The Government has rejected calls to expand its definition of extremism to cover “spreading misinformation”.
Ministers dismissed a Home Office report, known as the ‘Rapid Analytical Sprint’, which reportedly claimed the Government should focus on several so-called “behaviours and activity of concern” such as “conspiracy theories”, instead of “ideologies of concern”.
The response came after the report was leaked to the think tank Policy Exchange.
Policy Exchange’s Head of Security and Extremism Dr Paul Stott and Senior Fellow Andrew Gilligan noted that the Rapid Analytical Sprint put free speech at risk by “defining aspects of normal and legitimate political debate as extremist”.
They warned: “This new approach risks swamping already stretched counterextremism interveners and counterterror police with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of new cases, making it more likely that dangerous people will be missed.”
Home Office Minister Dan Jarvis MBE MP confirmed that ministers have rejected the recommendations, stating: “Ideology, particularly Islamist extremism followed by far-right extremism, continue to be at the heart of our approach to countering extremism and counterterror.”
The report also pushed the Government to lower the threshold for recording non-crime hate incidents. Ministers have previously pledged to make changes to increase non-crime monitoring in cases of allegations of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
This little booklet makes the big point that some non-violent ‘extremists’ turn out to be heroic people of global significance. Successive UK governments have sought to confront non-violent extremism. But without a clear, precise and well-understood definition this is a dangerous road to go down. Our little list of heroes could easily have been accused of breaching modern ‘non-violent extremism’ thresholds.
Last year, The Christian Institute warned the previous Government against widening its definition of extremism.
Following former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge to tackle “acts of violence” against Jews and Muslims, the then Communities Secretary Michael Gove announced plans to block groups deemed to be ‘extremist’ from accessing public funding or engaging with the Government.
The definition described extremism as the “promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance” that aims to “negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others”, or “undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights”.
But the Institute’s Deputy Director Simon Calvert cautioned that previous attempts to “widen the definition of extremism have been so broad and expansive that they would have caught many ordinary people going about their daily lives, campaigners, political activists and those holding traditional beliefs”.
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