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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 165-v House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
TERRORISM AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS
Tuesday 1 March 2005 MS HAZEL BLEARS MP, MR BOB WHALLEY, MR TONY LORD and MS JUDITH LEMPRIERE Evidence heard in Public Questions 459 - 522
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 1 March 2005 Members present Mr John Denham, in the Chair Janet Anderson Mr James Clappison Mrs Janet Dean Mr Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell Mr John Taylor David Winnick ________________ Memorandum submitted by the Home Office
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Hazel Blears, a Member of the House, Minister of State for Crime Reduction, Policing, Community Safety and Counter-Terrorism, Mr Bob Whalley, Director, Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, Mr Tony Lord, Crime Reduction and Community Safety Group, and Ms Judith Lempriere, Head, Cohesion and Faiths Unit, Home Office, examined. Q459 Chairman: Minister, thank you very much indeed for coming this afternoon. I know you are coming here again next week to talk about antisocial behaviour, so thank you very much for making yourself available. Today's session is drawing towards the end of our inquiry on community relations since 9/11 and the impact of international terrorism. Would you like to briefly introduce yourself and your team members, please? Ms Blears: I am delighted to be here, Chairman. I am the Minister of State for Community Safety, Crime Reduction, Policing and Counter-Terrorism. I have with me today three officials. I am going to let them introduce themselves because they will get their correct designations properly recorded and I am sure that I will not do that. Ms Lempriere: Judith Lempriere, Head of the Cohesion and Faiths Unit, which is a recent change bringing together the work of the Community Cohesion Unit and the Faith Communities Unit. Mr Whalley: I am Bob Whalley. I hold the post of Director for Counter-terrorism and Intelligence in the Home Office. Mr Lord: I am Tony Lord; I lead on engagement with the Muslim community in the Terrorism and Protection Unit in the Home office. Q460 Chairman: Could I ask all the witnesses to speak up, if at all possible. The acoustics are not brilliant in this room. Minister, if I could start with you. In the inquiry so far witnesses from a number of organisations have suggested that community relations have got worse over the past few years and that, in particular, Islamophobia has increased. Would you agree with that assessment? Ms Blears: No, I would not necessarily agree with that because I think that community cohesion is quite difficult to measure. It is not like a crime, we do not have numbers, we do not have a lot of quantitative information. For the first time we are now starting to explore ways in which we can get a better assessment of the level of cohesion in our communities. We have now got the Home Office Citizenship Survey for the first time. These surveys are done every two years. We did one in 2003 and we will be doing another one in 2005. That should give us a way of tracking the progress of community cohesion in our areas. I think we are looking at 20 areas right across the country from Birmingham, Burnley, Lambeth, Kingston-upon-Thames and Tewkesbury to get a spread of the different kinds of communities as well. In 2003, 71% of people agreed that this local area is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together and only 17% of people disagreed with that statement. I think that is a fairly high level of cohesion with 71% of people saying "In our area people do get along together", but there is a North/South divide in that, in that people in the South of the country and the South East feel that people get on together more than people from the North of the country, so that is interesting. People in the poorest areas are least likely to get on well together: only 64% of people in the 20% most deprived areas got on well together compared with 77% of people in the more affluent areas. There is a North/South divide and an income divide. As well as the survey, we have also got the National Community Tensions Team working with Government Offices who do more intelligence monitoring as to when tensions go up and down, because these things do vary across the period of a year. Q461 Chairman: That is very useful baseline information but, if I can come back to the point, witnesses have been saying to us from a variety of different community groups, but particularly from the Muslim community, that in their experience the level of hostility, not necessarily physical attacks, the level of hostility, abuse, general suspicions that they face has risen since 9/11 and the various international events. Are you suggesting that is not what has happened, that things are either getting no worse or improving? Ms Blears: No. I do understand that is their experience and their perception and their feelings about what has happened. I think there are a couple of factors specifically responsible for that: clearly heightened media reporting since 9/11 and the language that is sometimes used in the media. I think the language around, "War of civilisations. Clash of Civilisations. War on Terror", that kind of language, inevitably can make people feel that there are difficulties in their communities. In the Home Office, ministers, all our officials, we are very, very keen to be very careful about the language that we use. We do not talk about Muslim terrorism, we do not talk about Islamic terrorism, we talk specifically about international terrorism associated with al-Qaeda. I am very, very keen to make sure that we do not make those links. I can understand why people do feel that. That is not just in the Muslim community, I have also seen the submission from the Jewish community around the monitoring of attacks and anti-Semitic incidents as well, so I can entirely understand that. All I am saying to the Committee is I do not have a way of measuring the accuracy but I have no doubt that is the perception. Q462 Chairman: Following on your comment about international terrorism, thinking of yesterday's news, why do you think that a young British man with a string of GCSEs, four A levels and a university education, nonetheless decides, at least for a time in his life, he wants to be a suicide bomber and blow up a plane full of people? Ms Blears: I do not think I have an answer to what is a very, very complex question but there are a number of factors at play. This takes us to the heart of our counter-terrorism strategy of which we have four strands: prevent, pursuit, prepare and protect. This is very much about our prevention strand of our counter-terrorism strategy. That is where we want to explore in much more detail what are the points in people's lives at which they are exposed to influences which may well draw them into radicalisation and, indeed, terrorist activity. Is it at school, at universities where people are sometimes in contact with the criminal justice system that can be a point, in terms of their daily lives, their worship, the influences that are at play in those different points of their lives? We have now got some further work being undertaken to try and focus our efforts on the influences that people are subjected to. Clearly there are some underlying issues about our communities around disaffection, inequality, some of those issues, but in the particular case to which you are referring I think perhaps those issues were less at play than some of the influences that those young people are exposed to. I could not honestly say that I have a convincing and complete explanation for what I think is a complex set of issues about the influences that people are exposed to during the course of their lives. Q463 Chairman: I am sure the issues are complex and I think we would be quite alarmed if you came here and told us you thought they were simple but, nonetheless, until the Government does have a convincing model or a convincing explanation as to why a small minority of young British citizens grow up and develop in that way, your attempt to fight terrorism will be very limited, will it not? Ms Blears: As I said to you, the strand of our terrorism strategy which is key to this is the prevention strategy that is preventing the next generation of people getting involved in terrorism. You are right, until we really have a grip on what are the influences, what are the factors, that turn one person into this activity but do not impact on other people in a similar position then clearly the strategies we adapt to fight that will not be as sharply focused and as effective as we want them to be. I think it is fair to say, Chairman, that it is early days in our exploration of what those factors and influences are. We have started work with the schools, we have started work with the universities, and we are certainly very engaged with the imams and the work that we are doing there in terms of the religious worship issues, but it is fair to say it is early days. I do not know whether Mr Lord, who is responsible for the engagement with the Muslim community, could give you a bit more detail. Personally, I think this is one of the most important and fundamental things that we can do and I want to drive this as quickly as I can. Q464 Chairman: Do you give any credence to the argument that the root of the problem is that young people in the Muslim community growing up in Britain find it very difficult to fully identify with British society as a whole because of what they experience through Islamophobia and prejudice and thus the alternative identity offered, positively in many cases but negatively in some cases, by Islam or extremist Islam, is the problem and, therefore, until we can find a way whereby those young people grow up very confident about their British identity that includes them, there is likely to be a small number of people who end up in the arms of terrorists? Ms Blears: It is incumbent on all of us to try to build a society that is as inclusive as it can possibly be of people from all backgrounds, all faiths and all creeds. That is what we are dedicated to doing. The only point where I take issue with you, Chairman, is on the numbers of people we are talking about here. I think it is a tiny minority of people and I do not think that Muslims growing up in Britain today, as a whole, feel excluded from our