A legal framework is still needed to tackle extremism, the government’s former adviser on extremism said on Wednesday.
Dame Sara Khan, independent adviser for social cohesion and resilience and former commissioner for countering extremism, said she believes designating extremist organisations under a legal framework would be more open and transparent than the government’s current plan.
Making the announcement in Parliament, the minister named five organisations which he characterised as neo-Nazi or Islamist, using parliamentary privilege, and said the government will assess them against the new definition of extremism.
Once an organisation is assessed to be extremist, it will be excluded from government funding or platforms. There may also be implications in relation to the counter-terrorist Prevent programme, to which the definition will apply.
The only route for an organisation to get off the list is to seek judicial review.
While Mr. Gove has promised to back up any designation with published evidence, the plan still raised concerns over civil liberties.
Speaking to the Human Rights joint committee on Wednesday, Ruth Ehrlich of Liberty said organisations shouldn’t have to undertake the “extremely costly and lengthy” judicial review process.
She argued the definition is still too “vague and broad,” and that it’s “dangerous” to target ideologies instead of actions.
She also said the new definition “will continue to compound the existing harms of the Prevent duty, which has a particular impact on the rights to freedom of expression, assembly, thought, conscience, and religion, particularly of Muslims, children, and people who are neurodivergent.”
Dame Sara, who was on the same panel, disagreed with Ms. Ehrlich, saying the definition does target actions, namely the promotion or advancement of an extreme ideology.
She also argued that the onus on the government to prove intention and identify a “pattern of behaviour” makes it a high bar for designations.
However, she shared some parliamentarians’ concerns over the lack of oversight.
“I do agree that ... there should be an independent oversight board who does the checks and balances on this. But I have to say, I understand that this is for government use only, and it’s a very narrow context,” she said.
“My own personal preference, as I outlined in the 2021 report, is that if we think this is such a serious threat, which I believe it is, we should actually create a legal framework.”
Dame Sara also said she believes a legal framework is “more helpful” because “there is an increasing tactic being used by clearly extremist organisations to sue and use libel law to silence anybody, including sections of the press.”
“The tactics of extremists have changed substantially in the last 10 years,” she said, adding that both neo-Nazi and Islamist groups “regularly use libel law to try and shut down any attempt to investigate or report on their activity.”
Legal Gap
Dame Sara and Sir Mark Rowley, who is now the Metropolitan Police commissioner have been calling for a new body of law to tackle hateful extremism that falls short of terrorism since 2021, when the Met published its “Operating with Impunity” report.The pair said many “hateful extremist” activities, such as glorifying terrorism and intentionally stirring up racial hatred, can fall through the cracks between so-called hate crime legislation and laws on terrorism so long as they avoid encouraging acts of terrorism or being threatening.
Sir Mark repeated his call for new legislation after the Met Police were criticised last year for not taking action over chants of “jihad” and “from the river to the sea,” and “shahada” flags that some say was the flag of the ISIS terrorist group, during pro-Palestine and anti-Israel demonstrations following the Hamas attack on Israel.
In 2005, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to proscribe Hizb ut-Tahrir, although the group was later assessed to not meet the criteria.
Repeating the call for new anti-extremism legislation on Wednesday, Dame Sara said, “If we did have hateful extremism proscription orders, separate to terrorism proscription orders, we would have not seen them on the streets, chanting jihad, creating that kind of climate and incitement against Jewish people and others.”
Following Sir Mark’s call for new counter-extremism legislation last year, Jonathan Hall, KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, warned against such a move, saying it’s too difficult to achieve the goal without “going too far” in restricting free speech.
In a report published in November, he reiterated his warning, saying there’s “a general risk of legislating in response to one set of protests because of the risk of unintended consequences when new legislation comes to be applied to other protests.”
He also said it would be “premature to conclude” that laws need to be changed when “real cases [are] currently before the courts” and “the edges of the current law [are] being tested out.”
