Cooper orders review of anti-terror programme so ‘serious cases are not missed’

The Home Secretary has ordered a “thorough review” of the Southport killer’s referrals to the Prevent anti-terror programme “to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed”.

Yvette Cooper told MPs on Tuesday she had appointed Lord David Anderson KC as interim Prevent commissioner because “independent oversight” of the programme was needed.

A litany of concerns have been raised over the years about how the deradicalisation programme works after several terror attacks were carried out by extremists who had been referred to Prevent.

Ms Cooper’s comments come nearly two years after then-home secretary Suella Braverman said the scheme – which aims to stop people turning to terrorism – needed “major reform” and should focus on security and “not political correctness”.

Axel Rudakubana was reported to Prevent three times between 2019 and 2021 but the Home Office established each referral “should not have been closed”, the Home Secretary said as she branded him responsible for “one of the most barbaric crimes in our country’s history”.

Speaking in the Commons, Ms Cooper said Lord Anderson will start work “immediately”, adding: “His first task will be to conduct a thorough review of the Prevent history in this case to identify what changes are needed to make sure serious cases are not missed, particularly when there is mixed and unclear ideology.”

Meanwhile, the Home Office will look at the thresholds used for Prevent referrals to see how violent behaviour can be “urgently” addressed.

It comes after officials in the department spent the summer investigating Rudakubana’s Prevent referrals and found, “given his age and complex needs”, they should not have been closed.

Ms Cooper said the referrals took place “between three and four years before the Southport attack, including following evidence that he was expressing interest in school shootings, in the London Bridge attack, the IRA, MI5 and the Middle East”, adding that on each occasion Rudakubana’s case was assessed by counter-terror police but not then sent for specialist support.

The findings are due to be published after he is sentenced.

The review “concludes that too much weight was placed on the absence of ideology without considering the vulnerabilities to radicalisation or taking account of whether he was obsessed with massacre or extreme violence, and the cumulative significance of those three repeat referrals was not properly considered”, Ms Cooper told MPs.

The Home Secretary also set out more detail on the public inquiry into the July atrocity which triggered riots around the country.

Highlighting how several public bodies had contact with Rudakubana but “completely failed to identify the terrible danger that he posed”, she said it was “just unbearable to think that something more could and should have been done” as she asked how he fell through so many “gaps”.

“There are grave questions about how this network of agencies failed to identify and act on the risks. There were so many signs of how dangerous he had become, yet the action against him was far too weak. So, families need the truth about why the system failed to tackle his violence for so many years,” Ms Cooper told the Commons.

The public inquiry will begin work “initially on a non-statutory basis, so that it can move quickly into action”, she said, but stressed statutory powers – which would mean witnesses could be ordered to attend and give evidence – would be added later “as required”.

Earlier, the Prime Minister said of the inquiry: “I will not let any institution of the state deflect from their failure.”

Speaking from Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer said he was under “no illusions that until the wider state shows the country it can change not just what it delivers for people, but also its culture, then this atmosphere of mistrust will remain”, adding: “So I want to be crystal clear, in front of the British people today – we will leave no stone unturned.”

Describing himself as the “prosecutor who first spotted failures in grooming cases” at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) 14 years ago and the prosecutor who “first did something about it, by bringing the rape gangs in Rochdale to justice”, he insisted his approach as Prime Minister will be “no different”.

“If any shortcomings are now holding back the ability of this country to keep its citizens and its children safe, I will find them and I will root them out,” he said.

In 2023, Ms Braverman said Prevent needs to “better understand the threats we face and the ideology underpinning them” after a long-awaited report which had been ordered by former home secretary Priti Patel in 2019 made 34 recommendations for an overhaul of Prevent.

At the time Ms Braverman vowed to “swiftly implement all of the review’s recommendations” but in February last year – nearly 12 months since she made this promise – ex-Charity Commission chairman Sir William Shawcross, who led the assessment, claimed the public were being put at risk because his key recommendations had been “ignored” by ministers.

Homegrown terrorist Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered veteran MP Sir David Amess in 2021; Reading terror attacker Khairi Saadallah, who killed three men in a park, and Sudesh Amman, responsible for stabbings in Streatham, south London, both in 2020; Usman Khan, who murdered two people in the Fishmongers’ Hall attack in November 2019; and the 2017 Parsons Green Tube train attacker Iraqi asylum seeker Ahmed Hassan were all referred to Prevent.

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Categories: Ali Harbi Ali, Home Secretary, Lord David Anderson KC, News, Prevent, Prevent Commissioner, Rudakubana, Yvette Cooper