Equality and Social Justice Committee

Okay, thank you. Firstly, can I just say it's a pleasure to be here today and to answer any questions that you have? That's a very good question. When I started my review back in 2021, one of the first questions I wanted to answer was, 'What is the state of social cohesion in the UK?', and, as you've said, also identify what the key threats are. There are numerous threats to social cohesion across our country. One of the challenges that I had was recognising that there is no comprehensive framework to assess the state of social cohesion. So, despite two decades' worth of cohesion reviews and reports, the UK Government has not, in effect, built a comprehensive assessment framework or analytical capability to understand the strength of social cohesion and all the threats that are undermining it, which is a key challenge and perhaps we could talk about that later on.

But, just in terms of understanding the threats, there are numerous. I wrote about the growing challenge of disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories. I spoke to numerous local authorities across England—my remit was England—and almost all of them raised concerns about conspiracy theories and disinformation. There was another key threat around the mainstreaming of extremist narratives as well. While we know that the Prevent programme addresses individuals being radicalised into terrorism, the wider challenge of extremist narratives becoming mainstream—so, extremist conspiracy theories, whether it's far right or others—that was a clear concern that many local authorities raised with me as well.

Alongside that, one of the other biggest threats that I'm particularly concerned about is the fact that we are seeing declining levels of social cohesion. We are seeing declining levels of civic engagement, for example, of volunteering, of social capital. We're seeing, I think, quite stark warnings about growing levels of disillusionment with democracy, distrust in our democratic institutions. Forty years' worth of time series data has shown that this is a clear trajectory that is downward that we're just not doing enough to prevent or reverse.

If you look at some of the data around, for example, voter turnout, we know that, in the general election in 2019, the voter turnout was 67.5 per cent. Last year, that fell to 64 per cent. If you look at data around distrust of our institutions, we know that trust in Government, for example, is at an all-time low. And again, you're seeing falling levels of trust in our police, in our media, across a whole range of different institutions. And I think it's really important that when we talk about social cohesion that does include democratic resilience and democracy more broadly, because social cohesion does include the vertical interaction; it's about the individual relationship with the state as the horizontal interactions that we have with different groups and different communities, and how well we get on with each other. So, for me, trying to assess both those issues was really, really important.

And so I think the threats are multiple, but, for me, it's the fact that, when you look at these two significant trends of growing levels of mainstreaming extremism, growing levels of disinformation, conspiracy theories, misinformation, that is clearly having an impact at local levels, but also at a national level, as well as this other evolving trend of disillusionment with democracy, distrust in our institutions, declining social cohesion and social cohesion indicators. That's left me with the view that I think the UK is at serious risk of chronic democratic decline. And what I showed in my review was that Whitehall simply does not have a strategic approach to (a) measure this, but (b) to also prevent and respond to it.

Thank you for that. Clearly, the problems haven't got any better since your report was published. What action, if any, has the UK Government taken or committed to in addressing your recommendations?

So, I put forward around 15 recommendations, and, as you said, my report was published in March last year, so it will be almost a year. I've not had any response from the UK Government to any of my recommendations, or to my report either. It's unfortunate that I've not had any meetings with Ministers either about the report. So, I don't know what's happening. And I think that's quite concerning, firstly, because obviously there were the riots in the summer, which affected 27 towns and cities—luckily, not in Wales, but in parts of Northern Ireland and of course England—many of which I had predicted in my report. There have been many examples of similar but smaller examples of disturbances, riots, violent protests that have broken out in places like Barrow-in-Furness, in places like Sunderland, in parts of England, where, again, you saw similar factors. You saw similar examples of disinformation being used, you saw examples of far-right actors being involved. So, again, similar challenges, and so I think the riots shouldn't have been a shock to Whitehall. I think there were many early warning signs that were flashing that should not have been a surprise to Whitehall. But it just did reiterate the point that the Whitehall machinery has not developed an effective system to pick up these warning signs and to prevent and take a long-term approach to building and protecting social cohesion and responding to those challenges. And so, yes, I think it's quite clear that, even in the last year, there have been significant challenges that have raised concerns about social cohesion.

And it's not just about the riots. We know that the Electoral Commission, for example, argued that the election last year was one of the most abusive. We know that 55 per cent of candidates were abused or intimidated. During the general election campaign, it was quite high, the number of abuse and the level of abuse of candidates experiencing that. So, it's a whole range of different factors. Obviously, we've had the global factors. We know that things like the Gaza-Israel conflict have had a serious impact on social cohesion in our country. There have been other global factors as well, and, obviously, the technological challenges that we're seeing play out as well, including the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories.

So, these things don't remain static—they are constantly evolving, and they are evolving at a rapid pace. We're seeing, obviously, concerns around extreme violence as well, and more and more young people being radicalised as well. The director general of MI5 gave a speech in October last year where he said that, in the last three years alone, we have seen a threefold increase of people under the age of 18 being radicalised and being investigated for terrorism. So, the scale and pace of threats to our country, whether it's extremism, whether it's technological threats, threats that are seeking to undermine social cohesion, they are moving at a rapid pace. And I feel that the UK Government doesn't seem to understand the seriousness of this, and that they need to work on that response, and respond to those recommendations that I put forward, at a much more rapid pace.

