It’s refreshing to see that the U.S. government is not the only government to screw up its spending programs.
ISLAMIST HATEMONGERS FUNDED BY THE TAXPAYER WITH MONEY EARMARKED FOR SCHOOLS
Mail Online
June 8, 2011
Hundreds of thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money earmarked to counter terrorism was instead handed to extremist groups, it emerged last night.
Radical Islamists were bankrolled with money which should have been used to combat their anti-Western ideology, a Government report concluded.
The money was spent as part of the Prevent program which was funded with hundreds of millions of pounds to try to stop young Muslims from becoming radicalized.
The report also revealed:
__Hundreds of thousands of pounds were wasted on pointless sports clubs or ‘cohesion schemes’.
__More than 1,100 people were reported to the authorities after displaying extremist sympathies – a quarter of whom were children.
__The astonishing scale of Islamic teaching outside the mainstream school system in up to 2,000 madrassas attended by an estimated 100,000 children.
Home Secretary Theresa May launched a withering attack on the failures of Prevent, set up by Labour in the wake of the July 7 attacks in 2005. She said it was ‘flawed’ and vowed to end all funding for extremist groups.
In a statement to Parliament, she said: ‘It failed to tackle the extremist ideology that not only undermines the cohesion of our society, but also inspires would be terrorists to seek to bring death and destruction to our towns and cities.
‘And in trying to reach out to those at risk of radicalization, funding sometimes even reached the very extremist organizations that Prevent should have been confronting. We will not make the same mistakes. Under this Government, public money will not be provided to extremist organizations.
Mrs May also pledged not to give money to anyone who doesn’t support British values of democracy, human rights and equality before the law. ‘If they do not accept these fundamental and universal values, then we will not work with them and we will not fund them,’ she said.
Critics of the Prevent program maintained that the way the money was handed out, through police and councils, meant there was a lack of proper checks.
The report said that audit trails for Prevent money were so bad that as yet unidentified sums of money may have reached extremists. It also found that 13 per cent of Prevent funding in a single year went to ‘sports and recreation activities’ including boxing and football clubs.
The Home Office report concluded: ‘The review found no evidence to indicate widespread, systematic or deliberate funding of extremist groups, either by the Home Office of by local authorities or police forces.
‘But there have been cases where groups whom we would now consider to support an extremist ideology have received funding.’
It added: ‘Records and audit trails for Prevent funding have not always been comprehensive. It is therefore possible that Prevent funding has reached extremist groups of which we are not yet aware.’
The report calls on councils, universities and schools to prevent terror propagandists from holding speaking events in public venues.
Ministers have also pledged to increase their efforts to reform terrorist prisoners on their release from jail, and to stop wasting money overseas on programs with no value to UK security.
The report identified 25 priority areas in England, including Birmingham, Blackburn, Leicester and 16 London boroughs, which will be targeted with counter-terror funding.
Emma Boon, campaign director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance said: ‘The national government has had enough trouble ensuring that funding to promote cohesion doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.
‘Local councils had far less experience and ability to screen potential recipients and so were unlikely to avoid making expensive mistakes. Letting them do that without proper monitoring of where the money went was downright reckless.’
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