National Assembly for Wales

Prynhawn da. Welcome to the Equality and Social Justice Committee. All Members are present—I've had no apologies—and are there any declarations of interest about matters related to today's—? I see none. Obviously, we are a bilingual institution so contributions are welcome in Welsh and English, and simultaneous translation is available from Welsh to English.  

This is the start of our new inquiry into social cohesion, and we're very pleased to welcome as our first witness Dame Sara Khan, former UK adviser for social cohesion and resilience and author of the Khan review, which was published in March 2024, so before the general election. Could you—? I mean, March 2024 on the one hand isn't very long ago but an awful lot seems to have happened both nationally and internationally. So, drawing on your review, Dame Sara, what are the key threats to social cohesion across the UK and how do you think these threats have evolved in recent years?

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 address 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?

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.

Not at present, I haven't.

No, I haven't.

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.

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.

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.

Did you want to come in, Jane?

Yes. 

Jane Dodds, briefly.

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. 

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee and our inquiry on social cohesion. For our second session, I am very pleased to welcome Professor Ted Cantle from Belong, the Cohesion and Integration Network, as well as Professor Dominic Abrams from the University of Kent, who has provided us with an incredibly long list of research that’s been done on this subject. So, thank you, both, very much indeed for joining us this afternoon.

I just want to start off by asking you a few general questions. In the previous session with Dame Sara Kahn, we heard that Australia has a social cohesion index, which is based on 29 questions that could be asked of different communities. I wondered whether you think that this is a useful way of defining the state of social cohesion in any given community. And how does social cohesion differ from community cohesion, or are they the same thing just with slightly different tags? Who would like to start first? Shall I ask Professor Cantle to start us off?

Hello, yes, I’m very happy to answer that question. I prefer to define cohesion in relation to people’s attitudes and their behaviours, rather than going through long, complicated ideas of belonging and trust and identity. I think the simplest way to define cohesion and try to work out whether it is working or not is to ask people directly how they see the situation on the ground, and that might be in Wales or England, but it might also be in Cardiff or Swansea or any other part of Wales. In other words, it’s defined locally by how people see it, and their attitudes to whether they get on well with people from other backgrounds, whether they support or oppose the level of migration, whether they feel they’re being fairly treated or discriminated against, whether they’ve experienced hate crime and so on. So, I’d very much define cohesion in relation to the attitudes.

I would say there’s a big difference between the way in which minorities define cohesion and the way that the majority does. Because when you ask minorities it is often about exactly those sorts of things as to whether they’ve experienced discrimination, whether they feel they’ve got equal access to services and so on, but when you ask the majority, they tend to define it very much along the lines of whether the pace of change is too much in their community, whether things are changing around them and that they feel that that is out of control, and whether people respect local traditions and their way of life and so on. So, I think it’s very important to define it in relation to the attitudes of the communities themselves, but recognise that the way people perceive cohesion will depend on a number of different areas like social class, like whether you’re a majority or a minority.

Okay. Dominic Abrams.

Thank you. So, I think that the answer to this question depends on the level at which you happen to be looking at it, I think as Ted has just said. But I would view cohesion more as a process than a state. It’s really a system of relationships, if you think about it, that is ideally working positively and with mutual gain. There’s been a lot of academic research on cohesion. It has both objective and subjective aspects—the part that Ted was just talking about: people physically spending time together, communicating, and so on, but also feeling that they have shared concerns, interests, perspectives, places and identities. And it involves, as Sara Kahn was saying, both vertical and horizontal linkages between individuals, groups and organisations, and levels of representation and governance. So, it's a complex web, really, rather than just a single state.

I think, also, the other thing that's rather framed the discussion so far is viewing cohesion as a necessary thing for national security, or the integration of minorities, or something like that, and people with protected characteristics. But, I think, really, it's better to view social cohesion as one of the broader foundations of a resilient, flexible and resourceful society as a whole, so it addresses many issues, not just issues of integration, prejudice and discrimination.

The British Academy launched a programme on societal cohesion in 2019, and identified five central features, which might help, if we think about it this way. There's the importance of cultural memory and tradition, which, as Ted says, may be important in different ways to different parts of the community; the social economy—the informal and social exchanges that go on the whole time within a set of people, or group of people; the meanings and mechanisms of social responsibility, the way people understand their commitments and obligations to one another and how they implement those; their shared sense of identity and belonging; and also their shared commitment or care for a future for that place, community or set of people. So, all of those things are key ingredients.

