Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to safeguard vulnerable individuals from online radicalisation.
Answered by Ben Wallace
This Government has been clear there should be no safe space online for terrorists and their supporters to radicalise, recruit, incite, or inspire. We continue to work closely with industry to come up with new innovative ways for tackling terrorist use of the internet, as well as helping to provide targeted counter-narrative.
This included working with social media companies to set up the Global Internet Forum to counter-terrorism, launched by Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft on 26 June 2017. This followed a meeting hosted by the Home Secretary on 30 March 2017 where the companies agreed to set up the forum
Anyone can contact local authority safeguarding teams or their local police using the 101 non-emergency number if they believe someone is being radicalised; referrals can also be made through any of the means below:
Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to reduce knife crime.
Answered by Sarah Newton
Tackling knife crime is a priority for the Government. Our Modern Crime Prevention Strategy published in March 2016 set out a range of measures to strengthen our response to knife crime. Our work to tackle knife crime is centred on four key strands – working with the police on operations and enforcement, work on legislative framework, work with retailers on responsible sales, and early intervention and prevention.
We are taking firm action including encouraging police forces to undertake a series of coordinated national weeks of action to tackle knife crime under Operation Sceptre. The operation includes targeting habitual knife carriers, weapon sweeps, test purchases of knives from identified retailers, and the use of surrender bins. The Home Office hosted a national briefing event for police forces on Operation Sceptre on 14 June and a record twenty nine police forces are expected to be involved in the next week of action planned for mid July.
In 2016, we also legislated to ban the sale and importation of “zombie knives”. We have agreed a set of commitments with major retailers to prevent the underage sales of knives more generally in their stores and online. The agreement also covers staff training and displays and packaging. Tesco, eBay UK, Lidl UK, Amazon UK, Wilko, Argos, Asda, Poundland, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s, John Lewis and Waitrose have all signed up to the principles. They have since been joined by Boots, the Co-op, B&Q, Aldi and TKMaxx. We also work with Crimestoppers to refresh their Fearless website and are supporting the development of youth violence intervention projects in hospital accident and emergency departments outside London.
Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to tackle extremism.
Answered by Sarah Newton
We are committed to defeating extremism wherever it occurs and will be establishing a Commission to lead this effort. The Commission for Countering Extremism will advise on how best to tackle this menace and will support our communities to promote and defend our fundamental values.