Terror laws reviewer calls for independent oversight of PREVENT

PREVENT was designed to guard against home-grown terrorism but has been blamed for alienating the Muslim communities it was supposed to be engaging.

In a Daily Politics film, David Anderson said: “Is PREVENT working? Nobody knows – most things about PREVENT are classified… I don’t have the power to review PREVENT, but in my view some person or body of people ought to have the power do for PREVENT what I do for the counter terrorism laws.”

He also called for Schedule 7 laws – which give police the power to stop, detain and interrogate people at borders for up to 6 hours without the need for suspicion – to be more targeted.

“Schedule 7 is extremely useful to the police but it’s also a significant source of resentment in some quarters… it’s very important that the power is applied in a targeted way and without ethnic discrimination,” he said.