There’s no British law designed to deal with extremism, the chief of the Metropolitan police said amid an ongoing controversy around what actions seen during pro-Palestinian protests are legal or illegal.
Speaking on Sky’s “Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips” programme, Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley rejected the idea the Met hasn’t been tough enough when policing the protests.
“We will robustly enforce up to the line of the law. We’re approaching 100 arrests in these events over recent weeks across dealing with local hate crime and dealing with these protests,” he said, adding that there are still appeals out there to find suspects, such as women who were pictured have images of paragliders on their backs.
No Law That Deals with Extremism
Sir Mark said there’s “scope to be much sharper in how we deal with extremism” in the UK.“The law was never designed to deal with extremists. And we have bodies of law to deal with terrorism, bodies of law to deal with hate crime, we don’t have a body of law that deals with extremism, and that is creating a gap,” he said, citing the chants of “jihad” as an example.
Speaking on the same programme earlier, Science Secretary Michelle Donelan said the government is keeping “everything under review” when asked about a media report that said the government is reviewing the definition of extremism.
“We have a definition. ... and we believe that the current law is fit for purpose. We do have, of course, the Terrorism Act [and] the Public Order Act that the police can deploy in these types of circumstances where people are actively promoting their terrorist organisation or inciting hatred and promoting violence,” she said, adding that the police have already made arrests.
Pressed on whether there is a review of the definition of extremism, the minister said, “So everything is always kept under constant review. In terms of a formal review, what we said to date is that we believe the existing law is robust enough, and the police should be applying that in the circumstances. Of course, if we feel that over the coming weeks, that’s not enough. What I’m saying to you is, of course, we'd take further action.”