The government’s counter-terrorism Prevent programme tends to hit the news only when it fails to prevent things, as seen most recently when we learned that Axel Rudakubana had been referred to it on three occasions before murdering three young girls in Southport.
But perhaps it’s precisely because Prevent reaches public awareness only in such circumstances that most people don’t appreciate how wide-ranging its day-to-day concerns and activities are. or how in the last couple of years they’ve become more wide-ranging still. You may not realise, for instance, that the 2023 online Prevent Refresher Awareness Course — hosted on gov.uk and completed by thousands of public-sector professionals — includes among its subcategories of terrorist ideology something called “cultural nationalism”: a symptom of which is the belief that “Western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of integration by certain ethnic and cultural groups”.
One problem with this belief qualifying as a danger sign is obvious: that it’s not only widely held but increasingly part of the political mainstream. It’s also, needless to say, perfectly lawful. Another problem, though – which I’ll come on to later – is more hidden: the way Prevent functions means that a single referral can have serious, long-lasting consequences.
But first a reminder of just how mainstream that supposedly alarming belief is. Fewer than 50 per cent of Britons believe that Britain is a successful multicultural society. Concerns about the impact of immigration on social cohesion, the idea that integration should be a policy priority and a conviction that shared cultural norms help sustain a liberal society are regularly expressed by big-hitting political commentators such as bestselling author Douglas Murray, former academic turned GB News host Matthew Goodwin and Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham.
They are also voiced by leading politicians. In April 2023, then Immigration Minister (now Shadow Justice Secretary) Robert Jenrick MP warned that “excessive, uncontrolled migration threatens to cannibalise the compassion of the British public”. Describing conversations with residents in Dover “whose lives had been made a misery by illegal migrants”, he noted they felt “abandoned by the authorities and estranged from their neighbourhood”.
But you don’t have to be a Conservative to risk sounding like a cultural nationalist. In 2019, Tony Blair talked of “a duty to integrate, to accept the rules, laws and norms of our society that all British people hold in common and share”. In May this year, Sir Keir Starmer launched the government’s Immigration White Paper with the words: “Nations depend on rules — fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not… Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers… When people come to our country, they should also commit to integration, to learning our language — and our system should actively distinguish between those that do and those that don’t.”
Granted, it’s unlikely that the Prime Minister will be referred to Prevent any time soon. But what if the same kind of sentiments were expressed by a teenager in a classroom or an employee online? There seems no reason why they wouldn’t fall within Prevent’s definition of “cultural nationalism”.
The Free Speech Union … knows of plenty of people referred to Prevent when lawful but controversial views were misread as signs of extremism
As many academics and civil liberties organisations have pointed out, Prevent has shifted from focusing on conduct (acquiring weapons, making threats, inciting violence) to treating political ideologies as indicators of risk — the problem being that “risky” ideologies are both vaguely defined and culturally loaded.
Certainly, the Free Speech Union (FSU) knows of plenty of people referred to Prevent when lawful but controversial views were misread as signs of extremism: a Christian teacher who stated that marriage is between a man and a woman; a schoolboy who declared in a YouTube video that “there’s no such thing as non-binary”; a 24-year-old autistic man whose social worker reported that he’d been viewing “offensive and anti-trans” websites and “focusing on lots of right-wing darker comedy”.
The Prevent duty is presented as a proportionate safeguarding mechanism. Public sector workers who suspect someone may be susceptible to radicalisation are expected to follow the “notice, check, share” procedure. This typically involves consulting a Prevent Lead or Designated Safeguarding Lead, who decides whether the matter should be referred to the police. If so, it’s passed on to specialist officers who determine whether the case is “no further actioned” or if the individual should be considered for support via Channel — a voluntary, multi-agency programme intended to divert people from extremism — or a Police-Led Partnership (PLP), in which the issues are addressed outside the formal Channel process.
If the threshold for referral to the police were high — or if the Prevent system filtered out unfounded referrals and left no institutional trace — then the inclusion of a broad ideological category like “cultural nationalism” might be less troubling. Unfortunately, neither is the case.