On the question of measurement, I think there is a strong case for having a national measurement framework, but it has to be one that also has sufficient flexibility to be able to be deployed differently and sensitively in local places. The review that we did for Sara Kahn's review identified 23 different data sources and 23 different elements of cohesion involving 307 different individual measures, so clearly that's completely impossible to use. We have to boil this down to something that is much more simple, manageable and useful, both at national and the local level.

Clearly, it is important that we do have some mechanism for taking the temperature of any given community, because, otherwise, we are going to have some pretty horrible events happening that we hadn't realised were about to be forced upon us. There are lots of actors out there who are keen to disrupt social cohesion for their own purposes, whether they're commercial or political. So, how are the key threats to social cohesion, which include things like disinformation on the internet, and general dissatisfaction with the delivery of government, with the way people are experiencing their daily life—? How are we going to keep pace with all the changes that have occurred, not just since Sara Kahn's report? Even since then, there have been some massive events that we can all think of that, obviously, are a real challenge to the future of government across the world. 

Well, I'm happy to try and respond to that. I am a very, very firm believer in the establishment of tension monitoring partnerships in every local area, and it's a great disappointment to me that many of those were set up between about 2005 and 2015, and were very successful, and they were allowed, really, to disappear.

The tension monitoring partnerships involve the statutory sector, the police and local authorities, they involve schools, they involve community organisations, they involve the faith groups, and they involve, sometimes, other organisations, like Neighbourhood Watch, or even the national health service. And the point is that, for every local area, they develop information about what's happening in the area, who's moving in, who's moving out, the demographic change, which community feels that they've got some form of grievance that hasn't been addressed. They also should be, these days, looking at social media that's impacting on their area. As we saw in the Leicester riots, that was one of the main contributors.

Now, tension monitoring partnerships really have been allowed to lapse across the country, and there is a national tension monitoring unit, and that covers the four parts of the UK. I've been talking very recently to the head of that tension monitoring unit, and he tells me that around 70 per cent of the material that they currently gather is from two organisations, Tell Mama and Hope Not Hate. There is very little from local government, from other agencies, very little from the voluntary sector more generally. So, really, we're missing an opportunity to share information and data between local partners, which doesn't cost any money; this is really about a protocol to share information and data and to then ensure that interventions are early and that we are building resilience at an earlier level. So, I'm just really hopeful that there will be much more of a national arrangement, guidance, to develop tension monitoring at all local levels, not just in Wales of course, but right across the UK, and that they feed into the national unit.

Okay, but we seem to be sleepwalking into this. Why are regional and national governments not paying more attention to this, given that the cost of dealing with horrendous events like the murders in Southport is massive, quite apart from the awful pain suffered by the individual families involved? Dominic.

So, I think one of the problems, and one of the things that we've noticed in our research is very clear, is that many local areas simply don't have the resource to do this kind of monitoring, and, as there is not really a statutory obligation for them to do so, national government has assumed it had enough information already from the national picture, whereas, in fact, even if you're monitoring tensions, those tensions could look very different in different places and be manifested in different ways, affect different groups and so forth. So, it's absolutely vital to have good local intelligence and understanding about what's going on. And I think, again, I want to emphasise that it's important not just to frame this in terms of prevention of disasters and prevention of tension and prevention of conflict; it's also about sustaining and building strong, good relationships that people can trust in. One of the biggest problems is people's lack of trust in national frameworks, whether it be government or the BBC or anything else, whereas they do tend to retain a lot of trust at the local level, we found in our research. So, not making use of that, that capacity to build trusted relationships, have trusted voices, is a major weakness in this whole system at the moment, and that does require investment in expertise and also a consistent framework and support for collecting the evidence that's needed and for using it effectively. But, as I say, it needs to be part of a constructive process, not just a defensive one.

So, very briefly, is the solution to restore the local monitoring units that existed between 2005 and 2015, and that would then enable that missing data that the national body simply doesn't get from local and national government at the moment?

Well, I'd see it more as a local social resilience unit, I think, rather than just a tension monitoring unit. I think a tension monitoring system is very good, but it needs to be a broader process because we also need to understand the capacity we have within our communities to deal with difficulties and conflicts and so forth, and that requires more than just tension monitoring.

Okay. Professor Cantle.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that. They need to be updated—we can't just re-establish what existed between 2005 and 2015—and they need to be updated firstly in terms of social media. The capacity to monitor social media at a local level needs to be considered, and that was, as I mentioned earlier, the problem in the Leicester riots. But more importantly, I think, we have to recognise that people in local areas unfortunately sometimes lack resilience, lack the critical thinking skills, and therefore we have to really develop those at a much earlier level. So, we're not just looking to see where there are tensions at the moment; we're looking to see where the risks are, where could these bad actors, if you like, actually have an influence. Where would they be listened to? Where are the vulnerabilities? So, I agree this is really about developing critical thinking skills, developing resilience, as well as—if the worst comes to the worst—where the tensions are likely to occur and where they're likely to result in conflict. 

