Speeches by Prinsley.

“I have the sense that people think that there is a whole process in place here that has been very successful in preventing all this stuff. Are you able to say how many episodes of terrorism have in fact been prevented? Is there any way of knowing that?”

“For a programme like Prevent to have public support, it would need to demonstrate its effectiveness rather than we sit here supposing that. Being able to somehow come up with a figure to say, “We have prevented 90% of all possible—””

“That is missing.”

“But the public are interested in it.”

“When I was a child, it was a simple matter that we were simply told not to talk to strangers. That was how our parents kept us safe. Do you think that we ought to be thinking about how we mandate within primary schools some sort of online safety education, so that all the children are told—everybody is instructed—about…”

“Which is why we need to do it very early.”

“We need to encourage good internet habits at a very early age for these people.”

“I want to pick up on something that I thought you said—I was not quite sure. Did you say a minute ago that the likelihood of being referred for the danger of far-right activity was greater than the likelihood of being referred for the danger of Islamic?”

“Do you have an explanation for that?”

“The question that I asked has a particular political resonance, as you probably understand. I can well understand that referrals from Muslim and Islamic schools would be less, but is Islamic groups within mainstream schools compared to, say, referrals for far-right activities? Would you see any contrast there?”

“I am Peter Prinsley. I am the MP for Bury St Edmunds. Thank you very much for coming this afternoon. This is about local approaches to tackling extremism. You have answered the question about how much of a priority this is given. Do you have sufficient resources at your disposal? If you were to be given additional reso…”

“That leads to the next bit of the question, which is all about how a local authority goes about co-ordinating the activities of the schools, youth services, health and community organisations and so on? From what you have just said, it sounds like something that was there has been dismantled, am I correct?”

“That leads on to the final bit of the question, which is about how we build trust in communities where there is probably widespread scepticism about whether any of this counter-extremism stuff is effective? How do we sell this to the sceptical community?”

“In another world, I know a little bit about how interfaith things are happening, and that the strength of interfaith activities is extremely patchy. There are some places where it works very well; many where it is non-existent.”

“The sight of this sinister ship snooping around our shores strikes alarm. How can we be confident of the security of our vital undersea communication cables and what, without compromising our security, is plan B if they are severed?”

“T7. At a recent church hall meeting in Elmswell—yet another quintessential Suffolk village—a number of my constituents raised concerns about the local railway crossing. This rapidly growing village relies on an outdated level crossing, creating enormous hold-ups that are inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst. In …”

“At a lively church hall meeting in Barningham, which is a quintessential Suffolk village, a number of my constituents raised concerns about the state of rural bus provision. They highlighted not only the infrequency of the services, but the fact that the buses are larger than demand requires; many seats are unused. Doe…”

“16. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of bus services in rural areas.”

“That answers my next question. There would be some point to this from the point of view of checking whether employers are complying with this stuff.”

“My first question is very wide, and you could probably spend all afternoon answering it. We would like to know what you see as the main potential benefits of a more widespread adoption of a digital form of identification in this country.”