What is Prevent?
Prevent is one of four strands of the government’s CONTEST counter terrorism strategy, introduced in 2003 and most recently revised in 2011. Prevent aims to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism by:
• responding to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat faced by the UK from those who promote it
• preventing people from being drawn into terrorism and ensure they are given appropriate advice and support
• working with a wide range of sectors (including education, criminal justice, faith, charities, the internet and health) where there are risks of radicalisation which need to be addressed
Education was identified, along with a range of sectors and the internet, as a priority area with regard to tackling radicalisation in the government’s 2011 Prevent strategy document.
How does Prevent apply to higher education institutions?
Engagement with Prevent has until recently been voluntary. However, the new Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places a ‘statutory duty’ (the ‘Prevent duty’) on a range of public bodies, including higher education institutions, to engage with Prevent.
Institutions must now have ‘due regard to the need to prevent individuals from being drawn into terrorism’ (s26). The Act also gives the secretary of state power to ‘issue guidance to specified authorities [including higher education institutions] about the exercise of their [Prevent] duty’ which they ‘must have regard to’, and to ‘give directions to the authority for the purpose of enforcing the performance of that duty’ where authorities have failed to do so (s30).
During the passage of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill, a range of interested parties – not only higher education institutions and sector organisations but also individual academics, politicians and the Joint Committee on Human Rights – raised a number of concerns and challenges to the provisions of the Act and the planned guidance, particularly as they related to freedom of speech. Many of these concerns focused on the inclusion of non-violent extremism in the exercise of the statutory duty. As a result of the concerns expressed, the Act now states that in carrying out the statutory duty, higher education institutions:
(a) must have particular regard to the duty to ensure freedom of speech, if it is subject to that duty
(b) must have particular regard to the importance of academic freedom, if it is the proprietor or governing body of a qualifying institution
It also states that the secretary of state in issuing guidance to higher education institutions and in giving directions to them:
(a) must have particular regard to the duty to ensure freedom of speech, in the case of authorities that are subject to that duty
(b) must have particular regard to the importance of academic freedom, in the case of authorities that are proprietors or governing bodies of qualifying institutions.
In March 2015, following a public consultation, the Home Office issued guidance on the Prevent duty (one version for England and Wales and another for Scotland). It states that it ‘does not prescribe what appropriate decisions would be – this will be up to institutions to determine’. However, it sets out a range of actions it expects to see from higher education institutions for them to be considered compliant with the Prevent duty. These include:
• ‘Active engagement from senior management of the university … with other partners including police and BIS regional higher and further education Prevent co-ordinators’
• ‘use of internal mechanisms to share information about Prevent across the relevant faculties of the institution’
• ‘[for] institutions to have regular contact with the relevant Prevent co-ordinator’
• ‘Risk assessment[s] … [of] where and how … students might be at risk of being drawn into terrorism. This includes not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism’
• Prevent action plans to mitigate risk
• A willingness to ‘undertake Prevent awareness training and other training that could help the relevant staff prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and challenge extremist ideas which risk drawing people into terrorism’
• ‘sufficient chaplaincy and pastoral support available for all students’
• ‘clear and widely available policies for the use of prayer rooms and other faith-related facilities’
• ‘policies relating to the use of university IT equipment … contain[ing] specific reference to the statutory duty’
• ‘clear policies and procedures for students and staff working on sensitive or extremism-related research’
• In relation to students’ unions, ‘clear policies setting out the activities that are or are not allowed to take place on campus and any online activity directly related to the university’
• For ‘student unions and societies to work closely with their institution and co-operate with the institutions’ policies’.
The published guidance did not include any section on external speakers and events as the coalition government could not agree its content prior to the General Election 2015 purdah period. However, this section is due to be published imminently.
The statutory duty will be applied to most public bodies from 1 July 2015. However, it is widely understood that it will not apply to higher education institutions until the external speaker section has been agreed and added to the published guidance.
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