Security Minister Tom Tugendhat Tells MPs ‘Soft Bigotry’ May Create Tolerance for Islamist Extremism

Britain's Minister of State for Security Tom Tugendhat arrives to attend the first Cabinet meeting under the new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak in 10 Downing Street, London, on Oct. 26, 2022. (Niklas Halle'n/AFP via Getty Images)

Security minister Tom Tugendhat has said the “bigotry of low expectations” may be to blame for under-reporting of concerns about Islamist extremism to the UK government’s Prevent programme.

Tugendhat told Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday that a kind of “soft bigotry” is enabling tolerance for Islamist extremism “in a way that there quite rightly shouldn’t be for extreme right-wing extremism.”

Last month an independent review of the Prevent strategy found it is “not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism” and “has a double standard when dealing with the extreme right-wing and Islamism.”

The review was ordered by former Home Secretary Priti Patel in 2019 and her successor, Suella Braverman, said the government would be accepting all 34 recommendations in the report.

Braverman described the 188-page review, led by the former Chairman of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, as “superb” and “unflinching.”

She added that it showed the Prevent strategy had been influenced by “cultural timidity” and “institutional hesitancy” for fear of being accused of Islamophobia.

The report recommended a series of reforms to Prevent, which was founded by former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2003 in the wake of 9/11, and the Channel panels, which were set up to try and deradicalise vulnerable people.

The Shawcross report (pdf) said, “Prevent must return to its overarching objective: to stop individuals from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.”

Asked why there were more referrals about extreme right-wing ideology than Islamist extremism, Tugendhat said on Wednesday that there were several theories: “One is that there is a misunderstanding of what is culturally acceptable and what therefore might be an inspiration to radical ideology in some communities rather than others. And I think that’s what I mean by the bigotry of low expectations.”

Michael Stewart, the director of Prevent, said more cases were referred to the service from the extreme right than from Islamic extremism. This contrasts with MI5 and the police, which found about 75 percent of their caseloads were Islamist and 20 percent from the extreme right.

Stewart said the Shawcross review identifies that disparity, but he added, “The report doesn’t describe to us actually why that’s so, so we’re in a position of collecting a significant amount of data on that so we can understand that better.”

Tory backbench MP James Daly put it to Tugendhat that, after 20 years, Prevent “didn’t work.”

Tugendhat disagreed and said: “I’m not saying it’s 100 percent successful, that would be absurd. But when we see the way in which it’s been able to divert some people away from violent extremism, that’s got to be seen as a success.”

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley (R) with Baroness Louise Casey before answering questions from London Assembly members at City Hall in east London on March 22, 2023. (PA)

Earlier Baroness Louise Casey told the same committee she felt the police had not “moved into the 21st century” like other industries such as education and social services.

On Tuesday, Casey published a damning review that said there was “institutional racism, misogyny, and homophobia” in the Metropolitan Police.

The Metropolitan Police’s Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, apologised for letting Londoners down but took issue with the word “institutional,” which he said had become politicised and ambiguous in recent years.

The review into the Met’s standards of behaviour and internal culture was commissioned last year after serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens was given a whole life tariff for abducting, raping, and murdering 33-year-old marketing executive Sarah Everard.

On Wednesday, Casey told Parliament it was a “shame” Rowley had reacted as he had and she felt he was “splitting hairs” when he rejected the accusation of institutional prejudice.

She said she felt it was a “missed opportunity” and she hoped he would soon accept her “diagnosis” of the systemic problems the Met faces.

Met is ‘Long on Hubris, Very Low on Humility’

Casey said, “We realised when we arrived in the Met, that we were in an institution that was long on hubris, very low on humility.”

Referring to the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer, Casey said: “For me that would have been a moment in an organisation or a profession that was the equivalent of ... a plane falling out of the sky. Therefore you would look at yourself as an organisation and ask yourself a myriad of questions.”

Casey said the Met needed to radically reform itself and she drew a comparison with the way the Royal Ulster Constabulary was transformed when it became the Police Service of Northern Ireland following the Good Friday Agreement.

She said, “What’s really interesting is the police haven’t moved into the 21st century in the way that others have.”

Casey said in both the education and the children’s social services sectors it was accepted that paedophiles would try to get jobs which put them “near to children” and systems were put in place to prevent them from attracting the “wrong people.”

Casey: Police Can Attract Those Who ‘Want to Abuse Power’

She said that the police force doesn’t recognise that there might be people attracted to the job because they “want power and actually want to abuse power.”

Casey’s review found violence against women and girls has not been taken as seriously as other forms of violence, citing the testimony of an officer who told the investigators a whole team of experienced and specialist detectives would be assigned to a murder investigation, while a woman raped and left in a coma would likely be dealt with by one trainee detective constable.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said it was “really important” if the Met was going to have a future it must “embrace the recommendations” of Casey’s report.

An undated police mugshot of David Carrick, a serving Metropolitan Police officer who admitted the last of 49 serious sexual offences at Southwark Crown Court in London on Jan. 16, 2023. (Hertfordshire Police)

Home Secretary Suella Braverman said she would increase funding and ensure the Met has all the support it needs from central government, and urged all forces to “focus relentlessly on common sense policing that stops crime and keeps the public safe.”

She also said she would hold the Met to account, and asked the public to judge them on their actions and not words.

In January, Rowley said he planned to write to Braverman and Khan at the end of March in an open public letter, and said by then he hoped the Met would have “finished reviewing all of our people, having checked their details against all the police, national intelligence data in the police national database.”

After serial rapist and serving police officer David Carrick was jailed, all police forces in England and Wales were told to conduct checks on their staff. Rowley previously said he expected two or three officers a week to appear in court charged with offences linked to dishonesty, sexual offences, violence, or domestic violence.