Could I bring Sioned Williams in now, please? 

Professor Cantle. 

Who would you like to answer first? 

Professor Cantle. 

I think we've had the same problem, really, across the country. We did have a duty to promote community cohesion in schools, for example, which still exists but it's not inspected upon in England, at least, by Ofsted, and that was changed to a discussion about British values. And the British values discussion, I have to say, I found really quite difficult because it was at such a generalised level. So, I'd much prefer to go back to more of a cohesion model—as I've said, it has to be updated, but—really to reflect how people get along with each other at the local level, and to build it around that. That seems to me the key definition here, how people relate to each other at the local level, and bearing in mind that we have very few mechanisms in place to help people, actually, learn to live with each other, whether it's at a local or a national level. So, I would see that as the key building block here. 

Yes. I suppose I would to add to that that, if one thinks about cohesion, if you think about the people who are most cohesive, they would tend to be those who are in some sort of conflict or competition with others. If you think of football fans, for example, supporters of any given team are incredibly cohesive amongst themselves but, of course, it's because of their rivalry with others. Now, the interesting about, say, the Premier League is the way that those conflicts are actually managed in a way that they don't result in all-out war, and in the way society is the same. We have to contend with the fact that there are multiple differences of opinion, interests, values and all sorts of other things, and they are sometimes shared by different groups rather than different individuals. Our task is to figure out how do you create or develop a system that allows for that set of differences, for the diversity at the group and the individual level, whilst, at the same time, moving forward and supporting everybody. 

I think the risk of the approach that had been adopted was that it was about squashing any kind of dissent or conflict, rather than finding a way to manage it that works effectively. And particularly, we need to find ways to make connections between different communities so that they can support each other. If there's a flood somewhere, the flood doesn't necessarily stop at the boundary of one community and start at the boundary of another. Mutual support is essential. So, I think it's managing this set of relationships. 

The other thing I'd say about that is that it's not just the number of relationships or the amount of safe contact between different groups that matters; it's the quality of that contact. Our research for Belong showed really clearly that the quality—feeling it's been a positive relationship, positive contact—is 11 times more important than the simple quantity of contact between different people and groups. So, it's managing that. That has to be done creatively. You have to create an environment and space in which those contacts can be positive and will be positive.

I listened to Dame Sara Khan earlier on, and I thought she articulated this very well. Incidentally, I agree with just about everything that Sara says; I've worked closely with her in the past. I think we are facing a very difficult situation across the UK with regard to cohesion, for all the reasons that Sara mentioned, and, particularly, that race and faith have become linked to a much broader political identity that is not only anti-migrant, anti-asylum seeker, anti-Muslim, but is also anti-politics, it's anti-elite, it's anti-rules-based democracy and it's misogynistic. So, it's a much broader political identity that we're having to deal with, and I think that puts us in a much more difficult position.

I would say though, in Wales, there is, I would think, from all that I've read and worked in Wales previously, a slightly stronger position because there has been a more consistent strategy over a longer period. There has been a positive approach to welcoming migrants, to the integration work that's gone on. Of course, there's a stronger architecture in terms of your eight regional co-ordinators, the unitary councils. There is a higher level of trust in politicians in Wales compared with elsewhere. It's still a problem, but it is there.

The concern that I have, really, is that I think, in Wales, there has been a very strong focus on migrant communities, which obviously has been necessary, but I do think, from what I've read and seen, that there has been less of a focus on some of the majority communities, and they are the people that are being exploited by far-right parties, by the anti-Muslim rhetoric. And when we look at the world values survey recently, 2023, it does show attitudes in Wales slightly better than England, but slightly behind Scotland. So, I think there is no room for complacency, but I do think you start from a stronger point.

