Instruments of interest
Draft Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Risk of Being Drawn into Terrorism) (Revised Guidance) Regulations 2023
58.These draft Regulations propose the first update of the ‘Prevent’ guidance since it was introduced in 2015. The guidance is part of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, CONTEST, and aims to stop people becoming terrorists and to support the rehabilitation and disengagement of those already involved. Specified authorities, including in the education and health sectors, local authorities, police and criminal justice agencies, must have regard to the guidance.
59.The update follows an Independent Review of Prevent (IRP), published in February 2023, that made 34 recommendations.20 Resulting changes to the guidance include:
- amending the first Prevent objective from “respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat we face from those who promote it” to “tackle the ideological causes of terrorism”;
- stressing the need for concern about an individual’s path to radicalisation; in particular, focussing on the “ideological” causes of terrorism and extremism; and
- outlining the new Security Threat Check (STC), a set of questions intended to ensure that decision-making within Prevent fully considers the terrorism threat picture.
60.The Home Office told us that the revised guidance contributed to meeting more than half the recommendations in the IRP, and that the Government are “on track” to implement all the recommendations in full by “shortly after” February 2024.
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Exemptions from Financial Promotion General Requirement) Regulations 2023 (SI 2023/966)
61.The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 introduces a regulatory ‘gateway’ for the approval of financial promotions. The gateway requires any authorised person wishing to approve financial promotions of an unauthorised person to first obtain permission from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), unless an exemption applies. This instrument specifies when exemptions apply, which HM Treasury says are intended to cover promotions “related to activity for which the authorised person had expressly taken responsibility, or where there is sufficient involvement of the authorised person”. Specifically, an authorised person will not need to obtain permission if they are approving financial promotions:
- that they themselves prepared, but which are communicated by unauthorised persons (for example, in a newspaper);
- of unauthorised entities that are part of the same group; or
- of their appointed representatives, in relation to business for which the authorised person has accepted responsibility.
20 Home Office, ‘Independent Review of Prevent’s report and government response’ (8 February 2023): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-prevents-report-and-government-response [accessed 20 September 2023].