society. Clearly there are people in the Muslim community making a huge and tremendous contribution to our society in business, in professions, in working life, in culture, in art, in sport, in all of those areas. I think this is a tiny minority but, nonetheless, an important one to us, particularly in our counter-terrorism work. On the whole, the vast majority of people from communities are able to find a good and proper and worthwhile place in our society. Chairman: I will turn briefly to Mr Winnick. Q465 David Winnick: Is it not encouraging, Minister, that after yesterday's case the Muslim organisations have condemned totally what happened and condemned the person's actions as outright criminal? Ms Blears: Absolutely. I am not surprised by that, Mr Winnick, because the Muslim community has a proud record in cases like this and incidents like this of making it crystal clear that they reject criminality, they reject terrorism, and the Muslim community in this country is just as keen to support the Police's efforts to tackle terrorism and to support our community as a whole. I am pleased but I am not at all surprised because this is absolutely in accordance with where the moderate Muslim community has always been on this. Q466 David Winnick: Would it not be right to keep things in balance, Minister. This was one person - one person - who comes from the Muslim community who has been found guilty in Britain. When you consider the number of Muslim people living in this country, and have done so now for nearly half a century in relatively large numbers, and even more so in certain communities, are not all the indications that the numbers who are likely to be swayed by terrorism, like this unfortunate person who will be sentenced later, are very, very small indeed and all the indications are that the overwhelming majority of Muslim people have every intention of being as law abiding as the rest of the community in combating anti-terrorism? Ms Blears: Mr Winnick, I think you are absolutely right. This is a tiny minority of people who are drawn into terrorist activity and the vast majority of the Muslim community are not just law abiding but actually make a positive contribution to building the kind of society that we want to see happen. Clearly we are focused on terrorism because the impact of the actions of one person - literally one person - can be huge in terms of the damage that one person can inflict. In the overall scheme of things it is a minority and I have confirmed already that I think the vast majority of the Muslim community make a hugely positive contribution to this country. Mr Taylor: Minister, I hesitated whether to say this but I think it is probably as well that I do. It is a fairly trivial personal experience but perhaps there is a deeper meaning underneath it. It is about loyalty. When I was a boy I was brought up in Warwickshire by my parents, both of whom moved from Lancashire to Warwickshire before I was born. At a very early formative age - we were a sporting family - my father told me that Lancashire was the greatest cricket team and that Manchester United was the greatest football team but I found myself growing up with boys who all thought that Warwickshire was the greatest cricket team and Aston Villa was the greatest football team. This was a difficulty of loyalties. I use the word "loyalties" deliberately. The interesting thing was we all had a common cause in sport in England, whenever England were on the pitch there was no problem about supporting England. I was into my teens before I decided that, notwithstanding what my father had said, I would choose to support Midlands teams because that was where I came from. I attached my loyalty deliberately. We have not heard the word "loyalty" mentioned so far, but was I not then a privileged young man in that beyond this Warwickshire/Lancashire situation I never had much of a conflict? Are we paying enough attention? Are we be paying patient enough, tolerant enough, sympathetic enough and careful enough about people who may have loyalties that pull them in different directions? Should this be taken into account in a civilised society? I am prepared to leave that question up in the air. Q467 Chairman: The Minister may well wish to answer it. Ms Blears: Indeed. I think that all of us, whoever we are, are complex human beings. We have different layers of interests, loyalties, values, and we struggle all the time with those issues because we are human. I do not think for one moment that there is a contradiction between having a loyalty, for example, to your religion and having a loyalty to democratic values in the kind of state you want to be part of and supporting law enforcement agencies. I do not see that as a contradiction. We are richer in this country because we have a wide, diverse set of people in it with skills and talents and we should welcome that. I do think it is important, through things like our citizenship education that is now in our curriculum, that we can explore some pretty complex and difficult issues, the ones that cause us all to get excited, whether it is sex, politics or religion, which is the stuff of life. I think the things we are doing now, particularly with young people, to get them to explore some of these conflicts and difficulties and find a way through is hugely valuable to us in addressing some of those issues you have raised. Q468 Mr Taylor: Thank you. You did not mind me personalising it? Ms Blears: Not at all. Q469 Mr Taylor: That is the way most of us feel these days. Minister, perhaps rather more seriously, are you concerned by the wide variation among Police forces in their use of counter-terrorism stop and search powers? Ms Blears: First of all, the use of the powers under section 44 of the Act are inevitably going to vary because they are designed to counter the terrorist threat that we face and that threat will be different in different places, it will be different at different times depending on the intelligence that we have and the threat that is around. For example, the guidance that we issued in July of last year to forces about how they should use the section 44 powers cover, first of all, how wide an area do they want to operate them in, because we are very concerned that they should only be operated where they are necessary; what is their justification for exercising their power; in what circumstances are they going to use it; what is the general threat that they are looking at; and then threat assessments for particular locations, particular events. If you have got a lot of military installations in your area, that might be a specific issue you might want to think about, or if you have got a lot of residences of the Royal Family that may well be another issue of concern. The guidance is different. There will be a variation but what I am concerned about is that variation is justified by reference to the purpose for which the powers are actually there. Q470 Mr Taylor: Have you given any new and different guidance to the Police on the use of these powers? Ms Blears: There is the guidance that I have just talked about from July last year which goes through all of those issues. Q471 Mr Taylor: Since then, anything? Ms Blears: Since then, we have set up the Stop and Search Action Team which is looking not just at the terrorism related stop and search powers but stop and search powers more generally. It is looking at these as part of its business. They have just produced a draft manual which is more than guidance, it is actually a manual of good practice going through case studies about how stop and search can be used. What we want to try and do is make sure that the disproportionality which is there in terms of people from different ethnic backgrounds being stopped and searched starts to come down and, therefore, that manual of good practice is very important for forces to take on board. Q472 Mr Taylor: Minister, you mentioned depots of the armed services or maybe royal palaces as two instances, may I ask you what the particular problems are about the use of counter-terrorist powers in ports and border areas? Ms Blears: Ports are obviously absolutely key to us in terms of our counter-terrorism strategy because keeping our borders safe and having good information about who is coming into the country and going out is very important. We have a National Co-ordinator of Ports Policing who is personally responsible for these areas. He has been very exercised about some of the concerns that have been expressed about the sensitivity of how these powers can be used at the borders because people are stopped and taken out of line and that can be a difficult experience. He has been working very closely with the various communities to make sure that they understand how the powers are used. He has also issued guidance to the officers to make sure that they do it sensitively as far as they possibly can. I think it was Lord Carlile, who was reviewing some of these powers, who said it was important at ports that as well as having the justification there was also the intuition of the port's officers. This is always a difficult area when you are trying to use powers in an intelligence-led way wherever you can, but equally there is that little bit of intuition that sometimes can get you a result, which is very important to us. It is getting that balance right. Q473 Mr Taylor: On Highway Patrol I think it used to be described as "backed a hunch". You have dealt with ports, Minister, but really we only have one land frontier, which is with the Republic of Ireland, would you care to make any comment about that? Ms Blears: It is not just the Muslim community that the National Ports Co-ordinator has been dealing with, he has also been trying to make sure that the Irish community are reassured about the way in which the powers are exercised. Recently he took one of the Irish Commissioners to Holyhead and as a result of that visit there has been increased signage put up at Holyhead to reassure people about how those powers are being used because there is a need to have sensitivity in that regard as well. Mr Taylor: Thank you, Minister. Q474 Mrs Dean: Minister, do you have any evidence that your attempts to reassure the Muslim community are successful? Ms Blears: I think I share the concern of the Committee about reassuring the Muslim community and I am not going to come here today and say that everything is wonderful and the Muslim community are perfectly reassured about our powers because I think there is still