If I can add to that, I think we have to be careful about viewing very salient events as being a reasonable indicator of what's going on more generally. So, I think even in Wales, where you have had riots what's been, I think, notable is how within a few months—sometimes immediately, but within a few months—those same communities where those things have happened have gathered together and reinforced themselves; they've shown huge signs of solidarity and mutual support in response. And we have to remember that the vast majority of the population in both England and Wales and Scotland are not rioting, are not protesting, are not engaging in these very negative behaviours. So, it's not that everything is falling apart. But the question then is why do people find that they want to engage in these sorts of very violent or extreme actions. And I think that can be traced to the wider systemic problem, which is that there are people who have a strong sense of a lack of voice, that the concerns that they might have are not being heard by whoever it is—the police, the Government, outsiders, whatever. They feel some sense of threat, and they find no way to express that and no-one to share it with, and no-one to help them look at it from a different perspective, or any confidence that it's going to be dealt with effectively. And I think if we don't actually listen to that and address those concerns, then of course eventually things will bubble over. But it's a big mistake to see this as some sort of descent into mindless thuggery; it's not. These are coherent protests that arise because we haven't dealt with the situation beforehand.

If we think of Southport, for example, immediately following the general election, the vast majority of the electorate rejected the existing Government—they were very unhappy—but for quite different reasons: some voting for Reform, some voting for Green and so forth. So, some subset of those people will have felt that their voice is now not going to be listened to—that the change that they've achieved is not the change they wanted. And then when a justification, a scapegoat, appears that can be used, then social media and misinformation and all the rest comes in, and it becomes crystallised in these rioting actions. So, I think we have to be careful not to overread those and to think more about the context in which they've happened, why they came about, and what followed as well.

I tend to work across the UK and internationally, but I have had work in Wales in the past, particularly when the cohesion strategy was being developed. I worked with the Ethnic Minorities and Youth Support Team in Swansea, with Rocio Cifuentes, who I believe is your Children's Commissioner for Wales now, and I was struck by how similar some of those issues were to what we were experiencing in England and elsewhere. But, more recently, and certainly in relation to the discussion we've had now, I haven't been working specifically in the Welsh context.

So, we did—. I think Sara Khan did mention the integration areas, which the Government had invested in prior to the pandemic, and, actually, we did conduct research with Belong and the Nuffield Foundation, looking at what had happened in those areas, and we were able to compare that with what had happened in Wales and Scotland and the rest of England. The general pattern for Wales was the same as most of the rest of the UK, which is that people, over the course of the pandemic, gradually became less strongly identified with their country, less strongly identified with Britain. Declines in local identification were much shallower; people maintained their local identity much more. What we did find that was really important, though, was that, in those five areas where the Government had invested in social cohesion—each of which used a different cohesion strategy of its own—they did fare better than other places in the country. So, people volunteered more, they had higher social well-being, they were more politically engaged on almost any measure you wanted, they were less prejudiced against outgroups, less fearful of immigrants and so on. So, I think that speaks to the point that you can't pin these things down to just demography or social class or poverty, that each place has its own identity and characteristics and, I think, in Wales, you'd find—we could go into our data; we haven't done this yet—that different parts of Wales, rural and urban, will differ quite greatly on many of these measures.

Okay. Thank you. Altaf Hussain.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this, it's really interesting. Great to have you both here. My area is media and misinformation. What impact is social media and the spread of misinformation having on social cohesion? What action can be taken by the Welsh Government and other organisations to address this? Thank you.

Who'd like to go first?

Well, firstly, I think social media is having a profound impact, and we are seeing that the way the algorithms work in social media means a much stronger rush towards groupthink; it's really fed in to the whole discussion—well, any discussion. If I could just give you one example, for an experiment, I set up an X account, a Twitter account, and I followed people who were on the far right and on the far left. Within 24 hours, my Twitter account was closed down because it was assumed I was a robot, because no human would possibly follow people with such diverse views. So, we know that the algorithms work, pushing information towards people who have the same views. I do think we have to think about how we can at least begin to control not just the content, but some of the algorithms. There are some discussions going on about that, but, unfortunately, not many at the moment. So, I would suggest that, in the meantime, while people figure out how to exercise more control over social media, we link this to citizen-led resilience. There are a couple of other countries—Estonia, I'm told; even Mexico—where they are undertaking citizen-led responses to social media at a local level, which builds the critical thinking skills of those involved as well as helping to respond to some of the social media posts. I think, really, we're in our infancy on this. We saw the devastating effect that social media could have within 48 hours or so in Leicester; it nearly had the same effect in Birmingham; it could have the same effect in any community. This, to me, is one of the key priorities, and I think we really have to get to work on that. But we also have to ask, 'What of the other communications?' We've seen the relative demise of local radio, of local newspapers; in my area, a local tv station is closing down this week. So, we're seeing the removal of responsible, professional journalism, and I think we have to really not only control social media, but we have to try and boost responsible, professional journalism to provide an alternative viewpoint.

