Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to prevent the spread of Islamic State extremism to within UK borders.

The Government's PREVENT programme aims to prevent people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. It includes programmes to deal with extremist groups, including those that have been proscribed by the Government.

It includes work to challenge terrorist ideology (including disrupting extremist speakers and removing material online) and to intervene and stop
people being radicalised. In the context of Syria and Iraq, we work to dissuade people from travelling there. We also have a range of interventions, from arrest at port for those suspected of committing terrorist offences, to support for people at risk from radicalisation.

The Government's Channel programme provides tailored support to people who have been identified as at risk of radicalisation. Referrals to Channel come from a range of sources including families, police, local authorities and others.

Since April 2012 there have been over 2000 referrals to Channel and hundreds of people have been offered support. In order to ensure our frontline services are able to deliver this support, since June 2011, we have provided training on tackling extremism to over 24,000 frontline public sector workers and are rolling out a revised version of the training this autumn.

The police work with the internet industry to remove terrorist material hosted in the UK or overseas and are making good progress. Since February 2010, the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit (CTIRU) has taken down more than 49,000 pieces of unlawful terrorist-related content which encourages or glorifies acts of terrorism. Over 30,000 of these have been removed since December 2013.

In parallel, we have made it easier for the public to report terrorist and extremist content they are concerned about via www.gov.uk/report-terrorism.

As the Prime Minister announced on 1 September, we keep this work under constant review and are looking at what more we can add to this comprehensive package of measures designed to ensure that we continue to do all we can to prevent the spread of extremism.