a great deal of work to do. Dealing with the counter-terrorist threat and the fact that at the moment the threat is most likely to come from those people associated with an extreme form of Islam, or falsely hiding behind Islam, if you like, in terms of justifying their activities, inevitably means that some of our counter-terrorist powers will be disproportionately experienced by people in the Muslim community. That is the reality of the situation, we should acknowledge that reality and then try to have as open, as honest and as transparent a debate with the community as we can. There is no getting away from the fact that if you are trying to counter the threat, because the threat at the moment is in a particular place, then your activity is going to be targeted in that way. If I can tell the Committee just a little bit about the specific work that is going on. First of all, our legislation is aimed at terrorists, it is not aimed at particular religions or groups. Our practical aim is to try and stop terrorism. In terms of engagement with the community, it is quite difficult to go and have a discussion about terrorism with somebody. I think that we need to do more about having some general conversations with the community, which clearly will include these matters but also is more relevant to them. By that, I mean talking about what we can do to raise Muslim achievements in schools, what we can do to increase the capacity for Muslim people to be leaders in their own communities, to start to take more of a place in civic and public life, to work with the schools early on to talk about bullying in terms of Muslim communities. We are also doing work to try and make our public services a little bit more sensitive around this area as well. I think it needs to be a broader conversation than simply about the terror threat because anybody just having a conversation about that is going to find that quite difficult. If we can manage to have a broader conversation we can perhaps also reach people who traditionally we do not talk to. I think there is too much of an emphasis on simply talking to community leaders. I say that with no disrespect because community leaders are very important and influential, but I want us to do more with the young people who are out there. Unless we have a more diverse conversation then I think there is a danger that we will not reach them. We are having some success, we do meet all of the leaders of the Muslim community, but in the next phase of our work we are setting a whole range of meetings for this year, next year, with officials and ministers, much more active engagement on reaching those parts of our communities that traditionally do not have a voice and we do not hear very well. Q475 Mrs Dean: Would that be at a local level as well as at a national level? Ms Blears: I am hoping very much that it will be both, that we will do things nationally because it is important that the Home Secretary continues to have his bilaterals with the Muslim Council for Great Britain and all of that, but much more in the regions of this country as well, not just simply in London, because in that way we can reach more people, perhaps getting our Government Offices more engaged on this. As I say, they already deal with the Communities Tension Team in terms of monitoring community cohesion and I think getting our regional offices to do more of this local work would be very important. We have got a couple of new people on our Community Panel that looks at stop and search and they are young people from the North West and possibly Yorkshire. That has been a bit of a departure for the Department, normally we would draw people just from the centre but we have specifically gone out and got young people from the regions to come and sit on a national body. It is much more that kind of thing that I would like to see happening. Q476 Mrs Dean: Do you have a strategy for explaining control orders? Ms Blears: Obviously we did not have the opportunity to consult at great length because this was emergency legislation, but last year we had quite a big debate when we launched our consultation document Reconciling Liberty and Security and clearly the issues were brought out in that paper, although the specifics around the legislation were not in a position to be discussed there. Just last week I met the Muslim Safety Council, together with other Muslim representatives, to talk through the legislation. Again, I think we will need to have an ongoing dialogue about not just that legislation going through Parliament but the implementation of that legislation and what it will mean in local communities because when control orders are made clearly there will be an impact and there will need to be a big job of work done in explaining how it will work and what it will mean in practical terms for the communities and their families as well as for the individuals. I think we are going to be very exercised on doing that. Q477 Chairman: Minister, we have just had two days of very high profile debate about control orders. Are you not a bit concerned that out there in the country a large number of Muslim people at local level will simply have seen a lot of headlines which give the impression that it is the Muslim community, it is the terrorists all over again, and here is the Government planning to lock everybody up? Whatever the nuances, which we debated at some length over those two days, surely when you bring forward that legislation there has to be a proactive strategy of communication in place otherwise by the time you get round to explaining it the damage will have been done? Ms Blears: I am concerned about the perception that is out there. The only point I would make is that the control order regime is clearly less draconian than the Part 4 regime was and, therefore, I would hope that communities would feel more reassured that these are proposals tailored and proportionate to the threat that we face rather than simply detention in prison. This is a scaling down to that extent, although perhaps nobody would believe that from the debate that we had yesterday, it is a less draconian regime than we have experienced in the past. I think you are right, we do have to be more proactive in our communications and our handling of this but also in our conversation as much as our communications. It does have to be a dialogue about this rather than simply presenting the facts as we see them. In all of this work, what we are trying to do is to establish relationships with people because we can put out as much information and material about this but what we really need to know from people is how they feel this is being targeted. One of the things that I am particularly keen on is getting people, if you like, inside the system so they can understand why we are doing what we are doing. What we found with stop and search in the Met, which was fascinating, was that once the local community was properly engaged and they knew that these stop and search powers were being targeted at this particular area because this particular crime was a problem then the biggest supporters you got were the people in the communities themselves. Unless you have that dialogue and you get them inside understanding then you can do as much talking as you like but it is not owned by them and that is where we need to go with this legislation as much as anything we do. Q478 Mrs Dean: Finally, in relation to stop and search there is a clear perception amongst the Muslim community that they are being singled out and unfairly targeted. How can you tackle that to make sure that the reasons for stop and search are accepted by the Muslim community as well as the rest of the community? Ms Blears: By the fact that we have got an independent Community Panel as part of our Stop and Search Team looking at that. They are responsible to a sub-group of the Lawrence Steering Committee for delivery of that and that is now chaired by Lord Victor Adebowale. We have got some Muslim representatives on that independent Community Panel and I have no doubt they will be saying some fairly robust things to us about operation and that is exactly as it should be. Again, that is arm's length, it is independent, it is challenging, it is robust. I think that the Community Panel has been hugely helpful to Government because they will make suggestions through their contacts that we could not possibly do. It is that kind of mechanism that helps us to do that. I have just got a bit of information that might be useful. We have just published the very latest figures on stop and search which monitor the ethnic background of those people who are stopped and searched, and under the terrorism searches they went up from 21,500 in 2002-03 to nearly 30,000 in 2003-04. Those are very recent figures. Of those, the searches of white people increased by 43%, searches of black people increased by 55% and searches of Asian people increased by, I say only, 22%, so a much lower increase of searches of people from Asian backgrounds than searches of white people or black people in terms of the anti-terrorism powers there, which may be of some reassurance. The way in which we monitor stop and search is part of the baseline assessment carried by HMIC, part of the Performance and Monitoring Framework, so we do have some hard data about how we can track these things through. Q479 Bob Russell: Minister, you have just given us percentage increases, could you give us the real figures and not just the percentage increases please? Ms Blears: Searches of white people increased from 14,429 to 20,637. Searches of black people increased from 1,745 to 2,704. Searches of Asian people increased from 2,989 to 3,668. Q480 Mr Prosser: Minister, it is encouraging to hear your wish to meet with Muslim people on the ground and young Muslim people in particular. Just before you took your seat we talked to some young Muslim people from Bolton, which you might know, who took part in the PeaceMaker Survey, and you could do no better than to start your discussions with those people, and perhaps a note from our Command Meeting will give you some good signposts for the future. My questions though are to do with the issue which you have just left us with, Islamophobia and discrimination. The situation at present is that although you classify, for instance, stop and search, by ethnicity, you do not classify it by religion, and there is quite a debate raging over the issue of whether there has been a disproportionate increase in the number of stop