Michael Gove ‘didn’t go far enough’ says his own social cohesion adviser
by Matt Dathan, The Times:
Communities secretary names five groups that could breach new rules, but Sara Khan warns crackdown needs to be tougher to stop hate polluting wider society.
Michael Gove has named and shamed five groups likely to fall foul of a new government definition of extremism but faced criticism from his own adviser that his efforts did not go far enough.
The communities secretary used parliamentary privilege to name three Muslim and two far-right organisations that could face a ban on having any links to central government over concerns about their conduct.
However, Sara Khan, the government’s social cohesion adviser, urged ministers to go further by introducing a law of “hateful extremism” as she criticised successive governments for being “behind the curve” on the issue.
In an interview with The Times, Khan said extremism was “polluting” society and called for a legal definition that goes beyond Gove’s non-statutory approach, which applies only to who can and cannot engage with government. She claimed a tougher definition would enable all extremist groups to be cut off from mainstream society.
Khan, the government’s independent adviser for social cohesion and resilience, said a new law could create “hateful extremism proscription orders”. They would apply in a similar way to banned terror groups and would put a legal duty on all public bodies, such as Ofcom and Ofsted, to tackle extremist groups in their remit.
Read also: Is Gove handing Labour a dangerous weapon? by Toby Young, Spectator. Toby Young is apprehensive about how the Labour Party might take advantage of Michael Gove’s proposed new definition of extremism to smear and demonise gender critical feminists and anti-abortion activists.
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