Neil Basu says better social mobility a must to win the fight against extremism

BETTER social mobility and education could do more to win the fight against violent extremism than policing and state security combined, feels Britain's counter-terrorism chief Neil Basu.

The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner said that up to 80 per cent of those who wanted to attack the UK were British-born or raised, and added that police and security services were no longer enough to fight extremism. The wider society has a role to play to tackle the terror threat.

"Nothing I am saying remotely excuses these heinous acts of criminal violence," he said in an interview with The Guardian.

"But the deeper causes need examining. My teams are world class at stopping attacks and locking terrorists up. But we need to stop the flow of recruits into terrorism.

"Don't forget that 70%-80% of the people we arrest, disrupt or commit an attack here, are born and raised here. Born or at least raised here. That has got to tell us something about our society - that we have got to look at why they would be prepared to do that.

"I want good academics, good sociologists, good criminologists to be telling us exactly why that is."

Basu, who is seen as a potential next head of the Met, also spoke about the government's Prevent programme and said it was "badly handled." It needed to be more community-led to be successful, he said.

The senior counter-terrorism chief also called for a greater understanding of marginalised communities, and rejected notions that British Muslims should “assimilate”.

“Assimilation implies that I have to hide myself in order to get on. We should not be a society that accepts that.

He added: “You should be able to practise your religion without suffering some condemnation of that; so my view is, do no harm. And that does not matter whether you are conservative Islamic, conservative Christian, conservative Hindu, conservative Sikh.

"You should be able to practise your culture or religion openly and still be accepting of others, and others be accepting of you. That is a socially inclusive society.”