and searches against Muslims since 9/11. Notwithstanding the figures you have given us, would it not be a good idea if the Home Office classified stop and searches by religion so it would show whether this disproportionality is taking place? Ms Blears: First of all, Mr Prosser, can I say I would be delighted to take up your suggestion. I have met those young people and to do that would be very good I think. This is a very controversial issue. It is a debate which is raging at the moment, as to whether or not we should monitor on the basis of religion rather than the way we monitor at the moment. Some people feel very strongly that religion is an intensely private matter and would not want to declare it. That would then make it difficult to be assured that our statistics were robust, depending on the proportion of people who were prepared to declare their religion. In some other cases people have been asked to declare their religion and there have been some, what are described in my briefing notes as "perverse reactions" and I do not know what kind of entries people gave. Because it is controversial, and I can see why some people would want it to be done, in fact the Community Panel which I have just referred to are going to be looking at this at their next meeting which is on 14 March, and I shall be very interested indeed to see what their recommendations are with regard to this. As I say, I think opinion is evenly split around this issue and I certainly do not have a fixed view about whether or not we ought to do it but there are some real logistical problems in getting statistics which are sufficiently robust for us to monitor them. Q481 Mr Prosser: It could be a subject you could discuss in your session with the young Muslims. Ms Blears: Indeed. Q482 Mr Prosser: An area which is not quite so dubious, I say, is the actual incidents of Islamophobia and at the moment we have no independent agency or no independent gathering organisation to number these. Do you think the Home Office should help set up such an agency? Ms Blears: We currently have no plans to have a statutory body because we do not think that would be appropriate. There is the Community Security Organisation which is an independent charity which monitors anti-Semitic incidents and it may well be that something similar might be appropriate in relation to Islamophobia. There is the Muslim Faith Forum, which is a joint group between the community, the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police, and that is very active. We also have a project called "Don't Suffer in Silence" which again is about third party reporting, and that is going to be piloted in three London Boroughs, in West Lancashire and in Lincolnshire, and already forces up and down the country are very interested in seeing if they can get more reporting of these kind of incidents. So there are a number of models which are out there. As I say, I would not want to see a national statutory body but I think there are a number of models which we can build on to make sure there is a broader awareness of the fact these incidents are taking place. Q483 David Winnick: On incitement to religious hatred, there continues to be concern; Rowan Atkinson for example has argued that this would be a restriction on entertainers like himself having a "go", if that is the right expression, at religion. Why should the Islamic religion be more protected than, say, the Christian religion or the Jewish religion or any other religion one would like to name? What would be your reaction to that? Ms Blears: I agree that one religion should not be protected above another, and the provision we have in the Serious and Organised Crime Bill is designed to give the same protection to Christian people and to Muslim people as currently exists for Jewish people and Sikhs, because under the current Public Order Provisions which are about racial hatred the actual issues which give rise to the hatred can in fact be religion or anything else. So there is a provision to protect Jews and Sikhs. What there is not, is a similar provision to protect Muslims and Christian people from having hatred stirred up against them. I want to be very clear on the record here, that this legislation is not about protecting religions, it is not about protecting ideologies, it is about protecting people, and it prevents people having hatred stirred up against them on the grounds of their religious belief, or indeed lack of it, because it also protects people who do not conform to a particular religion from having hatred stirred up against them. It is nothing to do with satire, with ridicule, with comedy, you can be as offensive as you like, it is up to you, but if you stir up hatred against people I do not think you should be allowed to do that, whether on the grounds of their race or their religion. Q484 David Winnick: I accept your argument, I actually argued and voted for the law in order that it is the same way as, for instance, Jewish and Hindus, who are protected by previous legislation. Do you believe, Minister, there are nevertheless expectations, say in the Muslim community, that the religion itself will be protected, and therefore if a book comes out like Salman Rushdie's book, then the Attorney-General be undoubtedly be pressed to take action through the courts? Ms Blears: I think when this whole area was first mooted, before any provisions were drafted, there was indeed some confusion about what the provisions would look like and that was about a year or so ago. I think since the provision was drafted, that confusion and misunderstanding have actually been cleared up, and I know that Iqbal Sacranie wrote a letter in February where he sets out very clearly his understanding of the provisions as currently drafted and what they do. So it is important that we are very clear about it and it is not about protecting a particular religion. There are a number of safeguards which will prevent vexatious or frivolous proceedings. First of all, you have the ordinary test for any prosecution, is it likely to succeed, is it in the public interest, then you have the extra hurdle here about the Attorney-General having to take a view on it, and the Attorney-General has to act in accordance with human rights. So there are four different hurdles in there, so I do not think we are going to get vexatious proceedings. As the Act gets known and as people know what the provision is more clearly, there is likely to be less pressure for prosecutions. On the race side, we have only ever had 86 references for prosecution coming forward. So we are not inundated with these things but it is a case of managing that quite carefully. In relation to books or plays, and there was the play in Birmingham as well, neither of those would have been protected, because this is about protecting people so they do not have hatred stirred up against them on the grounds of their religion. Clearly there will be a lot of debate around these issues because they are controversial but I think the law will be pretty clear and hopefully well understood. Q485 David Winnick: I am not an authority on this but as I understand the position, religious believers, again I suppose not all of them by any means, are rather sensitive about their religion and we have had protests from Christians over the recent Springer programme. Can we be quite clear about this. Just as that was done within the law, however much I understand some Christians' views - and one or two constituents have written to me over the issue and I have written to the BBC on their behalf, not my behalf - insofar as that was perfectly legitimate, perfectly lawful in a democratic country, then the same could be done about any other religion - Jewish, Hindu, Muslim - as well, if this law comes into operation? Are we absolutely clear on that, Minister? Ms Blears: Yes. The offence as set out in the Bill is very clear and it has to be words or actions that are intended or likely to stir up hatred against people on the grounds of their religious belief or lack of it. There are three very clear and distinct limbs to the offence and it is about stirring up hatred against people on the grounds of their religious belief. I think it is clear. I know there are some members who do not agree with that. We did have a very, very lengthy debate in Committee Stage and at Report Stage of the Bill. I am satisfied the law is clear and I have no doubt that the Attorney-General in administering that law will have a similar, clear-sighted view. David Winnick: I hope that satisfies Mr Rowan Atkinson. Whether it does or not, remains to be seen. Q486 Mr Clappison: Minister, I think you have accepted, as you accepted in Committee, that the Bill has been framed in terms of protecting people, but I think you accepted yourself in Committee that the offence could be committed by saying something about religion without reference to people. Ms Blears: What I said was that if it had the effect of stirring up hatred against people on the grounds of their religion, that could be so and it would depend on those circumstances. Q487 Mr Clappison: Correct, and that could be done through a criticism of the religion itself. Ms Blears: You say "a criticism", I think it would have to be of huge significance in order for it to stir up a hatred, because it is the hatred it is aimed up. Q488 Mr Clappison: It might be a significant criticism of a religion then. Ms Blears: You and I can debate what that threshold might be. Clearly the Attorney-General will need to take a view on whether or not constituent parts of the offence are sufficiently fulfilled for there to be a criminal act committed. Q489 Mr Clappison: Can I come on to that, because since then, the Director of Public Prosecutions has given evidence to the Committee saying it is a question of - I think his words were that the main issue around it is - "managing expectations". What are you doing to manage expectations because in some quarters it has got out that this is going to result in far more prosecutions than looks likely, at least according to the present Director of Public Prosecutions? Ms Blears: As I have explained, before the clause was drafted people did have confused expectations about what might be delivered. Since the clause was drafted, debated, considered, by the House of Commons - there has been a lengthy discussion of it - I think the Government has been crystal clear in terms of what it is aiming to prevent. It is not about protecting religion, it is about protecting