In response to the Home Secretary’s response to today’s urgent question on her conduct within Government to tackle extremism, Yvette Cooper MP, Shadow Home Secretary said:

“Ministers need to work together on preventing extremism. Last week they spectacularly failed to do this, preferring to indulge in a blame game. But Theresa May is still failing to take responsibility for what went wrong, or to provide reassurance that they will work together in future.

“The Home Secretary claimed she did not authorise the release of her letter to Michael Gove accusing his department of a failure to act to the media or on the Home Office website. Yet time and again she refused to answer whether she wrote it in order to leak it, who did release it and why she left it on the website for three days.

“Theresa May didn’t write or send the letter until after Michael Gove briefed the Times. Are we really supposed to believe she didn’t write it in order to leak it?

“She also claimed that the Department for Communities and Local Government had taken over the wider prevention work fighting extremism within communities that the Home Office has cut back.

"Unfortunately, the DCLG is failing to do this work and the result is that work to support community leaders, who are the strongest advocates against extremism, has been cut right back. The Home Secretary needs to make sure the ‘Prevent’ programme is working effectively rather than looking round for others to blame.”​