Published by Open Rights Group (ORG)

Last month, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove MP, announced a new and expanded definition of extremism as part of the Government’s Counter Terrorism Strategy. 

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Extremism is now defined as: “the promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to:

1. Negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or
2. Undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or
3. Intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).”

While to some this may seem like a reasonable measure to protect against threats to democracy, the imprecise language leaves too much room for interpretation and potential misuse. The third of these – aiming to “intentionally create a permissive environment for others” is especially subjective and problematic: merely stating that legitimate grievances or drivers of extremism need to be tackled could be interpreted as falling within this definition.

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The new guidance is non-statutory, meaning it will not be enshrined in law and will only affect parliamentarians and civil servants who will no longer be allowed to engage with groups that supposedly meet the new definition. The government’s independent reviewer of state threat legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, has warned that this defines people as extremists by “ministerial decree”.

It is important to ask why the government have renewed their focus on extremism since 7 October, without proposing legislative changes and therefore denying parliamentary scrutiny. This may be because a previous attempt to redefine extremism by the Cameron government, failed to find a “legally robust” definition. However, regardless of how the new definition of extremism is applied, there will, no doubt, be a wider chilling effect on free speech.

Key Findings

• Referrals are stored within a national Prevent database, regardless of whether they meet the threshold to be reviewed by a Channel panel.
• Data is being held for a minimum of six years but can be kept for up to 100 years. The rationale for this minimum retention period is to consider the possibility of “re-offending” – even though Prevent referees have not in fact committed a crime. If there is no policing purpose for retaining data, this retention could be unlawful. Individuals are not necessarily informed that their data is being stored nor whether their data has been deleted after the six-year period or further retained.
• There appears to be a lack of oversight and parliamentary scrutiny over data sharing, processing and storage of Prevent referrals that are inappropriate for Channel interventions but which are managed by police-led partnerships. Once a case is managed by the police, national security exemptions can be applied to limit rights to rectification, access and removal. But the Intelligence and Security Committee does not deal with policing and the Independent reviewer of Terrorism Legislation does not oversee cases managed by police-led partnerships. This means that new counter terrorism capabilities are being built without Parliamentary oversight or legislative safeguards.
• The data of some Prevent referees is being shared with airports, ports and immigration services. This could explain reports that people who have been referred to Prevent have subsequently been questioned at ports and airports under schedule 7.
• It is very difficult for individuals to exercise their right to erasure and request data is removed because many will not know that they have been referred to Prevent. Even when they do know, the lack of transparency about data sharing makes it very difficult for individuals to find out all the different places that their data is being held.