The Home Office has set up a cross-government taskforce to look at existing multi-agency and safeguarding arrangements, and how they interact with the Prevent programme in the wake of 2024’s Southport killings and the murder of MP David Amess.
Details of the taskforce emerged this week in the department’s formal response to peer David Anderson’s Lessons for Prevent report, which was submitted to ministers in July last year.
Prevent is a Home Office early-intervention programme that seeks to identify people at risk of becoming terrorists – and then offers them “interventions” to change their path. More than 66,000 referrals to Prevent have been made since 2015.
Both Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana and Ali Harbi Ali, who killed David Amess in October 2021, were known to Prevent. However the murders they committed took place some years after their last contact with the programme.
Among his recommendations to government last year, Prevent reviewer Lord Anderson said a Cabinet Office task force should be established to lead exploratory work into the possibility of formally connecting the programme to a broader safeguarding and violence-prevention system.
Anderson said the work “cannot be done by any single line department” and that the taskforce should be “answerable to a senior Cabinet Office minister and the cabinet secretary.
In her formal response to the report, which was published yesterday, home secretary Shabana Mahmood says she has now set up a cross-government taskforce in the Home Office, which will draw on Cabinet Office expertise and support.
“This will consider the range of existing multi-agency and safeguarding arrangements, how they interact with Prevent and what more might be needed,” she said. “The taskforce brings together partners from across government, including the Department for Education, Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry of Justice, operational partners and others working on safeguarding and violence prevention.”
Mahmood said devolved governments would be important partners in the taskforce’s work, as much related policy is devolved.
She added that the taskforce will also work closely with Prevent partners and local frontline networks. On top of that, the taskforce will identify opportunities for building better connections between different safeguarding systems and “examine the role of the online information environment” in influencing evolving threats.
Mahmood said the taskforce will work alongside the second phase of Sir Adrian Fulford’s Southport Inquiry as it considers the adequacy of multi-agency systems to address risks posed by young people fixated with extreme violence.
The home secretary said that last year a pilot was established in nine local authority areas to look at ways to ensure cases that leave the Prevent system are “connected to the correct alternative services”.
The pilot focused on individuals who pose a risk of violence or had “concerning interest in mass violence” but were not classified as a terrorist concern.
According to Mahmood, over the course of 12 months around 50 cases were taken through monthly multi-agency assurance meetings to monitor progress.
“From this evaluation, we identified practical minimum standards to strengthen the handoff process from Prevent to alternative services which we are working with partners to agree and roll out,” she said.