people. It does not prevent satire, ridicule, all of those things, it prevents people stirring up hatred against others on the grounds of their religion. I think we have been very clear about that and I think the letter from the Muslim Council now accepts that entirely. We also have support from a whole range of faith groups, it is not just the Government. A whole range of faith groups actually support this law being brought in because it provides a level playing field and gives the same protection to Muslims and Christians as has been available to Jews and Sikhs for some considerable time. Q490 Mr Clappison: So whatever faith group it might be, Christian, Buddhist, whatever, you feel expectations are now at a realistic level and they have not been raised too high? Ms Blears: I have certainly tried to ensure that the Government has done everything it can to be as clear as possible. I think we will need to have on-going dialogue because we deal with a whole range of faith groups. We certainly do not want to see a position where this provision is used to heighten community tension by having inter-faith disputes. That is absolutely not what we want to do and that is why it is important for us to carry on having this dialogue with those faith groups to ensure they are very clear about what the law can and cannot do. Q491 Chairman: On a broader point about community cohesion, over the last three or four years there does seem to have been a marked growth in every single faith group of organised groups of people whose main aim is to complain about offences being committed against their beliefs, whether they are Jewish, Sikh, Muslim; every faith group has this. Are you worried that this growth of sensitivity to offence, to criticism, is actually helping to undermine community relations, if each faith group becomes more and more defensive about perceived criticisms, either of their beliefs or of their activities? If so, is there anything the Government can do, aside from legislation, to try and rebuild the atmosphere of greater religious tolerance which seemed to be much more common place ten years ago? Ms Blears: I think it is a matter of concern when people cannot have criticism without being immensely defensive. I think we would all want to try to create an atmosphere where people can debate vigorously and with passion and conviction, but at the same time still have respect for one another's views. I am not unhappy that people feel very strongly about their religion, because I think in some ways that is a strength for people and helps them to deal with all kinds of adversity which are around us, but the worry is when that passion, conviction and strength of faith becomes defensive and that could possibly lead to that kind of difficult relationship. I think one of the main things we can do is encourage more inter-faith work. We have been supporting a whole range of inter-faith organisations. We have also been bringing together rabbis and imams to work together to see what are some of the common strands of their faiths and then to debate some of the differences, and I am pleased to support as much of that work as I possibly can. The more people understand each other and the more they meet face-to-face, in my experience, the less tension we have; the more people conduct correspondence from afar, the more likely it is to result in tension. Q492 Bob Russell: Minister, would you accept that the view from the public bar of the Dog and Duck is that immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees and indeed the settled ethnic minorities, are all basically the same? How has that impression come about? Is this the media which has done this? Ms Blears: I think it is partly the media. I think some of the reporting, some of the language which is used - you only have to look at some of the newspapers we see and some of the dreadful headlines which are out there - has been influential in this. I am not going to blame it all simply on the media, also there are some fairly pernicious political groups around as well, the BNP and others, who take advantage of tensions which are in communities and issue some pretty vile propaganda which can help to stoke these feelings amongst people. There are some things we can try and do to help, if you like, bust the myths which go on around asylum seeking. I know my own local authority in Salford has issued a tremendous leaflet which goes through the myths one by one, about what benefits people get, what housing people get, what services they get - the kind of myths which are around, like, "Every asylum seeker is living in a marvellous, wonderful, well-furnished property" et cetera - and I think it is incumbent particularly on local authorities to try and do as much of that work as they can. I think the mayor who was elected in Stoke-on-Trent actually made a personal campaign to go out there and do exactly that kind of work. So it is partly the media but also these terms which then become general currency, if you like, and sometimes all of us can be guilty of that. Q493 Bob Russell: I am delighted with these local examples which you have given, but do you not think that Government Ministers should be doing a lot more in the hope that will balance perhaps some of the media coverage? Do you think the media have reported responsibly? You have only mentioned the written word, are you saying the radio and television are not in your sights when making these criticisms, that it is only the newspapers? Could you be more specific because clearly it is not all the newspapers, surely? Ms Blears: No, but I do not think it is appropriate, Mr Russell, for me to sit here and condemn one newspaper and not another. I have concerns generally about the tone of reporting. I think it is worse in some media outlets than in others. That is why we have set up a couple of things. We have set up a Media Practitioners' Group following the disturbances we had in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford, to bring the media people together. We have also recently funded a practical set of guidance for editors and journalists about how to (a) stay within the law in their reporting and (b) how they can have more literacy around some of these complex issues concerning religion and culture, and help them use some other words than the ones they tend to cling to. So that is very practical help. Also the Improvement and Development Agency, which works with local government, has produced some guidance for local authorities' communications people, so they can help to educate their local media in their area about what they can do as well. Q494 Bob Russell: Does that best practice include the National Union of Journalists, because my recollection is the NUJ has a very strong code of conduct which I would suggest some Fleet Street newspapers perhaps do not really follow? Should the NUJ be brought into this as well? Ms Blears: I am not sure if they are members of the Media Practitioners' Group; I would be surprised if they were not. I will certainly look into that, Mr Russell, I think that is an excellent suggestion and one we should take on board. I will just make another point, you said about Government Ministers making statements around this. You will know in the debate around immigration and asylum we have been at pains to talk about the positive contribution which is made by many of the people who come to this country and do jobs in our Health Service and other facilities. That is very much a balanced part of our strategy, to try and make sure we do get the benefit which comes from managed migration to this country clearly in the public's mind. Q495 Bob Russell: I welcome that and I will ask you also to regularly publish the fact that inward investment, so to speak, results from those who are settled here working and being net contributors to the national economy and not a drain, and I think that is something which if it was said time and time again by, I suggest, you and Home Office colleagues it would have an impact on the media. So are you saying the media coverage of these issues has been a significant factor? I think you are. Ms Blears: Yes, I think the language used has sometimes not helped to create the kind of tolerant and inclusive society we would all want to see. What is important is that we take practical steps to try and change that. We cannot dictate what is in the newspapers, neither should we, we have a free press which is out there doing its job of reporting, but what we can do is try and explain these issues to the journalists, the people involved, and see if we can influence them in terms of some of the language used. Q496 Bob Russell: Would you acknowledge if the media gave a balanced report - the fears we have from the various ethnic minorities and particularly those we have heard from the Muslim communities - that would go a long way to retrieving the situation? Ms Blears: I think it would help significantly if all of this debate was conducted in a less confrontational manner. Q497 Mr Clappison: Minister, it is clear that many people in Britain today are sceptical about the reality of the terrorist threat to the country. What are you doing to convince them? Ms Blears: I would challenge, first of all, the basic presumption that you make, Mr Clappison, that the public are sceptical about the terrorist threat. I think the public - and this is my general belief as well as on this particular issue - are far more capable of understanding complex, difficult, frightening, complicated issues than we ever give them credit for, and they are also capable, dare I say, of seeing through some of the most complex, obfuscating language that any of us use as politicians as well. The poll which was in the Daily Telegraph yesterday was quite enlightening to me. It seemed to indicate that the public did know what we were intending to do to try to contain the terrorist threat, something like 75 % of them agreed with what we were trying to do, they understood the balance between national security and civil liberties - complex issues - and I was quite heartened by that. But that does not mean we have not got more to do, and that is why we have got an on-going communications strategy around our counter-terrorism strategy itself. We have just recently issued the Prepare for an Emergency booklet which went to every household. We are doing quite a lot of communications work with the business sector, with the voluntary sector. We do need to do more with the general public as well as that booklet, to