremist and bar them from working with children
■ Strengthen the powers available to Ofcom, the media regulator, to strengthen sanctions against channels that broadcast extremist content or give a platform to hate preachers.

Cameron will also pledge to act on a current review of the operation of sharia courts and announce that new arrivals in the country should respect “British values”. In a foreword to the strategy Theresa May, the home secretary, defines these as “democracy, free speech, mutual respect and opportunity for all”.

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The prime minister said: “We need to systematically confront and challenge extremism and the ideologies that underpin it, exposing the lies and the destructive consequences it leaves in its wake.

“We have to stop this seed of hatred even being planted in people’s minds and cut off the oxygen it needs to grow.”

The extremism strategy will target militants even if they do not specifically advocate violence as well as racists, anti-semites and those who spread conspiracy theories.

A new community engagement forum will funnel cash to groups such as the Active Change Foundation, a youth centre in east London which trains young communiuty leaders, and Inspire, a women’s counterextremism organisation which runs workshops for Muslim women across the country.

The strategy was questioned by David Davis, the former Tory home affairs spokesman. “Extremism banning orders just won’t work. The government of the day cannot easily lay down what British values are. If you enforce tolerance of other religions you cramp free speech,” he said.

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“All that will happen with a newspaper is that anyone associated with it will become an easy target for the Islamists who will label them collaborators. Being quite so crude and heavy-handed may backfire and undermine people we want to support.”

Davis recently won a high court ruling declaring emergency legislation on surveillance powers is incompatible with European Union law. The government will appeal against the case on Thursday.

Another defeat would force ministers to clarify their stance on the “snooper’s charter” by March and is likely to force them to agree to judicial oversight of surveillance requests by the intelligence agencies.

The partnership between the government, web companies and the police to take down extremist material from the internet will build on work to remove child abuse images.

The Metropolitan police counter-terrorism internet referral unit has removed more than 110,000 pieces of extremist propaganda since 2010 — 38,000 so far this year.

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Officials say Isis produces 38 unique pieces of “high-quality propaganda every day”. The type of content already targeted for removal includes a video by one Islamist extremist, viewed more than 5,000 times on YouTube, which says unbelievers are “not worth anything, less than an ant, less than an insect, less than a dog”.

Those who peddle Islamophobic content will also be targeted. One video, viewed more than 9,000 times, shows a speaker at an anti-Muslim rally in Newcastle describing Islam as a “disgusting, backward, savage, barbarian, supremacist ideology masquerading as a religion”.