John Oconnell

A few weeks ago I wrote for Coffee House welcoming the Government’s decision to scrap Prevent grants administered by local authorities. In that article, I cautioned that scrapping something should actually mean scrapping it, not just moving resources around. Today, the TaxPayers’ Alliance has released research showing that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) also distribute funds through Prevent. Again, money has gone to projects of questionable value in the fight against extremism, violent or non-violent.   One of the more dubious projects was a “mobile cinema for justice”. What’s worse is that it was administered by an American charity called the International Research and Exchanges Board. Why is that bad?

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.