Speeches by Kohler.

“So, the large percentage of false positives on referrals is a real danger, is it not?”

“What can we do to stop that? Do educational professionals, teachers, have the skills to work out who they should be referring?”

“Excuse my ignorance but can you give me in broad terms what a social cohesion strategy would look like?”

“In his review, Lord Anderson recommended that Prevent be connected to other safeguarding and violence prevention strategies. Dr Horton, you have already mentioned that that is happening in the informal pre-Prevent stage. Is there more to be done there?”

“On that point, I have heard one defence of the Australian model: it is a nice binary, it is simple—as with do not talk to strangers—and teaching nuance at an early age is a fool’s errand and you need that simple rule that gives parents something to say, “You cannot do it”. Are you resistant to those ideas? I might be a…”

“You said, “legal advice”. You would have a solicitor there?”

“Does it require a strategic approach where you work out which of these strategies are being used so they are not counterproductive?”

“So, they know how to do a referral, but not why, a lot of the times?”

“Given that there will always be the issues with time for training and teachers have a huge number of responsibilities, and being risk-averse of not making a mistake, is there something we can do with the referral system so that it does not stigmatise in the way you are telling me that it does?”

“Do you know what factors influence whether the child engages?”

“That is the view?”

“Picking up on what Chris just said, events promote hypervigilance. Do they also, though, promote more people into extremism?”

“What percentage of children who do go to the channelling point, engage with it? Do we have figures on that?”

“Four-fifths of referrals do not make it to a Channel discussion, and five-sixths do not get a Channel intervention. Is there a formal process as to what happens with that vast majority?”

“Dr Horton, do you want to add something?”

“Could you ever do that? Could you ever prove that what didn’t happen was due to Prevent?”

“This is the essence of a liberal democracy, of course.”

“One of my colleagues will ask in detail about the internet but I want to ask a preliminary question on com networks. Some of the evidence we have had has said that com networks should be treated as extremism. Others have said, “No, don’t treat it as extremism, it is different”. What is your view on that? Secondly, do y…”

“Vast sums of money are being wasted now via Prevent. If four-fifths are not getting through to the Channel process that means police are spending time on an inappropriate referral, which is a huge waste of resource. Presumably if it was the other way around that filtering would not happen at that point, would it?”

“Is there an argument for not having counter-terrorism for that stage—one recognises a child that is vulnerable and not bringing in this Prevent approach at that point—or is that naive?”