Only 4% of people think David Cameron's anti-extremist policy works

Poll blow: Prime Minister David Cameron
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Joseph Watts1 April 2016
WEST END FINAL

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David Cameron’s flagship strategy to stop Britons becoming extremists suffered an embarrassing blow today as research reveals only a tiny percentage of people think it is working.

The Prevent policy is a key part of the Government’s counter-terrorism efforts, with teachers, lecturers, social workers, prison officers and NHS managers under a legal obligation to report signs of radicalisation.

However, the poll found just four per cent of the public believe current measures are effective, while 19 per cent had no idea the Government even had an anti-radicalisation strategy.

BMG Research statisticians were so surprised by the findings that they ran the poll twice to check them. Director Dr Michael Turner said: “The Government is clearly doing a poor job communicating any progress of its strategy to the wider public.”

Ministers revamped the Prevent programme last year, introducing the new “duty” to tackle extremism on all state bodies, including schools.

Bella Sankey, director of policy for human rights group Liberty, said the poll was a “damning indictment” of Prevent, which she branded “clumsy and offensive”. She said: “The Government has had no qualms dismissing the valid concerns of human rights campaigners, teachers and religious groups, but the British public will prove harder to brush off.”

Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said the Government’s approach was “clumsy at best and highly divisive at worst”.

He added: “This is the biggest challenge of our times but [the BMG poll] shows that the Prime Minister is failing to rise to it.” He said Prevent “needs a wholesale rethink”.

BMG polled 1,511 adults, of whom 55 per cent did not think anti-radicalisation efforts were working. It follows a call by the UK’s terror watchdog for an independent review of Prevent.

Security minister John Hayes said more than 400,000 people have been trained to recognise the signs of radicalisation. “On top of this, there have been more than 4,000 referrals, with hundreds of people at risk of being drawn into terrorism accepting voluntary support.”

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