Prevent, a well intentioned but divisive scheme, is scrapped

Earlier this week, the government announced that they are to abolish the Prevent Violent Extremism (PVE) grants. Prevent is part of the broader ‘Contest’ programme which was established after the London bombings of 2005. The idea behind Prevent is to address the root causes of extremism by encouraging community cohesion, thereby stopping people from being influenced by violent extremists. But in September last year we published research that showed exactly how local authorities spent the money given to them by central government. It was a ground breaking study: Paul Goodman – in his previous role as a MP for Wycombe – asked the Department for Communities and Local Government for a breakdown of this spending in Parliament but was unable to get an answer. Our paper was the first time that PVE spending was collated – and the results were less than impressive, so we said it should be scrapped.