You've mentioned disinformation as being one of the key issues that we all face. It's nearly two years since the Online Safety Act 2023 was passed, yet we still have no implementation of it. Is it that this is beyond the powers of national Governments? Are we losing control completely in the face of vested interests that are not slow to use their financial firepower to prevent laws being implemented?

I think one of the challenges with disinformation and with the Online Safety Act is that I'm not quite convinced that the Online Safety Act is going to be able to deal effectively with disinformation. It's one of those categories that kind of falls in the 'legal but harmful' category, and I think that's always been a challenge for the Bill at that time, and now, I think, the Act. So, it'll be very interesting to see how Ofcom responds to disinformation, particularly now when, for example, Meta has said, ‘We're going to remove all fact checkers', for example, and where Mark Zuckerberg openly said, 'That's going to result in more bad stuff.' That inevitably will mean more disinformation online. So, that challenge undoubtedly is going to get worse.

Another significant challenge is, when we talk about disinformation—. So, the Southport riots, for example, after the horrific murders—the summer riots, sorry, following the attack and the murders in Southport—I think at least two hours after the attack one far-right Twitter account—X account, sorry—had spread the fact that, ‘Look—.' Well, it wasn't a fact, of course; they spread disinformation that the attacker was an illegal immigrant, he was a Muslim, which was obviously blatantly untrue; it was disinformation. But that, I think, had around 5 million impressions within two hours of the attack, and there’s a whole timeline of information that shows how quickly disinformation spread following the Southport murders online, and how much it was being viewed online, and I think that is really quite disturbing. There was a poll by YouGov, which showed that, five months on from the Southport attack, more people in January 2025 believed than they did in August—more people believe now than they did in August—that the Southport attacker was an illegal immigrant, was motivated by religious terrorism, and was a Muslim, which, of course, is clearly not true. So, I think disinformation is a real challenge. Even if you do flood the zone, so to speak, with truth and facts, as has been the case for the last five years, since the Southport attacks, disinformation amongst the population is still persistent; it's even higher than it was in August 2024, which just shows you how complex it is, challenging disinformation. It's really, really difficult.

And a very clear example, one that I saw on my journeys across England, when I carried out my review, was how local authorities were struggling with disinformation. Like I said earlier, almost every local authority I spoke to was struggling with this. In Oldham, for example, an area that has been struggling with social cohesion for some time now, they told me how disinformation, conspiracy theories about the council, about the police, around historic grooming gang cases was causing significant damage to the area. It was eroding social cohesion, it was feeding extremism, it was also undermining the ability of the local authority to exercise its democratic mandate, because people were attacking officials and elected leaders because of the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, and that was a message that I saw quite frequently across my journey. So, it’s having a real-world impact at a local level, where it's eroding social cohesion, it is fuelling division and polarisation between different groups of people, it is fuelling distrust of our institutions and of local democracy, and national democracy. So, it's a real challenge. And I was not convinced, having spoken to the Home Office, to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the communities department, to the national security secretariat, the national risk framework that sits inside Cabinet Office, that there is a significant plan of action or a strategic approach to deal with disinformation, whether online or off-line, and that I just think is simply untenable in this day and age.

We’ll move on to other Members who wish to ask you some questions. Could I call Sioned Williams in the first instance?

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon. You mentioned there about the review and that the remit of your review related to England only. Can you explain why Wales wasn't considered as part of the review? What was the reasoning?

So, thank you for your question. So, I, at the time, understood that social cohesion was a devolved issue, and so the Government at the time, in 2021, which I think was Boris Johnson's Government, made it very clear to me that England was my remit, and so that was a decision made by the Government at that time. So, that's an issue that I think would have to be raised with them. If they'd said to me, 'Carry out the reviews for Wales as well', I would have been very happy to do that. One of my former roles was the commissioner for countering extremism, and my remit was England and Wales, and I was very happy to come to Wales and speak to Government Ministers, civil society groups, local authority officials, and I learnt a great deal, actually, from my visits to Wales. But, for this particular piece of work around social cohesion, my remit was very clearly assigned to be England only. Having said that, a lot of the statistics, polls and research that I used was UK more widely, and I think that was really important to include, actually, that although the areas that I visited were very much England focused, a lot of the polling and the research that I used, including a lot of the rapid evidence assessments that I commissioned and the public consultation and so forth—. Sorry, probably not the public consultation, but everything else looked through a wider UK lens.

Thank you. So, that's clearly why we're asking you now, because your work and the review that you've done is relevant to Wales, especially because a number of things you've mentioned, such as counter-terrorism and policing, are reserved, not devolved, and they do affect social cohesion in Wales. You mentioned how disappointed you are and how concerned you are for not having received any response to your recommendations. Have you engaged with the Welsh Government at all or any organisations based in Wales about the recommendations or the issues that were raised by you?

Not at present, I haven't.

And you haven't been contacted by anyone from the Welsh Government or local authorities in Wales about your review?

No, I haven't.

