Ed Miliband speaks out about “rising intolerance” in Europe

Recently, there has been a rise in the number of report of Islamophobia, racism and anti-semitism.

Ed Miliband has spoken out about this, outlining three measures that must be taken to combat this:

We’ve seen incredibly worrying violence in the last few weeks.

We saw the events in Paris.

We’ve seen the events in Copenhagen.

There is real fear among Jewish families, among Muslim families, among people of all backgrounds about the rising intolerance that we see.

We have to recognise that – but recognising it is not enough.

Europe’s leaders have got to show a unity of purpose in tackling these issues.

I don’t think we can just walk by on the other side when we have seen the kind of events we’ve seen in Copenhagen.

There are three things that we need to do.

First of all we’ve got to counter extremism right at its roots.

The Prevent programme which is designed to prevent dangerous radicalisation of young people – that has got to be done much more at the community level because if you don’t nip these things in the bud right then it is much harder to tackle them later.

Secondly, you’ve got to work with social media companies. I think that the freedom of social media is incredibly important but we have to look at the ways we can counter this stuff online.

Thirdly, and I think this is where European cooperation is incredibly important, we’ve got to work across borders. We have got to work across borders across Europe to deal with these issues. Because some of these terrorist networks are working across borders and there is no option for Britain to withdraw from this.

We’ve got to be engaged with the rest of the world.