Thank you, Professor. My second question: the Welsh Government has developed a website—probably you might know about it—called 'For the Record', which is an open resource to fact-check and clarify claims made about Welsh Government policies. What's your view on this approach?

Well, if I can come in—.

Yes, Professor, please.

I think, from our research, it seems to be that the critical factor in all of this is who does one trust. If you're given advice or information, do you believe that information? The problem arises when people are uncertain, and, in that situation, if they don't trust, say, a Government source, or an official source, and they either believe there's a problem that isn't being addressed—it might be the level of immigration, for example—or they don't think there's a problem at all, then what happens is they effectively disregard the source of information altogether. So, two things we've identified, aversion amplification and distrustful complacency, both have their same roots in this lack of trust. So, if either thing is missing, either the concern or the certainty are missing, or alternatively the trust is missing, then people are likely to be vulnerable to misinformation. They're going to turn to other sources of information that they trust more, or that they have more confidence in.

We noticed, for example, during the COVID pandemic, that although people found national Government level information very accessible—it was easy to get hold of and to look at the graphs and all the rest—it was regarded as less honest, credible or empathetic than that from local government, and the problem was that local governments and local authorities just didn't have information to give out; they didn't have the information about what was happening locally or what was going on, they didn't have the people to provide it or the resources to provide it. So, there was a problem there, because what do you do if you don't trust the Government and you don't have anyone local you can trust? Then you will turn to other sources of information, and you'll be particularly vulnerable to misinformation and things coming from social media, some of which might be quite okay, but some of which might not be.

I thought the media toolkit, by the way, which I looked at, was excellent, and I thought it made a really good start. There are certain things there that are missing in it, but I think it's a very good start. I was very impressed by that.

Now, the toolkit is to help the community leaders, isn't it, trying to stop the spread of misinformation. So, you like it?

Yes. I mean, I think there are some gaps. First of all, it assumes that all the inaccurate information is going to come online and through social media, but it may also be shared and reinforced by personal conversations; it doesn't comment on the role of neighbours or other key individuals who might be able to support those facing uncertainty or how they should go about it; it doesn't comment on how the trustworthiness and expertise of local sources can be established in the minds of the recipients of the advice; it doesn't address the possibility of Michael Fish moments—what happens when the experts and sources of advice turn out to be wrong, as does happen sometimes? What happens next—how is that mitigated? And there's no comment on the way that local and supralocal, regional or national narratives articulate with each other, or who takes responsibility for navigating that, particularly if there are differences between them, and that was very noticeable during COVID. So, I think, while it's an excellent piece of work, more could be done with it.

Thank you. Is there anything you want to add, Professor Cantle, before I move us on?

Just very briefly, I think too much trust is put into community leaders. Community leaders are often the gatekeepers of their community rather than the gateway, so it comes back to the point that Dominic's just made: who should we trust? And whenever I go into a local area, I try and go below the community leaders, particularly to women's groups, to youth groups, to try and find alternative sources, really, of information, and alternative sources of leadership.

Thank you. Mick Antoniw.

You've answered a few of the questions. I wanted to ask a little bit about the monitoring of social cohesion. You mentioned about, I suppose, really the lack of clear, national strategic plans and the implementation and the resourcing of those. Just a couple of points. I'll try and perhaps—. Because you've answered many of the points, I wanted to just add some specific things. When false information gets out there, we seem to have no consistent or credible system of rebuttal. I noticed that, when recent riots occurred, one of the issues, of course, that one particular Reform politician was commenting on was saying, 'Oh, well, I was just asking the questions, wasn't I? And no-one was answering them.' Well, of course, there's a certain amount of truth there. Now, the first thing is: to what extent to do you think there is a need for some sort of official rebuttal system that could be implemented? The second thing is you said, of course, it's not all to do with poverty, but most of the concerns that we have emerge in areas that are extremely poor and have suffered consistently from austerity, and the ability—. No matter how you engage at the end of the day, the concerns people have, it's a question of what you can actually do about it. So, it seems to me there's a very, very clear link with poverty. And I don't know to what extent that undermines the ability, and the discrediting, I suppose, of people's belief that you can do something about it. The second thing is: do we have enough legislative control? I know there's been legislation coming through, but it seems to me it has more or less tried to avoid the real issue of specific controls. I think those are probably the three main areas I wanted to ask about, and where they fitted within the concept of a national strategic plan.

Professor Cantle.