Okay. Thank you. Clearly, you've already mentioned the awful riots that we saw over the summer. We didn't have the same level of violence and rioting in Wales as in other parts of the United Kingdom, but we know that a number of us here have seen support for those things online within our communities, but thank goodness it didn't then transfer to the streets. But, bearing that in mind, do you feel that we could come to a conclusion that Wales is in a different position to England in this respect?

I think it's very hard to say one way or the other. I definitely would not want to jump the gun and say the context in Wales is completely different to England. I think it would be very pre-emptive of me to say that without having carried out a proper investigation. I mean, one of the challenges at this present moment in time is that we still don't fully understand, even in England, why was it that in some places the riots occurred but they didn't occur in other places. So, for example, in Luton, which has a long history and continuing challenge of both far-right and Islamist extremism, I suspect many people would have thought, 'We're going to see the riots emerge in places and towns like Luton', but that didn't happen. So, again, there's still a lack of understanding, or there's still not a full picture of, 'What are the factors in a local area that provided resilience to the disturbances breaking out?', and, 'What areas were susceptible and what were the factors that allowed other areas to be susceptible to it?' I think that's the case more generally that we're seeing. Certainly, when I did my review, it was very difficult to understand fully what made some areas more resilient to extremism and other areas more susceptible to it, or the same with conspiracy theories or disinformation. So, there's a general lack of institutional knowledge, I think, within the Government as a whole about what those factors are. I think that certainly that can be investigated and understood, and of course there are inevitably going to be social cohesion challenges. When I was the commissioner for countering extremism, I remember speaking to officials who were very clear about the growing challenge of far-right extremism, for example. I recently participated in the documentary about Patriotic Alternative, the neo-fascist group, and their activity in Wales and how they were radicalising people. So, again, Patriotic Alternative were very actively involved in fuelling disturbances and fuelling anger about what happened in Southport, and using that as a justification to encourage people to attack and engage in violence. And so, again, why that didn't happen in Wales, even though Patriotic Alternative are really active in Wales, is a significant question to be asked. I just think it's really important that (a) we have a better understanding of our local areas, local communities, local tensions, but (b) also really pool together some important academic research about why the disturbances happened in some areas and why they didn't happen in other areas. What are the factors that make some areas susceptible to this kind of disorder and what are the factors that make some areas resilient to it? What we do know, from some polling, is that I think one in 10—so, around 10 per cent of people—shared the views of people who did engage in violent disorder during the summer riots and had sympathy for the use of violence against refugees, and I think this was a UK-wide poll. We know that 8 per cent believe that violent protest outside refugee accommodation were justified. So, there are clearly factors there.

I published an independent report just before Christmas that looked at the summer riots following the Southport attacks, and showed that, in some of the areas, there were common themes. There were common themes around disinformation. There were common themes around the involvement of far-right actors. There were common themes around the fact that some of those areas, but not all of them, had socioeconomic issues and deprivation and poverty and unemployment, but not in all the areas. Some of those areas has also concerns around disillusionment and distrust with democracy and distrust with our institutions. But not all of those issues appear in all of the areas where the riots took place. So, again, unfortunately, it's not a complete picture, and we do desperately, I think, need to build up that picture, which is why I really believe that Whitehall needs to develop this much more robust social cohesion, extremism, societal threats assessment framework, because we just lack that information. And I think if we did have such a framework, it would help to give you the early warning signs of saying, 'Ah, look, there's a problem here in Cardiff, or there's a problem here in east London', for example, but we just don't have that, and so we really are behind the curve, unfortunately, in understanding these challenges.

And just to come back on that very quickly, would you think that it would be useful or relevant to not only have that strategic vision in Whitehall, but also in the devolved nations?

Yes, I think so. I think that would be helpful. What I wrote in my review was there should be a national strategic plan. I don't want to get involved in the politics of it. I gave a policy recommendation about this is what the strategy should look like. I gave a very clear skellington as to what that strategy should look like, but I also think it would be very helpful to have a national framework that does measure all of the areas, because I think there's a lot of learning to be done as well. There will be lessons to be learned from why it was the case that Wales didn't have riots, and I think you can only really do that if you do have that national assessment framework. If it's devolved, I think we'd be losing a lot of rich research and intelligence sharing and information. So, I, personally, would prefer a national assessment where we can learn from each of the devolved areas and share good practice. I think that would be much more helpful from a policy perspective.

Yes, but perhaps we need some kind of strategic vision that relates specifically to the nature, the demography and governance of the devolved nations. I just want to come back on one point briefly, Chair. You touched on economic deprivation and, clearly, Wales isn't a country that's doing well economically at the moment, and, as I'm sure you're aware, we lost thousands of jobs recently in the steelworks in Port Talbot. You mentioned that it can be a factor that can weaken social cohesion. To what extent, in general, is that true? How important is it as a factor, in general?

