Dame Sara Khan, the former Home Office extremism tsar, says official proposals to tackle extremism in Britain have been “sitting on a shelf gathering dust” despite evidence that the country is facing “unprecedented” levels of radicalisation. The Telegraph has the story.
Dame Sara Khan said she was “baffled” that the department failed to formally respond to any of the reports she produced as head of the Commission for Countering Extremism.
She warned that the country’s “counter-extremism infrastructure” is “poor, it is weakly coordinated and there are serious gaps”.
The intervention comes after the Metropolitan Police said they agreed with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s assessment that there were “red lights blinking everywhere” – in a reference to the warning signs missed before the September 11th attacks – following the October 7th atrocities carried out by Hamas. …
But, addressing MPs last week, Dame Sara, who was Counter-Extremism Commissioner between January 2018 and March 2021, said: “I have not had a response from the Government to any of my reports when I was at the Commission for Countering Extremism, which in all honesty I have to say I find baffling.
“Even more so given that one of the key recommendations made to the Home Secretary in March this year by Sir John Saunders, who carried out the inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombings, was as a matter of urgency to consider and respond to the Operating with Impunity report [produced by the independent Commission for Countering Extremism].”
She added: “As far as I am aware, my reports are all sitting on a shelf gathering dust in the Home Office. …
“What I stated in my report was that having reviewed the Government’s then 2015 counter-extremism strategy, which was not about laws, having now carried out a legal review looking into the gaps in legislation, we do not unfortunately have a robust, strong counter-extremism infrastructure.
“Instead, it is poor, it is weakly coordinated and there are serious gaps.”
Worth reading in full.
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