Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she has taken to help tackle far-right extremism.

The overarching aim of the UK’s comprehensive counter terrorism strategy, CONTEST, is to reduce the risk to the UK and its citizens and interests overseas from terrorism, so that our people can go about their lives freely and with confidence.

CONTEST is threat agnostic, and government’s powers and capabilities are both applicable and effective in tackling various ideologies, including Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism (ERWT).

Since March 2017, the police have disrupted twelve ERWT plots, and the government has now proscribed 5 ERWT groups as well as groups aliases. In 2021 we reviewed our approach to ERWT which confirmed our threat agnostic approach was proportionate and effective in dealing with the various threats we face.

Most recently government has;

• Established the world-leading Counter-Terrorism Operations Centre to pull together expertise and resource across police, intelligence agencies and the criminal justice system. This will enable us to better identify and tackle emerging threats from terrorism, hostile state activity and serious organised crime.
• Announced the Protect Duty (to be introduced by primary legislation) which will assist in reducing potential vulnerabilities and strengthening our protection against terrorist attacks by seeking the consideration and implementation of appropriate and proportionate security measures at certain locations.
• Introduced the Online Safety Bill to Parliament - a truly world-leading and much-needed law which will make the UK the safest place to be online –which will require tech companies to remove and limit the spread of terrorist content. The Bill will be continuing its passage through Parliament shortly.

Announced the refresh of the CONTEST strategy, which is being updated to protect the public from new and emerging threats to our way of life.