So, just to come on to your first point, what I recommended to the UK Government was to have a national strategy. Now, that’s not to say that that can’t be amended for different parts of the country, because, like you’re saying, there are clearly different challenges, and it would be silly to have a one-size-fits-all model. But I think some kind of overriding strategic approach is needed. The UK Government produced a 2019 action plan for integration, which, of course, is slightly different to social cohesion, but they included social cohesion as part of that. They funded five pilot areas, for example, and one of the things that all five of those areas said to me is that they would like a strategic approach. They would like guidance, for example, on how to measure the effectiveness of the interventions that they’re making, because when I went to assess how effective their approach was, having received Government funding, and all the work that they were doing, they found it very hard to prove to me the effectiveness of their work. And, again, what they were saying was, ‘We would like the Government as a whole to be able to present to us a very clear picture of, "This is the data that you should be gathering, this is how you should be measuring it, this is how you should be proving the effectiveness of your work, demonstrating outcomes as opposed to outputs," for example’. But I completely accept the fact that, even at a local authority level, one part of Wales is going to be very different to the other, and the challenges that you’re seeing. And I think any sensible local authority would have to make sure that, while they’re taking guidance from a national strategy, they’d have to mould it to make sure that it fits into the relevant climate, the context and the challenges that they’re facing.

On the issue of the relationship between socioeconomic issues and social cohesion, this was really interesting learning for me, because when you look at the academic literature, it’s quite mixed. There’s not a clear-cut, definite consensus amongst academics that where there are high levels of unemployment, deprivation and poverty it means you’re going to see low levels of social cohesion. And I witnessed that myself when I went round to different parts of the country. I mentioned Oldham before. One of the things that I was struck by with Oldham is that they’ve developed an index that’s called the ‘thriving communities index’, where they can measure, up to a ward level, the strength of social cohesion. And having done that index, they were surprised by their own findings, where they assumed that parts of Oldham that have really high levels of deprivation, and have done for many years, would be where cohesion was the lowest, but they found out that that wasn’t necessarily the case at all.

So, again, I think, in reality, data on the ground, but also, the literature around it—which is what academics are discussing—show that it’s not always a clear-cut relationship. I think what it shows is that it’s not just dependent on socioeconomic issues; there’ll be a whole range of other factors that will indicate to you why social cohesion is declining or is strengthening in certain areas. I think just looking at it purely through a socioeconomic lens is simply not going to give you a full and complete picture.

Thank you.

Did you want to come in, Jane?

Yes.

Jane Dodds, briefly.

Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. You mentioned the strategic approach of having a framework, and people requesting that. Do you have any information about international examples? Are there countries around the world that you know about that have taken this approach, or that have a strategy or a framework in this regard?

So, one of the countries I was quite impressed with was Australia. They have developed a social cohesion index, and they’ve been running it for around 17 years now. It’s a non-governmental organisation that actually runs this social cohesion index, but it’s funded by the Australian Government, and it is the go-to NGO and index when wanting to assess the state of social cohesion. So, they, for example, rely on a nationally representative survey of around 7,500 Australians, and then they have additional targeted boosting surveys and qualitative interviews, and so forth, with people who’ve migrated to Australia over the years. And they have a set of around 29 questions across five domains, and they include, for example, belonging, pride, life and culture in their area of Australia, worth, emotional and material well-being and happiness, people’s experience of social inclusion and justice, democratic participation, their acceptance and rejection, and so forth. And so that is quite a comprehensive social cohesion framework that Australia uses, and so their most recent index showed, for example, that actually social cohesion is declining in Australia, quite worryingly, which is what I think some of the data that we were picking up from other countries was also showing—a kind of widening challenge around that you are seeing declining social cohesion in western democracies. But I think Australia has quite an interesting model, and it shows that it can be done. One of the challenges amongst academics over the years in this country has been that it's very, very complex, it's very difficult; you can go very, very broad. How do you measure social cohesion? There are still disagreements about what you even define as social cohesion, and how broad you go in including it. That was something I certainly picked up on in my review that, even when I spoke to practitioners across England and more broadly, people have different definitions of social cohesion. I think that lack of standardised approach, that lack of a framework, is not helpful.

One of the things that I did when I carried out my review was to commission the Belong network to put together what could a possible framework for social cohesion look like, and that was published on Gov.uk. They put together a quite helpful, quite broad framework. But they looked at some of the kinds of things that could be measured and they broke that down into six areas, so for example you could measure social trust, belonging and identity, civic engagement, tolerance towards other people and political engagement. So, that piece of work is done, it's there, it's something that the Government could use as a starting point. I think if people have disagreements—. Even though I found it quite helpful, I think it's quite broad. I would probably narrow it down even further. If you wanted, for example, to get all local authorities to measure social cohesion, you want to make sure it's as easy for them as possible. You don't want to give them a massive questionnaire, especially if they're going to have to go and speak to their local constituents and people in their area to get their views on these issues. So, I think it is possible. Other countries have shown it's possible. And it's just a question of why has it never been done. Why has it never been done despite 20 years' worth of reports and reviews and commissioning? That's what bothers me more than anything. This could have been done. This should have been done. And now I feel like we're playing catch-up and that we're behind the curve in all of this when we really shouldn't have been.

Okay, thank you very much for that interesting contribution. We've got four further areas we'd like to ask you about. So, I wondered if we could have brief questions and slightly briefer answers. Altaf Hussain.

