Heather Bellamy spoke with The Christian Institute, about the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the Government's approach to countering extremism and how the legislation could be over, before it's even begun.

Ciaran Kelly

A recent report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights has exposed the dangers to Christians from the Government's approach to countering extremism. Heather Bellamy spoke with Ciaran Kelly, the Head of Communications at The Christian Institute, to find out more.

Heather: So first of all, what is the Joint Committee on Human Rights?

Ciaran: The word joint is important. This is a committee comprising of MPs from the House of Commons and MPs from the House of Lords. There are a number of these, in various aspects of Government life and work and this one in particular is focused on human rights.

Heather: The committee was tasked with examining the Government's planned counter-extremism legislation. What are the Government's plans in that legislation?

Ciaran: That is a very good question and quite difficult to answer. The reason it's difficult to answer, is because the plans are far from clear.

The Government introduced this quite some time ago. David Cameron introduced it, with the suggestion that it was about time we stopped saying that obeying the law was enough. That we should turn the page on that approach, because it's a failed approach and we need to deal with these people who might be keeping the law, but we don't like what they are doing. Ever since then, there's been questions and the Government has been questioned on who exactly it is they have in mind. They haven't been very forthcoming though, in terms of what they are actually trying to achieve.

Clearly what they are trying to do, is to take some action against the extremists who can be a threat to society, who are violent extremists. That's what you would think anyway, but the conversation keeps being about non-violent extremists and people who insight hatred, or are not taking violent acts themselves, but are somehow catering for an extremist mind-set.

Everybody agrees with the need to tackle violent extremists. I don't think there is going to be much in the way of debate over that. The problem comes when we start trying to talk about what non-violent extremism is.

The legislation that the Government is talking about, smacks very much of, "Something must be done and therefore we are going to come up with something." What they have come up with, is a catch-all set of criteria that pretty much boils down to, "If we don't like it, then we can classify it as extremist and we can take action against you."

What the legislation talks about, is introducing some civil orders. They're called Extremism Disruption Orders and some Banning Orders as well and they would have a very low threshold of application. If someone deems something that you or I might say, or write, as extremist in some fashion, then an application can be made for one of these Disruption Orders that would stop you from meeting with various people, or stop you from posting on social media. That's the problem, pretty much anybody who says something that is perhaps non-mainstream, could be caught up under the term extremism.

If I am being vague about it that's because the legislation that it has been talked about thus far, is extremely vague.

Heather: Why was this committee tasked with examining the legislation?

Ciaran: It is reasonably normal for committees to examine legislation, it happens all the time, but this particular piece of legislation is a real cause for concern. Harriet Harman chairs that committee and she was extremely critical of it.

What the committee was responding to was various pieces of evidence around concerns over the legislation. What was the Government trying to achieve? Who was the Government targeting? What constitutes the term extremism? What does that mean? What does that look like? What's the offence, which doesn't already exist that you are seeking to legislate for?