There are some very good questions there. I think, firstly, rebuttal, generally, I would support. But sometimes rebutting something just underlines, in the eyes of the people making the statement in the first case, that it is true, and that gives them yet another reason to come back at you. So, there has to be a judgment about who does the rebuttal and how it's done in a way that is sustainable, because it can, actually, just lead to further argument and further difficulty. Generally, though, we have failed on rebuttal, and that's why I was suggesting earlier on that we need to see more citizen-led initiatives, which I think will have more trust. They are also helpful in building critical-thinking skills at the same time as developing the rebuttal.

I think one of your questions was also about austerity and the impact that had. Again, Dominic dealt with that a little bit earlier on, and the link with austerity is often very difficult. But one thing that I think we sometimes neglect is that we've had a very substantial increase in population, we haven't had an increase in public services, we haven't had an increase in housing, as that has developed, and therefore I think people do correctly perceive that public services have not kept up with population growth. And I think that has led to tensions in some areas. I think it's something that, obviously, the current Government are beginning to get to grips with in terms of housing. But I think we shouldn't pretend that there aren't real grievances about public services in some areas, and that they have to be dealt with. They have to be dealt with alongside the question of attitudes and beliefs. We have to deal with those issues that are about real resources in local areas, and whether people feel that they are getting adequate resources for their particular area and for their own families.

Yes, and if I can add to that, I think it’s important to be aware of where poverty is hitting hardest. It doesn’t hit everybody in the same area, in the same way. Young people in particular are finding themselves in increasingly difficult circumstances, with incomes that aren’t sufficient to afford accommodation, with entering work much later than they used to—training goes on much longer. They often have parents who have now stopped working but, nonetheless, might start becoming dependent on them. So, there are enormous pressures that really are going to create huge pressures on intergenerational relationships. And those happen within families, let alone within communities.

So, I think that’s a really important question that isn’t being addressed and that will affect social cohesion, broadly. But it also is one of the routes—those sorts of pressures are part of the route through which people become disengaged, disillusioned, and they say, ‘Well, politics is doing nothing for me. What do I turn to?’ So, I think we have to concern ourselves with the way that social cohesion is operating—can it contain and support and deal with these sorts of tensions in effective ways, and are our broader set of policies addressing those things, or are we creating conditions that will inevitably weaken social cohesion? And we can see a weakening of social cohesion not just as conflict between groups, but also as the simple individual disengagement from the rest of society. And if that happens on a mass level, it’s very difficult to co-ordinate any responses to any challenges.

Can I follow up just on that last point, because, obviously, the next generation coming through schools and so on at the moment—. Obviously, we've introduced voting at 16. We are now looking at automatic registration. Maybe, at some stage in the future, we’ll look at compulsory voting and so on. Those are only partial solutions. We do have a new curriculum, which has a greater focus on civic education, but it does seem to me that that is the elephant in the room, the real standing one—the inability to properly have teachers that are competent to address the issue, but also to properly engage within our schools, and schools that are properly prepared to make the time available for that. What are your thoughts on that, on whether that is something that needs to become a strategic objective of far greater importance than it has been up until now?

Certainly, I think education needs to equip people to deal with the world as they find it, and one of the things that’s become increasingly difficult for them to do is build social relationships, particularly following the pandemic. But given that, often, they’re living in a social media bubble and their access to transport and other communication forms is limited, actually forming relationships is the key to social cohesion. If they can’t do that, then nothing else will happen. But forming relationships is also the key to dealing with misinformation, because if you and I, for example, live in different social bubbles but we actually know each other and talk to each other occasionally, the chances are that we will each, perhaps, neutralise, or at least question, the information that we’re getting from within our own bubble, because we can talk to each other about it. So, if you don’t create the conditions for those relationships to form, then everything’s much more vulnerable.

Professor Cantle.

Yes, I’m very concerned about education policy generally. I think not enough is done, or has been done, to promote cohesion within schools, and within FE colleges and universities, I might add. I think the policy that we’ve had on admissions, generally, has meant that we’ve allowed social bubbles in schools to develop. I think the policies we’ve had on faith schools have been really regressive, and have led to increasing segregation, and certainly separation. So, I feel that a lot more needs to be done within schools, by schools, but not as something different and additional. It’s not about doing more things; it’s about doing things differently. And we see that it’s not just, of course, limited to the schoolchildren. Anything that goes on in schools immediately has an impact on parental networks, on the community more generally, and on the way in which we relate to each other. So, I think schools policy is absolutely critical.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Jane Dodds.

Professor Cantle.

Yes, I'm very happy to talk about the third sector, because I think their role is absolutely crucial. I think, though, that they need to be involved in the assessment process of what's needed in local areas. Often, they are the recipients of funding from national or local organisations and are basically told to bring communities together. I think they should be, certainly, part of the tension monitoring process, assessing what divisions are occurring and what needs to be done. So, I think they have a strategic role as well as just simply a role in producing cohesion solutions.