Thank you very much. Thanks, Sara. It's great to see you here, and I remember when you were appointed in 2021. The Prime Minister had come to Wales, and I did ask him about Wales, because your appointment was only for England. That went away when we got involved in COVID, so still we don't know whether there has been any work done on it. My question area is media, misinformation and misogyny. A recent undercover investigation by the BBC documented activity by the far right in Wales. What is your assessment of this and other forms of extremist activity in the UK, and what actions are being taken to tackle extremism in the UK and in Wales, particularly if you could talk about far-right and Islamist activities? Thank you.

Thank you. Just on your first point, I would be very happy to come to Wales if you'd like me to come and do a review. I would be very happy to come.

But to your main question about extremism, as I mentioned I think you're talking about the Patriotic Alternative BBC investigation, which was a year long's worth, and I think it was a really important investigation. I mean, obviously, my background is extremism as well, and I produced a report last year called 'The New Extremism Landscape', which identified how what we're seeing in the UK now, I think, across the board, is an evolving and accelerating extremism landscape. I think you're seeing a significant growth of far-right extremism. You're seeing persistent Islamist extremism. You're seeing what we call now 'salad bar' or 'pick-'n'-mix' extremism, which is where individuals pick and select from different extremist ideologies, often coming up with an incoherent extremist belief that's often used as what motivates them. You're seeing, I think, a real worrying level of incel extremism. I spoke to many of the Five Eyes countries before Christmas and many of them all raised their concerns with me about the threats of incel extremism, and its really pernicious and violent hatred towards women by men, and I was quite surprised to hear how many of the Five Eyes countries are grappling with this, and indeed speaking to policing in this country, it was certainly a concern. I'm really concerned about that.

There is also growing concern around school shootings, for example, and I think many of these trends have been there, but they have been growing in the last couple of years, and so it's a real concern, and I think one of the challenges we have in the UK as a whole is that we don't actually have a counter-extremism strategy. The UK Government had the 2015 counter-extremism strategy when David Cameron was Prime Minister, and I think that obviously also had a remit in Wales. There was funding, there was resource given to that, non-governmental organisations were given support, local authorities were given support. That strategy was scrapped in 2021 and so since 2021, so in the last four years, the UK has had no strategic approach to counter extremism at the very time when you're seeing an accelerating and evolving extremism landscape, which is really, really concerning. When I spoke to certain areas—. One of the local authorities that I spoke to was Stoke-on-Trent, and I think this is a really important example to understand the gaps, and I'm sure there’ll be similar towns and cities in Wales who experience this challenge. So, Stoke-on-Trent is an area that has had persistent and historical threats of both far-right and Islamistic extremism, and they used to receive funding from the counter-extremism strategy. That obviously stopped in 2021, so they didn't receive that. They used to be a Prevent priority area, and then in April 2023, the then Home Secretary Priti Patel said, 'You're no longer going to receive Prevent funding because you don't fit our criteria for Prevent any more.' So, they lost their Prevent funding, they lost the counter-extremism funding, they weren't receiving any funding from the communities department in terms of social cohesion, yet here they were experiencing really concerning levels of both far-right and Islamistic extremism, disinformation, conspiracy theories, other activity that was really harming social cohesion, and for me, that example of Stoke-on-Trent just shows you how towns and cities like that just fall through the gap, because where are they supposed to get funding from, where are they receiving help from? They're basically being left to deal with these challenges on their own, and that's just not good enough.

One of the things that struck me having visited England across the board was that they all said the same thing. Despite different demographics, different challenges, different socioeconomic issues and all those factors, they all said the same thing, which was, 'We lack the capability, we lack the resources and we lack the expertise to understand how to challenge these threats to social cohesion, whether it's extremism, conspiracy theories, disinformation.' And as I said, the UK Government does not have a strategic approach, and when tensions have erupted in the local area, and when social cohesion is literally breaking down in front of your eyes, as I saw when I did my review, many of the Members of Parliament were telling me, 'We assume that if we went to Whitehall, there'd be some Government department who’d say, "Look, we know how to deal with this issue, because this is a prominent issue" ', and they found that there was nothing there at central level. They were in effect being left to deal with these challenges on their own, and I think that's a real concern. So, I think we're going to see worsening extremism. We are definitely seeing a growing acceptance of extremist narratives in a way that we weren't seeing 20 years ago.

So, these are serious challenges that we are going to be facing, and if you look at global future trends around increasing levels of polarisation, declining social cohesion, the growing threat of misinformation, disinformation, all of those factors create a permissive environment for extremism to flourish, as well as disillusionment with democracy and distrusting our institutions. All of those factors point to a worsening extremism landscape, as well as a declining social cohesion environment.

Thank you, Sara. Did you review or explore the impact of incel communities and misogyny on social cohesion in the UK, and what impact is social media and the spread of misinformation having on social cohesion? What actions can be taken to mitigate these impacts, if any?

I didn't look at incel specifically as part of the review, but it was something that did come up quite considerably. It was something that I looked at in my last report that I published in December, 'The New Extremism Landscape', so there's information that was based there. The second part of your question was, sorry—

About misinformation.

—about misinformation.

Yes, misinformation.

