The number of younger people being referred to the Prevent counter-extremism programme has doubled since last summer, the Home Secretary has revealed.
Yvette Cooper told the Commons Home Affairs Committee that she was “really worried” about “increasing extremism among young people”, with rising numbers being reported to Prevent or arrested for terrorism offences.
But she also warned that not enough cases of Islamic extremism were being referred to the programme, saying she was “concerned about the threshold ending up being too high”.
The Government has embarked on an overhaul of the Prevent programme, which aims to divert people away from extremism, amid rising concern about youth radicalisation and following the murder of three young girls in Southport by teenager Axel Rudakubana.
Rudakubana had been referred to Prevent, but his case was closed due to his lack of ideology.
As well as appointing an independent Prevent commissioner to examine the programme, the Southport case and that of Ali Harbi Ali, who murdered Tory MP Sir David Amess in 2021, ministers launched a review of Prevent thresholds towards the end of last year.
Asked about the findings of that review on Tuesday, Ms Cooper said: “This is one of the issues that I am really worried about, and we are seeing increasing extremism among young people.”
Adding that the counter-terror caseload involving young people had trebled in the last three years, she said: “What we’ve also seen, I think, is a doubling of the number of young people being referred to Prevent since last summer as well.
“So this does raise some very significant challenges for us.”
In response, the Government has proposed new “youth diversion orders” as part of the Crime and Policing Bill currently making its way through Parliament.
The orders are intended to apply to young people who require intervention beyond the voluntary Prevent scheme, and can impose conditions including restrictions on online activity.
The latest figures show a slight rise in the number of people being referred to Prevent when compared to the previous year, with 6,922 referrals in the year up to March 31 2024.
Around half of those referrals were for people aged under 18, while referrals for “extreme right-wing concerns” outnumbered those for “Islamist concerns” for the fourth year running.
But Ms Cooper told MPs on Tuesday: “I continue to be concerned about the threshold ending up being too high and not enough Islamist extremist cases being referred to Prevent, and the need to do more to make sure more of those cases were being referred to Prevent.”
