Counter-Extremism Strategy

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for securing this debate. Like him, I want to refer to the APPG’s report, Time to Act: Addressing the UK’s Accelerating Extremism Threat, a copy of which I have handily placed in front of me on the desk. I will come to that in a minute.

I start by pointing out that only two days ago the Community Security Trust, another great organisation that we should probably refer to more often in these debates, recorded that 3,700 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2025. That is the second-highest on record, the highest being in 2023, which was, of course, the year of the appalling attacks in southern Israel. In that year, there were 4,298 incidents.

It is also worth pointing out that, as noted in the APPG report, anti-Muslim hate has doubled over the past decade. Tell Mama recorded that anti-Muslim hate incidents rose from 500 per annum in 2012 to 2,500 per annum in 2021, which is going some. As the APPG has also pointed out, the explosion in the online world—this is stating the obvious—has gone hand in hand with an equally virulent explosion in conspiracy theories and the two have created a toxic mix.

I am pleased that the Government are taking certain steps against the hate marches in the form of the Crime and Policing Bill. It remains to be seen when that Bill reaches the statute book how effective the new measures will be, but I hope that we will leave the door open to going further with those measures, if necessary. I am also pleased that HMG has created criminal sanctions for those who have undeclared links to Tehran, whose proxies operate in the UK and elsewhere.

On that subject, I have two questions for the Minister. The first—he is probably getting tired of listening to me raise this, because I do so probably every couple of weeks—is that we need to look at the question of proscribing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is an issue that came up under the previous Government. It has come up persistently under this Government. I have never heard a convincing explanation as to why we do not proscribe the IRGC. Let us for a minute reflect on what the IRGC is. It is a group of homicidal maniacs who answer to a bunch of clerical fascists in Tehran. The important thing as far as proscription in the UK is concerned is that the IRGC persistently uses proxies. They use front organisations in the UK and elsewhere across the globe in order to carry out their vile activities.

Many of us are worried that we are not perhaps tracking the extremist landscape as effectively as we should be, so my second question for my noble friend is: what assessment have the Government made of who the most prominent domestic extremists are, what is their scale and influence and what is the level of harm that they are causing to British society? I will leave it at that for the time being.