I suppose I kind of answered this question earlier, which was that there's a real lack of understanding or strategic approach in knowing how to deal with disinformation. We all witnessed how Elon Musk, for example, accused Jess Phillips, the Home Office Minister of—. You know, the disinformation he spread about her, and even then we weren't quite sure how to deal with it. We know that she received death threats and the like. So, it's a real challenge, and it's something that local authorities are really struggling with. It's affecting individuals, it's affecting institutions, and it's affecting society as a whole. It's having real-world impact. I'm afraid that there's just not enough thought given to how to deal with these issues, despite it becoming such a growing challenge for people working in social cohesion.

Thank you, Sara. Let me come to the last question of mine, really. The Welsh Government has developed a website called For the Record, which is an open resource to fact check and clarify claims made about Welsh Government policies and a toolkit to help community leaders identify and stop the spread of false information. What is your view on this approach?

I haven't seen it, so I'd be very interested to know, I guess, from you, really, about how effective it has been, what reach it's had. I think it would be very interesting to do a review of that piece of work, because it could be very, very helpful and it could be an example of good practice.

I also would be very interested to know how it's being received when it's a Government platform, because one of the challenges in this area of work is when so many conspiratorial narratives revolve around Government itself, and people are less likely to believe what the Government says. Is the Government the right messenger to carry out such a platform, or does it need to be an independent body? I think these are all questions that have to be examined when you're looking at the effectiveness of that work, and if people support it, great. Why are they supporting it? Why are they believing it? If they're not believing it, what are the reasons around that?

But I think things like this—. Whether it's Government led or whether it's independent, putting that aside for a minute, it's really important to have things like this. The more you can put information out there that is based on fact, and as quickly as possible as well, particularly when incidents happen, that is really the key. I think that the time factor is one of the most important issues when tackling disinformation.

Could I now bring in Mick Antoniw, please?

You've answered a few of the points I wanted to discuss already about, really, monitoring and interventions, but just in summary, it seems to me that we're still at a stage where we're really trying to guess to work out what's happening and what to do about it. You talked about there being no comprehensive assessment framework. What I see from reading your report, but also from other reports, other information around is that the areas that are most impacted are those with the highest levels of poverty, inequality and the highest levels of disengagement from civic protest, and that one of the common factors in the ability to trigger concerns and extremism or whatever is, really, the very strategic use of social media. I suppose the point I want to ask you about is this: it seems to me that, despite current legislation and so on, and new legislation, there is no real legislative framework within which that can be managed or controlled or an understanding as to how to do that. Is that a fairly fair summary? Really just your thoughts about that.

Look, there's no doubt that social media is playing a very critical role in undermining social cohesion, but I would not put it just to social media alone. I think the challenges of social cohesion emerged well before social media arrived on the scene; it's always been a challenge. I think the reality also is that, look, when you live in as diverse and plural democracies as ours, where people have different ethnicities, races, languages, political opinions and beliefs and views, tensions are inevitable. I celebrate that diversity, I think it's what makes—. There is no democracy without pluralism, so celebrating that diversity and pluralism is really important. But I also think it's naïve to think that tensions will not emerge; they will. They will emerge because it's inevitable because of these differences. What we need to understand is how do you prevent those tensions, how do you pre-empt them, manage them, respond to them in a way that doesn't undermine social cohesion even further. And I think we've not really understood—. We've not really built up our strategic approach to that. And like I said earlier, I think we've left local authorities to deal with that on their own, so that's a real challenge.

One of the things that I would love to see a lot more of—and it's something I put in the report—are more deliberative democracy approaches. If you look at the research around deliberative democracy, it's quite clear. It says that, look, this is where we give citizens a more meaningful role in public decision making. Research has shown that it enhances public trust in Government and in the state, institutions, it creates much more effective Government engagement, it improves shared decision making and it improves better policy outcomes. And if you have more of that happening at a local authority level—. I recommended that local authorities, for example, should create much more meaningful deliberative democracy models or forums where people are genuinely getting involved in local government, where they feel that their voices are heard. We're always hearing this opinion and view that people feel that their voices aren't being heard and we need to engage people to contribute, to understand the challenges that local areas are facing, whether it's immigration or poverty or deprivation, whatever it is, and help local government make policy decisions better. And again, if it's the case that we're seeing declining levels of trust, well, if research has shown that deliberative democracy models enhance that trust, why are we not using those as a force to improve social cohesion? I think we have to have a sea change in the way local authorities do government, where they do engage with people, that we really use deliberative democracy models now in the way that we're seeing in the US, Ireland, Poland, many of the European countries, and where research has shown that that has proven to be very, very effective.

Let me just ask you, then, about that research. I represent an area that has a very, very small ethnic community, but I get exactly the same responses now; the real concerns are those that have been generated, which have no real relationship to the issues in the area itself. You talk about deliberative democracy. Well, firstly, we have electoral systems that, basically, for many people—. Certainly first-past-the-post voting basically excludes most people from making their vote actually relevant in many, many areas, so we have a democratic system that is very, very flawed and has not kept up with the need for change. But we also have, certainly in many of our working-class communities in Wales, levels of participation in general elections that are falling below 50 per cent, which I think is a real precipice for democracy. So, I'm really just wondering, when you talk about deliberative democracy, when you say that it works in certain areas, what are you specifically talking about that says it does work? Because there are many things that happen at a very, very local level, but people are just increasingly disengaged from that, and poverty and inequality are big factors. And I suppose one other thing that I'd like to specifically ask you about around that is the differential between urban areas and rural areas, because all rural areas have pockets et cetera of urbanisation and so on, but, in terms of your work and so on, have you come across any specific views about the need for differential approaches in rural as opposed to urban areas?