continue to talk to them about the nature of the threat. I suppose my bottom line is that we try and keep the public alert but not alarmed, and that is quite a difficult balance to draw. But our general mission statement is to reduce the terrorist threat so our citizens can go about their daily business free from fear. That to me is what is most important here - enough information but not to the point where people are constrained from living their ordinary lives because of the terrorist threat. Q498 Mr Clappison: I think many people would agree with what you are saying on that, Minister, but I mentioned the word "sceptical" in my question. Do you agree it is important that people should be able to have trust in information, and trust in particular what the Government is telling us, and that is something the Government should hold in high esteem? Ms Blears: Yes I do, because inevitably on these issues there will be things which cannot be revealed to the general public, and we had a debate around a lot of that yesterday, about how much evidence can be produced in the normal criminal justice system and how much can be shown to defendants and their legal representatives, and inevitably we are asking people to take some of this on trust; not just trust in the Government but trust in the security services, trust in the police, as well. If that trust breaks down, I agree with you, that would damage our efforts to really fulfil our counter-terrorism strategy. Q499 Mr Clappison: I do not want to go back over the ground which we went over yesterday, I am sure we will come back to that in the future, but can I move on to a slightly different subject, and that is the question of extremist religious views which are imported into the country in some cases, particularly the extremist Islamic views which have come in? We know the vast majority of imams and religious leaders in the Muslim community are sincere, genuine and moderate, but we do have a problem - and I think this is recognised - with some preaching more extreme views coming from certain parts of the world. What policy do you have on that, particularly individuals who come trying to lead people astray with an extreme view? Ms Blears: I think the general background is that clearly we have a right to free speech in this country, a democratic right, of which we are rightly proud, but the difficulty is when people start to use that right to free speech to say some pretty horrendous things, and it is a very fine line when they cross that boundary between free speech and inciting people to commit crime. The police monitor some of these extremist preachers in a very careful way in terms of tapes, analysing their words, analysing what has been said and they will if possible prosecute. In fact there was Abdullah El-Faisal, who was convicted in February 2003. He was a preacher and he was convicted of incitement to murder and he got nine years because he was encouraging people to kill other people during some of his preaching. So action can be taken but it is a fine line. We monitor all the time to see whether that line is being crossed. Q500 Mr Clappison: Has guidance been given to the police about this? Ms Blears: I am not aware of any specific guidance, but that is not to say there is not any. I am not aware of any specific guidance. Clearly they have the law, they interpret the law as they do in a range of other criminal offences, and the police and the Crown Prosecution Service are experts on this, that is part of their job, so I am not aware of any specific guidance on that. Q501 David Winnick: Minister, I understand that it is intended that preachers, imams, should be able to know English, pass an English language test. Have we made progress on that? Ms Blears: Yes, it is a two-stage process. In August last year, we actually changed some of the immigration rules that now mean people who want to come here as ministers of religion are required to demonstrate they are competent in the use of spoken English. Q502 David Winnick: That is the situation now, is it? Ms Blears: Yes, that is the situation now. There are two stages. We have brought in the first stage and now they have to show they can use spoken English to Level 4 in the International English Language Testing system, which is described as a limited user. Over the next two years that will be raised to Level 6, so people will have to be more proficient in English when they first come in. We are just about to launch a second stage of consultation with faith communities on taking some further measures to try and ensure ministers of religion from abroad can play a full role in the community. That means non-spoken language, it includes things like civic knowledge, engagement in communities, pre-entry qualifications, and we want to explore with the faith communities what ought to be the range of skills and abilities that people who want to come into this country as ministers of religion should possess. Again, there will be a range of views, I have no doubt, in that consultation, and we will listen to that very carefully before moving on to the next stage. We have already changed the immigration rules on spoken English and we are looking at the second stage, which is a wider kind of view. Q503 David Winnick: The Muslim community - presumably you have been consulting with them - are quite happy with this, are they? Ms Blears: As far as I am aware, when the changes were brought in last year, there was consultation on that basis, and we will be consulting again. I do not know if Judith could help us any more. Ms Lempriere: The Minister is right about the consultation. There have been some concerns about the effect of requirements on people who the system have treated as ministers but who are actually more concerned with internal support to different faith communities rather than actually representing their communities. Those sorts of concerns are ones which we will take account of in the next stage of the consultation so that we can make sure that we are sensitive to different communities' needs. The idea behind the initial regulations was maybe rather over-simplistic in terms of the way it has been applied to the different sorts of people who come to this country to work with the faith communities here, and we need to be sensitive to those particular circumstances. Q504 David Winnick: Minister, there have been complaints from witnesses while we have been conducting this inquiry, particularly the Union of Jewish Students, who complain of anti-Semitism. They complain that, for example, to name a college, at the School of Oriental and African Studies they are facing pressure, they are facing anti-Semitic taunts - not physical attacks. They have complained very strongly about the Open University. I know that the SOAS authorities have put their foot down and only last week an Israeli embassy official, who was to be boycotted, the authorities of SOAS said that would not do, and the person concerned went to a meeting, so I read in the press. Just as there can be extremists obviously elsewhere, have you heard these reports of extremist Islamic elements, again, totally unrepresentative of the Muslim community, indeed, a particular group who are banned in the Middle East, who are making it very difficult in certain universities for Jewish students? Ms Blears: No, Mr Winnick, I am not aware of that situation. Clearly, it sounds to be of great concern, and I will undertake with my officials to find out further details about what has been happening there. Clearly, if any of these incidents are breaches of the criminal law, then there is provision for religiously aggravated offences now in terms of the provisions that we brought in. But I was not aware that people are subjected to this kind of intimidation and clearly, that would be a matter of concern. I will perhaps ask my officials to investigate that and to let me have a report on it. Q505 David Winnick: May I suggest, Minister, that you ask the Clerk for correspondence relating to the Open University, because the response from the Open University certainly did not satisfy the organisation that I have named, and perhaps you may want to see what was written at the time. Ms Blears: Indeed. Q506 Chairman: Minister, two further questions on that. On our recent visit to the Netherlands and France, in both countries the issue was raised of recruitment by extremist groups in prisons. Is that something that you have identified as an issue here? Ms Blears: Yes, we think, again, a small number of people may well be subject to influences in prisons in a number of ways. They could be subject to influence from other prisoners, they could also be subject to influence from the imams who are preaching in prison and ministering to people there. That is why we want to try and make sure that there are properly trained imams in the prison service, and we are embarking on work to make sure that that happens now. I think it is also important that in our general crime prevention policies we have a prolific offender strategy, and one of our key strands around that is resettlement and rehabilitation of offenders, and making sure people have proper support when they leave custody in order to break that re-offending cycle. That is important to us and that is another way that we can try and focus our efforts on giving people support. But clearly, the prison environment is a closed environment, one in which people can be subject to some fairly intense influences, and it is an area that we want to do more work in. It really connects to what I was saying right at the beginning, that we want to follow people's pathway and see at what point they are exposed to these influences and see how we can counter it. Q507 Chairman: Is the Government proposing to fund the education of British-born imams? The Dutch government, in order to deal with the issues of foreign imams, is going to provide state funding to the Muslim community to fund British-born imams. Are there any similar plans in this country? Ms Lempriere: Not as far as I am aware, no. Q508 Chairman: On education, Minister, you gave a very positive view about the things that are going on amongst young people. When this Committee asked a North West-based group called Peacemaker to do some research amongst young people on attitudes to the issues in this inquiry there were a number of things that they told us that gave us cause for concern, but two I would like to highlight. One was that they found a number of sixth form colleges and similar very