I'm also concerned about the way in which we tend to fund the third sector. We often link it to particular faith groups or groups representing a particular ethnicity, rather than around place, and I think it's really important that the third sector role is linked to local place, so that they actually bring communities together. It seems ironic to me that one of the key functions of the third sector that we want them to achieve through cohesion is to bring communities together, and yet we often fund them on very specific bases. So, I would like to see the funding for the community sector to be built around local place, so that it is in itself essentially about integration of the different interests, both strategically and operationally.

I think Professor Abrams wanted to add to that.

Yes, just to add to that, I enjoyed reading the 2016 community cohesion national delivery plan, and many of the outcome areas began with the objective of understanding what is going on, where I think the third sector is absolutely crucial. I wonder to what extent there has been a systematic evaluation of the impacts of the implementation of that plan, not just an assessment of whether and what's been done, but what effect it has had. I also noted that it lacked a coherent approach to building social cohesion. Instead, the emphasis seemed to be on ameliorating tensions and less so on building a resilient social infrastructure, which is where the third sector is absolutely essential as a partner. It's through that social infrastructure that cohesion is developed and sustained. I didn't see any reference to the role of the arts in community-generated activities, but, actually, also not much reference, other than as a problem, to the role of things like universities and other Government institutions in supporting cohesion. So, I think the point is that to build social cohesion effectively, one needs a partnership between all of these things, and particularly at the local level we do need the third sector. The Mayhill panel review noted the risk of siloed working and the need to design a multi-agency approach that involves community members and representatives. So, again, I think you're obviously very alive to this already in Wales, and identifying social infrastructure issues, such as, I quote:

'Creating and supporting community capacity, safe spaces, youth activity and much more is required',

all of which I would strongly endorse.

Do go ahead.

I think the targets should be pretty much the same for the third sector as for the statutory sector. What we’re aiming to achieve, obviously, is some improvement in community relations. And, in giving the finance and resources to the third sector, we have to start with a performance framework and be very clear about what they’re set to achieve.

If I can give you one example, I was involved in a Breaking Boundaries scheme, which is a sport scheme. It was £1.8 million, funded by a charity. It covered six cities, and the performance that we expected was that they would aim to get young people from different communities playing sport—playing cricket in particular, but other sports, too—together in each of these given cities. It was the first time that they’d ever even considered playing sport across these boundaries. And the performance framework was that, at the end of the programme, we had to see a change in attitudes of those young people towards each other, and of their parents and families we also had to see a change in attitudes. So, we measured their attitudes before and after. And it wasn’t just about how they felt about it, we also measured their behaviours—how far, as a result of going through this exercise, they would be willing to volunteer, volunteer in other communities, volunteer for that local area, and how far they would be willing to join sports clubs that didn’t have a majority of their particular group and where there had been difficulty in the past. So, we could very clearly measure the attitudes and the behaviours. It was a two-year scheme with very clear outcomes laid down from the start. And I think that that would be true, really, for any type of third sector scheme, where it’s not just simply about giving the money and allowing the performance framework to be determined somehow as you go along, but setting the performance framework right from the start.

I think the trouble is that, for different activities, there are obviously different outcomes. But I think there is the higher level outcome, which is this thing about the shared objective, and I think the issue there is that both the funding and the support for the third sector involvement needs to be longer term, but also it does need to be integrated, or at least it needs to be explicit how it fits into the wider local agenda and objectives. And I think that that would help everybody, really.

I think also we have to have a reasonable acceptance of failure, not to expect everything to work all of the time. It’s necessary to try out different things and see which ones work best, and it’s necessary to adapt things to the particular local circumstances in the light of evidence about what is and isn’t working. So, I think it needs both sensitivity and flexibility but also enough time to understand whether or not things are working.

So, Professor Abrams, do you want to go first?

Okay. I think the Welsh Government is, obviously, going to have to identify what it is about Wales that is distinctive and different from what is happening in the rest of the UK, and, obviously, different parts of Wales are also different. There are specific factors, people and places in which extremism might flourish, for example, and the way it could be expressed might be very different in Wales—say, in Swansea, when compared with, I don’t know, Southampton, Perth or somewhere else. So, I think that there has to be articulation with the national strategy overall, but there also has to be a clear explanation of what it is about Wales’s context that requires specific and different things.