There are definitely arguments that, look, you can't have a one-size-fits-all approach for different areas. You've got to really understand the views and concerns of people living in different areas, even almost at a ward level. Because, even in one particular town, you'll have people who have a whole range of different views. And I think one of the challenges and frustrations, I have to say, I have with social cohesion approaches is this kind of one-size-fits-all model. Even with intervention programmes, we don't do an audience segmentation. So, if you look at organisations like More in Common UK, where they segment the British population into seven categories, based on their political opinions, views, beliefs, you can—. If you have something like that, you can then create the appropriate interventions that are needed to address those different groups of people who think and view and have their beliefs in a whole range of different ways. So, my frustration is that we've got to get much better at mapping out the people in our local areas, understanding what their beliefs and views are, their grievances, and ensuring that we have the right programmes for them where there are concerns.

When we talk about people feeling that their voices aren't heard, I think it's really important to ask, 'Well, why do people feel disengaged, why do people feel that their voices are not heard?' The idea that people's voices are only heard once every five years when there's a general election, I just don't think that's acceptable; I don't think that's good enough. And I can imagine why people feel frustrated by that. They feel that that's—. It's not enough if we want to have people really genuinely engaged. And I think if people were more engaged then you would see an increase in voter turnout. But, even at a local level, people just feel that they hardly hear from their local authority. I think about the local authority I live in; I don't hear from my local authority hardly ever. And I remember, during the last general election, I don't remember any candidate knocking on my door. And I think it's that sense of people feel that they are not being listened to, they are not being engaged, when actually so much can be done about that.

Again, I spoke to some local authorities who showed me some really fantastic examples, where the local authority goes round knocking on people's doors, where they go round and every month they're knocking on around just under 2,000 people's doors, asking them, 'Are there any concerns? I'm from the council, what are your views?', and where people will just tell them what they're worried about, what they're concerned about, but they feel that their voices are heard. And so I think it's really thinking differently about how do we engage with people at a local level, because it's not only important from a social cohesion perspective, but also, as you said, Mick, just even that kind of wider democratic engagement, which is really, really critical.

I’ll take it further. You’ve opened an area that, really, we could discuss for a long, long time; we haven’t got that time. Just one thing in terms of data obtaining; we have real issues in terms of data disaggregation, the collation of data. We have it—. For example, we know the impact in terms of our prisons and so on: you’re more likely, from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, to go to prison, less likely to get parole, a whole series of issues like that. But the lack of actual data—. Of course, the data you want—. The question is what data do you actually want, what is it that’s relevant, what is it that actually helps you. Do you have any sort of advice or views in terms of specifically, firstly, who should be responsible for it, at what level should it be being obtained, and, secondly, what the content of that data should actually be? You mentioned, of course, that we need national strategic plans. The question is what those plans are, how strategic they are and what you need to actually evidence those plans. I just wanted just a little bit more thought about that. I know some if it is in your report already, within your recommendations, but perhaps just for the record here—.

Yes. So—

Briefly, if you will.

Very briefly.

Briefly.

My first recommendation in the review was for the Government to establish and fund an independent impartial office for social cohesion and democratic resilience, whose role it would be to pull together this assessment framework, where they would identify and collect all this relevant national and local data, including from all local authorities, and where, using that data, they would publish a state of cohesion and democratic resilience report. Well, then, you can, in effect, assess much more clearly and effectively the state of social cohesion, whether it’s declining or improving over time. I think that would provide a really helpful picture of progress and also assess trends as well. So, that is a recommendation that I put in my review, and I think that is something that is needed.

One of the things that struck me was, if you look at, for example, the Social Mobility Commission, they produce a yearly report on the state of social mobility, looking across the board. Why can’t the same be done for social cohesion? The same could absolutely be done for social cohesion, but also in the sense that it also holds local authorities to account. Because, in my review, I did come across examples where local authority officials or local councillors were just not being honest with me about the state of social cohesion. Because there was no data, they could hide behind that fact and not be held accountable for the state of social cohesion. I think if you have something like this independent office that has this independent assessment and framework and produces this yearly report, rather than Government doing it, it helps to improve accountability and so you have a much better picture of social cohesion and how it's faring.

Thank you.

Thank you. Could I call in Julie Morgan?

Yes. Prynhawn da. I'm aware that we're running towards the end of our time now, but I just wanted to ask you about the role of the third sector. How important do you feel that their role is in looking at social cohesion, and what barriers do they face?

Their role is critical. We are not a democracy unless we have a healthy, vibrant civil society. It's absolutely functional to us as a plural democracy. I know we're pressed for time, so I'll hone in on one particular concern I have with non-governmental organisations. As I said, they play an absolutely critical role. We cannot do this work without the role of civil society groups; they are absolutely fundamental.

