The head of the government’s controversial counter-terrorism programme Prevent is leaving his position after a damning inquiry revealed the strategy’s failures in relation to the Southport attack.
Michael Stewart had spearheaded the programme – which aims to to stop people from becoming involved in or supporting terrorism – since September 2020.
He was in charge when reviews of the stabbing and earlier incidents criticised the strategy’s focus and exposed basic failures that hampered officials’ ability to stop the Southport murderer, Axel Rudakubana.
Stewart’s departure, first reported by the Times, follows a rapid learning review that found Prevent had misspelt Rudakubana’s surname in its database, a factor that may have hampered its assessment of him as being a possible mass murderer.
The review also found Rudakubana had his case in the Prevent programme closed “prematurely” after he was referred three times for an interest in knives and mass atrocities between December 2019 and April 2021.
Rudakubana murdered Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Bebe King, six, at a dance class in Southport on 29 July last year.
Dan Jarvis, the Home Office minister in charge of Prevent, later told MPs the programme knew that Rudakubana had been caught carrying a knife in 2019, and had searched on the internet for school shootings, London bombings, the IRA and the Israel-Palestine conflict, between December 2019 and April 2021.
A review also concluded that Prevent made a series of errors in its handling of the man who murdered the Conservative MP David Amess. Ali Harbi Ali was convicted of Amess’s murder in 2022, when he was 26.
His school had referred him to Prevent in 2014, but his case was closed two years later, despite concerns that he could have an interest in violent Islamism. He had been referred from Prevent to the Channel scheme, for those deemed at risk of radicalisation.
Ali’s trial heard he had hidden his real views while in the Prevent scheme. The review found the assessment had been made too soon, after just one coffee meeting with him at McDonald’s.
MPs across parliament have called for Prevent to be overhauled since the Southport murders. Jake Davison, who had also been referred to the programme, went on to murder five people in a 12-minute rampage through Plymouth in August 2021.
Stewart also led Prevent when William Shawcross reviewed it in 2023 and concluded that it was not “doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism” and “has a double standard when dealing with the extreme right wing and Islamism”.
Prevent is a voluntary scheme intended to deflect people away from being radicalised before they commit terrorist acts.
Last month, Jarvis said the Prevent commissioner would “ensure the implementation of all relevant recommendations” from the review about the programme’s interactions with Ali.
The Guardian revealed Kemi Badenoch co-authored a report that expressed concern the Prevent programme was alienating communities.
The Conservative leader co-wrote the 50-page report titled Preventing Extremism in London when she was a member of the London assembly’s police and crime committee in 2015.
“Community engagement is critical to the success of Prevent,” the report went on, noting the risk that “the current ‘top-down’ approach to Prevent delivery makes it difficult to engage citizens”.
The Home Office has been contacted for comment on Stewart’s departure.
