Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to ensure that charities suspected of extremist activities are not able to register with the Charities Commission.

The Government is determined to defeat extremism in all its forms and cut off the funding for it, which is why we conducted a review of the funding of Islamist extremism in the UK. The review found that the majority of Islamist extremist funding comes from private charitable donations in the UK; and that some extremist organisations seek to avoid regulatory oversight.

The Government’s response therefore includes working with the Charity Commission to increase the proportion of organisations registered as charities; and encourage the public to carefully consider the credentials of the organisations they donate to.