Indeed, the 2023 Prevent Duty Guidance explicitly encourages referrals even where uncertainty exists: “There may be times when the precise ideological driver is not clear. Yet, like any safeguarding mechanism, it is far better to receive referrals which turn out not to be of concern.” In effect, staff are urged to refer people “just in case” on the basis of impressionistic cues.
But this of course raises the crucial question of what’s being captured: the referred person’s conduct, or the referrer’s ideological outlook? That question becomes even more acute with a category as vague and politically loaded as “cultural nationalism” — not least when you bear in mind the political composition of the education sector.
A June 2024 survey by Times Higher Education found that 64 per cent of university staff intended to vote Labour, with 12 per cent supporting the Greens and just 4 per cent backing the Conservatives. Given the sector’s overwhelmingly progressive orientation, it’s unlikely to be sympathetic to views suggesting that immigration has had a destabilising effect – and may even be hair-triggered to spot signs of them. A teenage boy with a bookshelf of Douglas Murray titles, a strong interest in national policy and a willingness to speak his mind could find himself flagged as a potential radical without ever having done anything unlawful, threatening or violent.
But, in fact, we don’t need to speculate about whether perception and personal bias might lead to excessive referring — because we already know that it has. An independent report in 2020 found that Prevent’s handling of “Islamist extremism” had led to high rates of over-referral, particularly in the NHS, where more than 90 per cent of referrals failed to meet the threshold for intervention. Most of those flagged were Muslim, neurodiverse or in mental health crisis: a pattern the report attributes to the absence of clear and validated risk criteria. In the resulting vacuum, Prevent training materials instructed health professionals to “trust their instincts”.
When it comes to “cultural nationalism”, the same lack of a carefully defined target belief system, anchored in specific risk indicators, means that political perception will inevitably fill the gap. Once again, the outcome is likely to be a wave of false positives.
All of which might not matter so much if a referral that’s “no further actioned” was quietly and instantly forgotten. Instead, details about the referred individual — often a child — are still entered into the Prevent Case Management Tracker (PCMT), the national database maintained by counter-terrorism policing. This data is retained in the PCMT for a minimum of six years. It’s also duplicated in the Police National Database (where it also remains for at least six years); the Police National Computer (where it can stay until the subject’s 100th birthday); the Metropolitan Police’s criminal intelligence system (where it can be held indefinitely); and the Ports Intelligence Watchlist (which flags individuals for border surveillance — length of time unspecified).
And just in case that isn’t enough, it can then be accessed by MI5, MI6, the Home Office, Border Force, HMRC, the Charity Commission and local safeguarding teams including in schools, NHS infrastructure and children’s services — where it’s retained for 25 years beyond the child’s 18th birthday.
We also know, again mostly from the experiences of Muslims, that this data retention can prove extremely damaging. Tarik, for example, was offered a place at a sixth form college in London — but after it was confirmed, the college received “new information” from his secondary school. That disclosure was made on the advice of the Prevent officer who’d dealt with his case, despite the fact that no action had been taken. Tarik’s offer was withdrawn on the day he was due to enrol, leaving his parents to scramble for an alternative sixth form place after the new term had already started.
Even the High Court has recognised this risk. In R (II) v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, it considered the Prevent referral of an 11-year-old boy. No counter-terrorism concern was substantiated, yet the Metropolitan Police had by then kept hold of his data for five years. As Justice Steyn observed: “As long as the Claimant’s personal data is retained, he will continue to fear that it may be disclosed to third parties, particularly universities from which he may receive offers… fear that he may be tagged (wrongly) as a supporter of terrorism.”
But in a way the boy here was almost lucky — because at least he knew he’d been referred. Most people don’t.
Lord Young, Director of the Free Speech Union, recently wrote a letter to Home Secretary Yvette Cooper which pressed her to conduct an urgent audit of the Prevent Refresher Awareness Course, suspending “cultural nationalism” as a subcategory of terrorist ideology; removing all references that conflate mainstream political views with extremism; and making it clear that expressions of lawful opinion — however controversial — don’t constitute grounds for referral. He also urged her to establish a mechanism allowing individuals to discover what Prevent-related data is held about them, and to request deletion where no risk exists.
I look forward to her reply — and ideally her enthusiastic agreement — before too long.