I thought that the overall 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' was very impressive in its comprehensiveness and detailed attention to implications for multiple areas and spheres of activity, and, actually, a model for the UK Government in showing that you have to join up the priorities of different departments in order to get a proper, coherent strategy, so I thought that was something that the rest of the UK might want to emulate.

But it does strike me that there is still a problem with focusing the narrative simply on what you might call problem areas, whether it be racism or misogyny or something else, rather than having a broader framework that sets the overall set of ideals and principles that you want to pursue, and which would go well beyond any single problem.

Professor Cantle.

I've not really very much to add to that. I agree with all of that. I do think there is a role in setting the strategic framework; constant exhortation and constant checking up to make sure that people are given encouragement, not just simply feeling as though they're on the receiving end of a set of objectives. So, I think there is a very strong overall co-ordination role as well.

Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Okay. I just wanted to ask a slightly broader question, which is: what's the role of commercialisation of our society in producing this fragmentation of social cohesion? Because in the 1960s and 1970s, we had a much more equal society. Nowadays, we have some very well-off people, and a lot of people struggling to be able to afford the basics. And some of this must, I would have thought, have an impact. We're all told we've got to eat certain types of food, many of which are killing us. If we don't have particular things, doesn't that make us resent other people who have it?

Well, that's an extremely good question. I think, as Dominic said earlier, the relationship between poverty and disadvantage and cohesion is not entirely straightforward, but I do believe that resentment, grievances, not just about access, as you mentioned in terms of commercialisation, but as I was saying earlier, public services and housing, they all lead to a grievance culture. So, I'm sure that some notion of fairness is absolutely critical to people feeling that they have a stake in society.

And one of the things we really mustn't overlook is the loss of social capital. The social capital, the networks associated with heavy industry, with trade unions, with Scouts and Cubs and all the local societies, in some areas we've seen quite a reduction in social capital too. So, the networks that bind people together, I think are almost as important as some of the economic relationships. And I'm a great advocate of things like food hubs at a regional level, or even a local level, which can bring producers and consumers together. We seem to have lost that link between what is locally produced, locally consumed, at so many different levels. So, I think it is a more complicated equation, but I'm sure you're right that there is some relationship there, and it's going to vary from place to place.

I'll take Professor Abrams and then come to you, Sioned.

I certainly agree with all that. But I think in addition, in a sense, what's happened is the privatisation of what used to be public goods and resources and spaces. If you want to go and have a cup of coffee with a friend or something, you've got to go somewhere where you've got to pay for it, because there aren't any park benches around, and those kinds of things. So, swimming pools are impossible to afford to go to, so fewer people go swimming, and so on. So, I think without those publicly shared spaces, it's very difficult to generate publicly shared beliefs, concerns, activities and all the rest.

So, I think we have to think about, and the British Academy is currently undertaking a large review of what the social and cultural infrastructure is and what role it plays in sustaining social cohesion, and in a way, countering that individualised commercial landscape that people see before them. People do still depend on one another for everything, so if you buy something on Amazon, then one of the first things you look at is other people's reviews of the product. So, we're constantly seeking social validation of what we want to do and what our choices are. If we can establish that in a more dynamic, real-life, real-place way, then that will be ultimately good and strengthen social cohesion generally.

Sioned Williams.

No, I don't think Government have really recognised that at all. There's quite a recent book by Jon Yates, who was a former special adviser, the book is called Fractured, and he talks about the loss of social capital at many levels. He suggests areas in which social capital could be reconstructed. I just really don't think Governments have understood how important social capital is. They do, I guess, talk a little bit more about bridging social capital, about how people from different groups, different faiths, different communities bridge across, and there is an understanding that that's necessary for cohesion, because it brings people together, but I don't think they really understand that in order to have bridging social capital, you have to have bonding social capital in the first instance.

The other important part of that is what's known as linking social capital, where people are part of organisations that link them to jobs, link them to opportunities, link them to education, which is absolutely critical in the economic sense. So, no, I think it's not really understood. We had a flurry of activity, again, 20-odd years ago when Robert Putnam produced his seminal work, Bowling Alone, which really described the situation in the States. Suddenly, everybody got interested in social capital, but they haven't been interested very much since.

Thank you very much indeed. We've now run out of time. We thank you very much, both of you, for your very useful contributions. We will send you a transcript of what you have said. Please do correct anything that we've recorded wrongly, and, otherwise, we'd very much like to thank you for your time and your contributions today. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr.

I'd now just like to ask committee members to note the correspondence from Lord Timpson, from the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government and three other bits of correspondence on the Employment Rights Bill. Are people content to record those?

Under Standing Order 17.42, can I ask that we now move into private session?