Jess Phillips has suggested people could lose their jobs over the failure to prevent the Southport attack.
Axel Rudakubana, 18, who was sentenced to life in jail last week for killing three little girls last summer and attempting to kill 10 others, was referred to the anti-terror Prevent programme three times before the attack he carried out aged 17.
Following the killer’s unexpected guilty plea last Monday, Sir Keir Starmer ordered a review into the failure of state institutions to prevent the attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in July.
Speaking ahead of the review’s expected publication this week, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, said “if there are individual failings then, of course” people should lose their jobs.
“But if there is a systematic flaw in the system then that is for governments to change,” she added.
And she said: “I think it’s very, very clear in this case that the Prevent model, there were failings in it.
“There were state failures across the board and that’s why the government has announced a proper public inquiry to get to the bottom of not just what is wrong with Prevent, but with all the instances the killer of those three beautiful little girls wasn’t stopped when there’s potential he could have.”
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She added it is a “shame” Rudakubana’s school teachers tried to intervene by referring him to Prevent but “were left with little resource and that needs to be looked into”.
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“That might be a systematic problem, it might be an individual one and we need to get to the bottom of that,” the minister said.
Rudakubana was referred by his teachers to Prevent over concerns about his fixation with violence, but the programme judged he did not require intervention.
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The aim of Prevent is to “stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism”.
The government-led, multi-agency scheme also helps to rehabilitate and disengage those who are already involved in terrorism, and safeguard communities from threats.
Referrals to Prevent lead to a “gateway assessment”, made by specialist police officers to determine whether there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect the person is “susceptible to becoming a terrorist or supporting terrorism”.
The individual will then receive tailored support to reduce their susceptibility to being radicalised into terrorism, if appropriate.
The Prevent programme has three main aims:
• To tackle the ideological causes of terrorism;
• Intervene early to support people susceptible to radicalisation;
• Enable people who have already engaged in terrorism to disengage and rehabilitate.
Last week, Sir Keir said terrorism in the UK has changed following the sentencing of Rudakubana.
He said it is no longer just highly organised groups such as al Qaeda who are a threat but also “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety, sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups, but fixated on that extreme violence seeming only for its own sake”.
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The prime minister promised to review “our entire counter-extremist system to make sure we have what we need to defeat it”.
He also announced Sir David Anderson KC, an independent reviewer of terror legislation, has been appointed as the new independent commissioner for Prevent.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper last week announced a separate inquiry into the Southport attack because “the families and the people of Southport need answers about what happened”.