One of the challenges—and I wrote about this in the report—is what I identified as freedom-restricting harassment, which is where people experienced or witnessed threatening, abusive, intimidatory harassment that is intended to make people—. It's tended for people to self-censor out of fear. And one of the things that struck me was the extent of NGOs experiencing this level of harassment and censorship. We talk a lot about how parliamentarians are often at the forefront of experiencing this level of abuse and threats and harassment, but I was really startled to hear to what extent NGOs are. I spoke to one director of an NGO who works in hate crime, where they told me about the death threats that they receive, the death threats that their staff receive, and how they have to change their route to work every morning because of the work they do. And I don’t think we really understand the scale of abuse and threats—and this is even NGOs that actually work in social cohesion—how hard their work is and the abuse and threats they experience, because, I think, of this rising climate of abusive and harassing intimidation that people are experiencing, which, like I said, I identified as freedom-restricting harassment. And I carried out some polling about the scale and extent of that and how it's affecting civil society.

So, I think we need to have a much more open discussion and understanding about, yes, we know that the role of civil society is absolutely critical, but I can tell you now that their work is being hampered because of this growing climate of freedom-restricting harassment, and it's just making their lives so much more difficult, to the extent that many are even just withdrawing from this type of work altogether.

Yes, I think we are aware of those issues happening in Wales. But, in terms of the work that the voluntary sector does in this field, do you have any concerns about a lack of overall direction in their work?

I mean, look, every civil society organisation is very different. I think having a strategic approach would be very important. But what I will say is one of the concerns that almost every NGO or civil society group raised with me was the behaviour of politicians and Governments. That was, without a doubt, something that came up in the public consultation and my meetings with civil society groups—that they felt that the language of politicians or of Government, the use of culture wars, exploiting tensions for political purposes at the expense of social cohesion, made their work so much harder. That was something that came up time and time again, and I think that, again, having an honest and open conversation about that is something that is really, really critical. But I'll end that there, because I know we're pressed for time.

Yes. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Jane Dodds.

Yes. Thank you very much. I'll do it in English, just to be fast. Just to finish, you've talked a lot about the role of Government and your views on what Governments should be doing, and, obviously, here in this committee, we're interested in thinking about what the Welsh Government should be doing. I'm interested to hear specifically whether, in the strategy that we hope will be developed, there should be any targets and what measurements there should be. We've got a lot of evidence from you that, I'm sure, we'll gather together, but are there any additional things that you think we should have in any strategy that says, 'This is what good looks like', and 'This is the evidence we need as a Government to demonstrate that we have a socially cohesive and a well-functioning democracy here in Wales'?

In the review, I basically argued that I think the strategy should have three main objectives: it should promote and protect social cohesion and democratic freedoms; identify, pre-empt and prevent threats and activity that would undermine cohesion; and respond to and recover from threats and incidents. And then I’ve put forward seven strategic priorities, ranging from building resilience, engaging people, but also repairing relationships when social cohesion does break down, because it is shocking how frequently that doesn’t occur. So, when tensions have erupted in a certain area, there's a lack of work that is done to repair relationships. And obviously, through all of this, I think you do have to measure it. We have to measure interventions much more effectively. And that was something that I really struggled with in this review. And I carried out a rapid evidence assessment about the challenges around what works and what doesn’t work. We are certainly not measuring this as a long-term approach and we have to do that. I think it’s really critical that we measure this work and measure the interventions.

But again, because we don’t have a standardised understanding of social cohesion, we don’t have a comprehensive assessment framework that measures these issues, we don’t have a strategic approach, all of these things put together would absolutely help us to measure social cohesion, would help us to measure the effectiveness of our interventions. It would help us to identify areas where we know social cohesion is declining and, gosh, we’ve got to get in there now and do something about it before it worsens, or before extremists exploit those tensions. We are so behind on even the basics that it just feels to me that we’ve got to get these basics in there first before we can even do—. We’ve got to be able to walk before we can run. And I just feel like we’ve got to establish these very important issues that, as I said earlier, we should have established years ago, and we haven’t. And I think, from there, we will then be able to really build our understanding around a whole range of issues.

Again, one of the things that struck me, and that came out in my review, is that if you try to build up the evidence around what works to overcome tensions and manage conflicts or around conflict resolution at a community setting, there is very little research on that. There’s a lot of research in post-conflict areas, for example, or conflict resolution settings, where there have been conflicts, for example, in developing countries. But when we talk about conflict resolution at a community setting in established democracies like ours, we just don’t have that. Where we do have it is normally in things like workplace settings, for example, but we don’t have it in community settings. And again, it just shows you the lack of institutional knowledge we have, the lack of research we have, which we should have developed by now, that would be all part of this work.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much indeed. We will send you a transcript of your contribution, and, please, do make sure that we haven't captured something inaccurately, and send it back to us. Otherwise, thank you very much indeed for your extremely valuable contribution to scene setting this inquiry.

It's my pleasure. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. We'll now take a short break, and if Members could be back just before quarter to, so we can start the next session on time.