Prevent

• Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)

  
  Next week, the annual national parliamentary prayer breakfast will take place in Westminster Hall, at which 600 community and faith leaders and over 100 MPs will gather. Yet also this week, we hear of a Christian union being banned from holding prayer and Bible study meetings, purportedly on the grounds of the Government’s anti-terrorism Prevent strategy. Does the Prime Minister agree that such action was never the purpose of a strategy intended to address terrorism and extremism?

• The Prime Minister

  Of course what my hon. Friend says is right. I am very sorry I will not be able to attend the prayer breakfast, because I know it is a very good event, and it brings a lot of people together and means a lot to Christians around our country. On the point she makes about the Prevent duty being misused, I have not heard of that exact example, but it is clearly ludicrous. People do need to exercise some common sense in making these judgments, because it is quite clear that that is not what was intended
  
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