reluctant to allow the group in even to have a debate with young people about these sensitive issues, and secondly, they found that some of the adults working with young people could not adequately explain the difference between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. I just wonder whether you are really happy that the school system is properly equipped to deal with the sensitive discussions of these issues, which you yourself have said are enormously important to tackle. Ms Blears: I think a citizenship education programme is important, but it has not been around for that long. It is a relatively new introduction into the curriculum, and what we have found with all areas of citizenship education is that it is best taught by people who have a degree of expertise in it. If you are asking people to do sex education, they ought to be fairly competent in terms of doing it; it is not a generic skill and I think there is a danger sometimes in citizenship education that it can be all things to all people and you ask all teachers to be able to teach it. That is why in the citizenship curriculum now there is a real move to try and develop some specialism and some expertise in each of the strands, and I think, particularly in this area, when we are talking about extremism and the influences that are around, it is very complex work that needs to be done properly. Q509 Chairman: What advice has gone to schools to help them discuss these issues? Is that something DfES has done or the Home Office has done? Ms Blears: The only guidance around these issues that I am aware of is from DfES, and that is in relation to bullying, tolerance and respect in schools. There is not any specific citizenship guidance around issues concerning Islam and extremism at the moment. I do not know whether that would be appropriate. It is clearly not my policy area to discuss, but there is not any specific advice around these issues at the moment. There is some general advice around racism, bullying, tolerance and respect but nothing specifically around this area. Q510 Chairman: Can I press you a bit further on the Home Office's role in taking forward community cohesion in relation to education? The Cantle Report a few years ago was critical of the impact of mono-faith schools - not just ones that are designated as a faith school, but schools where effectively all pupils came from one faith. I do not get the impression that very much has been done about that over the last three or four years since the Cantle Report. Is that right? Ms Blears: It depends whether you broadly agree that faith schools or schools of predominantly one faith are, in inverted commas, "a bad thing" and I think generally, our policy is that in many cases faith schools and schools with a strong ethos can actually be very good places. They can help to raise educational attainment. I say this with some commitment because in my own community I have a Jewish girls' high school which we have been struggling for the last five years to bring into the family of maintained schools, and we have just achieved it. It is a tremendous school. It has fantastic educational achievement, a good community, it is doing the National Curriculum, and it is now a partnership school linked with our whole family of schools in the city and has links in that way. Q511 Chairman: The Cantle Report was very specific, was it not? He actually said that there are too many young people growing up leading separate lives in different communities, and he identified mono-faith schools - not designated faith schools particularly, because there are not that many of them, but mono-faith schools - as a significant problem that needed to be tackled by the DfES. I repeat, I do not think that anything has been done in the last four years, has it, to actually begin to tackle that problem? Ms Blears: I do not think I am in a position to give you the detail about what the Education Department has been doing for the last four years. The information I have is that... Q512 Chairman: With respect, are you not still the Minister in the Home Office Department responsible for community cohesion, a cross-government initiative? Ms Blears: I am not the Minister for it, but I am responsible for it today. If I tell you what I know and then Ms Lempriere can perhaps give you a little bit of further information. First of all, there is now a foundation partnership, where we encourage schools to be part of the partnership, because there is a difficulty about people growing up with separate lives, and that is not just confined to school. Therefore, if you have a partnership of schools, which I was trying to illustrate in relation to my local example, you can then get interaction, you can get students moving around between schools, you can get teachers moving around between schools and bringing in a different kind of input, because I think there is a danger about separate development in that way. You can also have young people working together out of school, in sport or art activities, all the out of school activities that go on now. The new schools that are established, the new secondary schools, have to specifically look at how they are contributing towards more inclusive policies and community cohesion. There are also measures now around admissions. The admissions forums are able to advise the admissions authorities how you can have admissions policies that perhaps get a proportion of your people from the different faith backgrounds into that faith school. So there is work going on right across that. The only issue I was taking at the beginning was simply to say that I do not think faith schools per se are necessarily a bad thing. In some cases, they can be a tremendously good thing, but what we have to make sure is that they do not operate in isolation and that the children within them are not immune from the rest of the diverse society around them. Ms Lempriere: Can I add to that? As well as the partnership schools that the Minister mentioned, there are increasingly now extended schools, where schools are embedded in their communities, linked to other services, which is a way of ensuring that you reduce the effect of the sort of segregation that you were talking about. We have actually produced cohesion standards for schools, which give sets of principles and ideas of ways in which they can support and build cohesion in their particular communities. There is, as the Minister said, a requirement that, even in schools which are maintained and formerly faith schools, that they are required to reflect the cultural diversity of the communities in which they live so that even though it may appear to be an apparently a narrowing effect, I do not think it is always the case. Again, it goes back to the sort of conversations you have been having already, talking about faith, because the other issue that Ted Cantle identified was the fact that you had schools that predominantly had white children in or people from black and minority ethnic groups. One of the things about faith schools is that quite a lot of them are in fact very racially diverse. Catholic schools are a good example. You get people from many different cultural or racial backgrounds in a faith school. Q513 Chairman: Can we stop there, because I did not raise any criticisms of faith schools. I was raising schools where all the pupils are of one faith. That is entirely different to an established faith school. We need not, as far as I am concerned, rehearse the arguments about faith schools. Ms Lempriere: I was just explaining that when we are talking about diversity, faith schools do not necessarily mean a lack of diversity. I think things have happened, to return to your main question, in the education sector to build cohesion, and certainly in the development of new schools, where, for example, there are significant developments going on in cities, issues around cohesion do feature in planning of intake and location to try and overcome some of the problems that Ted Cantle addressed. Q514 Mr Prosser: How successful would you say your efforts to promote community cohesion have been? We have been skating around this subject quite a bit, but as a specific policy to improve and promote community cohesion, how successful do you think you have been so far? Ms Blears: I think it has been successful in energising government. Whether or not this has translated to fully achieve our ambitions on the ground I think is perhaps another matter. I think government now is much more focused right across on how important cohesion is to build into their policies from the beginning, and that was not the case before we had the Cantle Report and the focus on community cohesion. Particularly in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister now, all the work that local government does around regeneration is much more focused on building in community cohesion from the start. To some extent the things we have just been talking about in education, similarly. How can schools help to build cohesion? You can say just the same in relation to transport proposals. How do you make sure that communities have sufficiently good transport links to enable them to use the facilities? The whole focus on the community cohesion Pathfinders that we had has helped to take that agenda across government. I think there is more work to be done. I am not criticising our local partners for this at all, but I do think out there on the ground that there is still a sense that we still have some big issues to tackle before people really do feel that they have a very inclusive community. That takes me back to our citizenship survey right at the beginning, that 71% of people say people round here get along with each other. Obviously, the task is to try and increase that number. Q515 Mr Prosser: The Chairman has been asking you about the Cantle Report and another area of criticism from them was the so-called area-based regeneration strategies. What changes have the Home Office made to help bring this about? Ms Blears: I think area-based initiatives were singled out for criticism on a double-edged basis. One was that where you had a geographical, inflexible boundary, people who fell just outside that boundary felt completely excluded from all the different regeneration that was going on somewhere else, and that inevitably would lead to a sense of resentment and community tension. The Home Office and ODPM have actually issued some joint guidance about how area-based initiatives can be designed in order