The government’s failure to implement the recommendations of a report into Prevent means the public faces an increased terror threat from the UK’s network of Hamas sympathisers, its author said today. Sir William Shawcross said the UK’s flagship anti-extremism scheme is failing to identify potential terrorists – including Hamas supporters emboldened by the October 7 atrocities in Israel.
He warned that the scheme continued to be biased towards tackling right-wing terrorists despite them posing less of a deadly threat than Islamists, and that the Gaza conflict would result in a rise in radicalisation if no further action is taken. In the report published last year, the adviser found Prevent repeatedly ‘failed’ to identify attackers and said officials had a ‘double standard when dealing with the extreme right-wing and Islamism’ – in part over fears of being called Islamophobic.
This led then Home Secretary Suella Braverman to vow ‘major reform’ so Prevent focused ‘solely on security, not political correctness’, while the Home Office said in a report earlier this week that it had already implemented most of his proposals. But Mr Shawcross told the BBC last night: ‘The Government says they have made some of those changes that I asked for, that I proposed – but not enough. And I think as a result the public is at risk.’
The former head of the Charity Commission said October 7 had ‘changed everything’, with members of the ‘underlying Hamas support network’ in the UK helping to organise pro-Palestinian marches and encouraging participants to bring anti-Semitic banners. Ministers ‘should pay much more attention’ to the threat posed by Hamas sympathisers, Mr Shawcross added.
‘There are unfortunately quite a lot of Hamas sympathisers and some operatives in this country,’ he said. ‘Prevent and the police should have been working much harder against those Hamas people in this country. ‘The public is more at risk because of the events of October 7 and subsequently – and many, many people in this country are much more frightened than they have ever been before.’