Nichols deplores anti-terror strategy

Cardinal Vincent Nichols has criticised the Government’s Prevent strategy saying that it risks alienating people, writes Megan Cornwell. Delivering the Pope Benedict XVI Lecture at Archbishop’s House last Tuesday, the cardinal said the strategy puts too much pressure on schools to report children to the police. Prevent, part of government efforts to counter terrorism, makes public institutions such as schools and hospitals responsible for reporting potential radicals.

“We are at a very delicate point in which the defining of extremism could go seriously wrong,” said Cardinal Nichols who shared the platform with the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, and Islamic scholar Maulana Syed Ali Raza Rizvi.