07-06-11, 01:00 PM
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Axe funding for anti-democracy Muslim groups, says former minister
Axe funding for anti-democracy Muslim groups, says former minister | Politics | guardian.co.uk
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There are "plenty of Muslim groups" in Britain who hold anti-democratic values and whose funding should be withdrawn, according to Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the government's former security minister.
Neville-Jones, who quit the Home Office last month, told the BBC it was not right for the government to "actively assist and advocate those who are advocating quite different values".
Her comments came before the publication of a revised Prevent counter-terrorism strategy, which is expected to confirm that 20 of the 1,200 groups currently financed will have their government funding withdrawn. The affected groups are not expected to be publicly named.
The 150-page document will back coalition criticisms that the £63m-a-year Prevent strategy, which combined community cohesion work with tackling terrorism, has seen millions wasted on Foreign Office anti-extremism projects without producing any security benefits.
It also reportedly says that no more cash will be spent on "organisations that hold extremist views or support terrorist-related activity".
According to a report in the Times today, the document claims that scrutiny of spending has been so poor it is "possible that Prevent funding has reached extremist groups of which we are not yet aware".
The bulk of the £63m budget is to be split off into a separate community cohesion fund run by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
A much reduced Home Office and Ministry of Justice programme will be aimed at "significantly scaling up" efforts to tackle radicalisation in prison and the supervision of newly released convicted terrorists, and on work in the university and health sectors.
There will be a new focus on denying potential terrorists use of the internet, with the possible development of a national "blocking list" of violent and unlawful websites. This will be used to prevent computers in schools, colleges and libraries from being used to access unlawful material.
"We want to explore the potential for violent and unlawful URL lists to be voluntarily incorporated into independent national blocking lists," the document is believed to state. "Internet filtering across the public estate is essential."
Doctors and other medical professionals are to be brought within the programme for the first time and asked to help identify those at "vulnerable to the risk of radicalisation".
"The key challenge is to ensure that healthcare workers can identify the signs that someone is vulnerable to radicalisation, interpret those signs correctly and access the relevant support," the document is expected to say.
It adds that the Department of Health will need to ensure that the "crucial relationship of trust and confidence between patient and clinician" is balanced with the health worker's responsibility to protect wider public safety.
Isabella Sankey, director of policy for the civil rights group Liberty, said: "The old Prevent strategy left Muslims feeling targeted and all taxpayers wondering where millions of pounds had gone. But its gravest error was blurring the lines between dissent and criminality and between civil society and security agencies. This is the danger that must be avoided in future.
"Block terrorist websites and stop prisons breeding hate by all means, but don't turn teachers and doctors into spies."
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