Call for authorities to do more to tackle banned terror group

Yvette Cooper has called for the police and Government to do more to tackle far-right extremism after ITV News revealed ex-members of banned terror group National Action were still meeting in secret.

Undercover filming caught former members of Britain's first white supremacist group attending a training camp in the Peak District.

The group celebrated the death of MP Jo Cox before they were outlawed by the Home Office in December.

Mrs Cooper, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, said more needs to be done to stop the group reorgansing under another name.

She also called on Google to do more to remove recruitment videos put up by the terror organisation - despite being asked repeatedly to do so.

Mrs Cooper told ITV News: "This is a vile organisation that has been glorifying the murder of Jo Cox, has been found to be linked to terrorist activity, and that's why the Government has banned them.

"They can't just reorganise again under another name, so we need to know what the police and what the Government are doing about this.

"And also what's being done about the fact that there are still National Action recruitment videos live on YouTube.

"I don't think that Google is doing enough to remove these kinds of illegal propaganda videos. They've been asked repeatedly to do so - they also need to take action."

Sarah Newton, the Minister for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism, told MPs "it's time for (Google) to deliver" in taking down National Action videos from the internet.

Giving evidence at a Home Affairs Select Committee hearing on what MPs are doing to tackle extremism in the community, she said a "special unit" has been set to "look online and find this material and when it is found to go to wherever it is and ask for it to be taken down".

The MP for Truro and Falmouth added that that a "filtering regime" has been put in place to prevent people from seeing National Action videos online in the UK.

However when Mrs Cooper revealed she had continuously noticed new National Action videos appearing on Youtube and pressed her on whether Google should be doing more to monitor their existence, Mrs Newton said: "We've got guidance in place, we've got agreements in place, we've got voluntary codes in place that everybody's signed up to.

"It's time for them to deliver."

Brendan Cox, Mrs Cox's widower, told ITV News that the rise of the far right is something "we should all take more seriously".

“Their attempts to undermine our country’s values of decency and inclusion will not succeed if we hold together against their hatred," he said.

"Jo dedicated her life to bringing people together and building stronger communities. Her values reflected the best of what it means to be British and the way the nation as a whole responded to her murder is evidence of that."

Neo-Nazi Thomas Mair was handed a whole life term for murdering Mrs Cox outside her constituency on 16 June 2016.

A spokesperson for the North East Counter-Terrorism Unit told ITV News: "Police are taking steps to secure and review the footage from ITN to assess whether any offences have taken place."

Ministers will be quizzed by MPs this afternoon on what they are doing to tackle extremism in the community.