to not to have those difficulties. A couple of the key things for me are, first of all, full and meaningful involvement of communities, not a sham consultation but real involvement with local people in designing what the initiative should look like, what its objects are, where it should operate. Flexibility in the application of scheme boundaries is absolutely key, so that even if you are limited to an area base, there is no reason why the people who fall just outside cannot at least take advantage of some of the good practice and extend some of the schemes to them. We will all have experienced New Deal for Communities schemes in that way, and some of our Surestart schemes have very defined boundaries, but that is no reason why the principles of a Surestart operation cannot be adopted elsewhere even if you do not have the full initiative, and I think that has been very important indeed. The final thing is we have also issued a guide not just for the officials but we have also issued a guide for residents and practitioners about how at a local level they can help to influence area-based initiatives so they have a sense of ownership of their regeneration, and that again helps to reduce some of the community tensions that are about. Q516 Mr Clappison: It is clear from the evidence we have received and from the Cantle Report that local leadership is a key factor. What is the Government doing to foster local leadership, to support it and to spread best practice? Ms Blears: You are right, Mr Clappison, that leadership is key in these issues, and I think our community cohesion pathfinders showed us that there is no one simple model for local leadership. I mentioned the Mayor of Stoke-on-Trent previously. He had a particular model; he was a man with a mission, and he was going to go out there and take it on. In other areas they have found that collective leadership is more appropriate, shared leadership with the local community. So there is a range of issues there. I think leadership in local government is absolutely fundamental to this and it is a key part of ODPM's ten-year strategy for local government, enhancing the capacity of local councillors to be able to lead their communities and be champions for their communities. We are now starting to measure that in a much more vigorous way through the Common Performance Assessment. I think community cohesion and leadership is an integral part of districts' CPA measurement at the moment, and from this year it starts to be part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment for higher-tier councils as well. So local leadership is absolutely fundamental to getting these issues right. We are also working with IDeA, again, the Improvement and Development Agency, to raise the capacity of local councils to be able to be community champions. So I think there is a huge amount of work going on, but it is going to be scrutinised by the Audit Commission in the CPA, and sometimes, when you shine a light on things through the CPA process, that is how you can really drive improvement. Q517 Mr Clappison: It is implicit in what you have said that you have got the mechanisms there to identify areas where local leadership is weak. What happens when you find an area where local leadership is lacking? Ms Blears: There is a range of measures that government can take, and councils now are assessed, I think, as excellent, good, fair, weak and poor. I think those are the gradings that councils have. Interventions are proportionate to their grading. Intervention can range from help and assistance and, at the top end, clearly, ODPM has powers to literally intervene and take over the running of services. It has not had to do that so far, but it has sent in some pretty strong remedial managers to some places to try and increase performance. I know that lots of council leaders now are getting peer mentoring from other excellent council leaders, where they are working side by side with them. I think there is an innovative programme where Kent Social Services are going in to help Swindon Social Services because their performance has been judged to be not that good, so they are in there helping them. It is a bit controversial, I know, but it is new ways of people helping each other, as well as, if you like, intervention from the centre. Q518 Mr Clappison: On a slightly different note, on a different form of leadership, inter-faith dialogue seems to be a bit patchy. It is very good where it is happening but it is a bit patchy. Is there anything that you are doing to foster it particularly? Ms Blears: Yes, we are. We have been encouraging the inter-faith network. This is at local level. There are currently around 200 local inter-faith groups. We want there to be more. We would like them to be in every part of the country, so we do want to try and ensure that we can make that happen. We have also, as I say, brought together this imam and rabbi dialogue. We have got the Inter Faith Network for the UK, which is core-funded by the Home Office, and the Local Government Association, so that is an interesting joint venture with local government. We have tried to involve inter-faith groups in all of our national celebrations that have taken place recently, so that they have a real place at the table in our national life. There is a huge amount going on but I think more to do. If we can have inter-faith groups in every community, where we are all talking together and sharing ideas, with that kind of robust debate, but with respect, then I think that could be the way forward for us. Q519 Chairman: Minister, finally, in the Government's recent document "Improving Opportunity, Strengthening Society", you said that one of the things you wanted to do was to develop a sense of inclusion and shared British identity defined by common opportunities and mutual expectations on all citizens to contribute to society. Going back to the Cantle Report again, he actually said that there should be a national debate, one in which young people should be very strongly representative, to try to define what that British identity should be for the 21st century. Does the Government think that debate is necessary or is it pretty obvious enough what British identity is and it is merely a matter of getting people to share in it? Ms Blears: This takes me right the way back to the beginning of ours session today, Mr Chairman, really. You will be pleased to know that I have about three lines of briefing on this, so I am entitled to say what I think rather than my briefing. Q520 Chairman: Would you like to go back over the last hour and a half and tell us what you really think? Ms Blears: You have had entirely my views this afternoon. In terms of opportunities for everyone and mutual expectations, it is very much the agenda that we talk about across government, whether it is opportunity, security, rights and responsibilities, that sense of mutual inter-dependence. That is not necessarily just about Britishness; that is about the core values that are the glue that holds us together. It is the question Mr Taylor raised about loyalties. My view remains the same. We are all very complex human beings. We have layers of different loyalties and views and opinions. I do not know that there is a need for a great debate about Britishness. I think there is a need for a great debate about what those mutual inter-dependencies are, and the relationship between rights and responsibilities and opportunities in this country. I think there is a need to re-establish some norms of behaviour, what I would call the essential standards of decency, but I do not think there is necessarily a need for a great debate about Britishness. Q521 Chairman: In the same document you promote the concept of citizenship ceremonies for young people, heightening the sense of being a citizen. Does that not need a more clearly defined vision of what being a British citizen, or British subject, is in the 21st century, which is clearly very different to what it would have been 50 or 100 years ago? Ms Blears: We have had a huge amount of constitutional debate over the last few days, have we not? I am more of an expert in the separation of powers than I ever anticipated being. With the citizenship agenda, what we are trying to do is to explore some of those issues, because I do not think they are necessarily that clear, about us coming to a fixed determination, a complete set of certain things that are about our citizenship. I think it is a journey and an exploration of how some of that works. That is why we have said we are going to pilot our idea of having a Citizenship Day in October this year. Some people have greeted that proposal with some scepticism. Will everybody want to be an active citizen on 15 October or whenever it is? But I do think that there is merit in exploring one of the things that unites us as a country, whether that is sport, art, drama, the things that we undertake together, the boundaries that we have. I am not personally sure that that is set in stone and is subject to a determination from outside. I think it is something that we all have to find for ourselves. Q522 David Winnick: Minister, looking back long before our time, centuries before our time, all the immigration which has occurred from the 16th and 17th centuries, all the different peoples that have come to our shores, has there been any group that have not succeeded in becoming part of the general society, that their children and grandchildren and so on are as British as anyone who can trace their roots back to 1066 and before? The point I am making is, is there any reason why the more recent immigrants, post 1945 and post 1955, will be any different to those in past centuries? Ms Blears: No, I do not think there is. People can hopefully come to this country, make a contribution, settle here, feel as fully involved and part of our civic life, which I think is important, as anybody else. I think it is a challenge for us at the moment to get that message really understood by our communities. We have a responsibility to reassure people that those coming to this country are not a threat, not people who are going to take things away from them, but are people who can help to add to the richness and strength of the society in which we live. I think we live in a fantastic country, and I think people coming here can help us make it even better. Chairman: On that note, Minister, thank you very much indeed. We will see you next week with four other ministers. Thank you very much indeed. |