Eroding Trust

 

The Open Society Justice Initiative's report, Eroding Trust: The UK's PREVENT Counter-Extremism Strategy in Health and Education, that was launched in the Houses of Parliament last night lends a further voice to the call for the abandonment of the PREVENT duty in schools and in medicine. The panel at the launch event was made up of medical and education professionals along with MPs from 3 different parties and a representative of PREVENT. All made a strong case for the need for trust in school and medical settings.

The consensus was continued during the subsequent discussion from the floor that explored the need to create spaces in schools and doctors surgeries where people can speak freely and explore views that others might find controversial and where everyone's views might be challenged. It was accepted by all speakers that this is the way in which alienation and other factors that might lead to acts of violence might be averted.

Given their commitment to spaces for the promotion of free speech, the representatives from the Home Office who repeated their ongoing refrain in asking what should replace PREVENT if it is repealed as the report calls for appeared to be missing the point. Education when it is allowed to function as it did before PREVENT provided these places and Dr. Clare Gerada (former chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners) suggested that her GP surgery also provided a similar space before PREVENT. It was the introduction of the PREVENT duty in schools that caused my students to stop engaging in political debate in 2014 and I have written about this before.

The spaces for open discussion that those working in PREVENT maintain they are trying to produce are all around us but they just need to be allowed to function by removing PREVENT.