Policy Exchange

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Policy Exchange is a British think tank based in London. It describes itself as right of centre although it has been described variously as hard right[1] and right in the British media on account of its links with the neoconservative movement, most particularly through one of its Research Directors, Dean Godson. It has in the past, nevertheless, been praised as "vital" by left-wing magazine The New Statesman and been described by The Observer as "influential".[citation needed] It seeks localist and free market solutions to public policy problems, with research programmes covering health, education, environment, crime and justice, welfare, housing, family policy and security.

It was set up in 2002 by Founder Director, Nicholas Boles and then-Chairman Michael Gove. Michael Gove has gone on to become Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath. Charles Moore, former editor of the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph has taken over as Chairman. In May 2007, Nicholas Boles was replaced by former Times Political Correspondent, Anthony Browne. Policy Exchange is a registered charity[2] but does not disclose its sources of funding.

In 2005, the Policy Exchange publication 'Unaffordable Housing - Fables and Myths' (Alan W. Evans, Oliver Marc Hartwich) won Prospect Magazine's prize for the best British think tank publication[citation needed]. It won Prospect Magazine's award for Think Tank of the Year in 2006/7[citation needed]. Some of the most recent studies published by Policy Exchange since 2002 include 'More Good School Places', 'Replacing the Routemaster', 'Bigger Better Faster More - Why Some Countries Plan Better Than Others', 'Culture Vultures', 'No More School Run', 'Unaffordable Housing: Fables and Myths', 'Taming Terrorism', 'Manifesto for the Met' and 'Better Homes, Greener Cities'. However its research on British Muslims has attracted significant controversy, most recently in accusations that evidence was forged in its latest report on mosques in Britain.


The Living Apart Together report controversy

On January 29th 2007 Policy Exchange published a report, Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism that concluded that a minority of young Muslims identify less with British society than their parents do, and are more likely to want Muslim women to wear the hijab and to see Sharia Law implemented in Britain. The report was written (broadcaster and PhD student of local cultural studies), Abi Senthilkumaran (a Social Policy Research Methods Masters student) and Zein Ja'far (a Masters student of Near and Middle Eastern Studies),[3] based on a poll conducted by the independent polling institute Populus of 1,003 Muslims in Britain. .[4] It attracted considerable media coverage for its poll findings but its credibility and accuracy were subsequently challenged.

In addition to a number of Muslim groups who criticised the report's methodology, university-based academics such as Dr Gabriele Marranci at the University of Aberdeen and Drs Marie Breen Smith and Jeroen Gunning of Aberystwyth University[5] also questioned the report's alleged political motivation. The latter wrote that the report was designed to support and legitimise the Conservative party's agenda with a façade of independence. Professors Tariq Madood (at the University of Bristol) and Ziauddin Sardar (who teaches at City University, London) also questioned the report's survey techniques and the reliability of the resultant conclusions and disputed its central conclusions which they stated "contradict all leading research on the matter and makes their claim empirically unsustainable."[6]

The Policy Exchange findings were also at wide variance with other studies, in particular those of the 1990 Trust whose report based on questioning a similar cohort showed just 1% of British Muslims supported the 7/7 bombings in comparison to Policy Exchange's claim that 13% of Muslims aged 16 to 24 years old supported Al Qaeda’s war against the West.[7] This resulted in an exchange between the conflicting think tanks with the 1990 Trust requesting Policy Exchange to disclose its report methodology but Policy Exchange refusing to do so.[8]

The Hijacking of British Islam report controversy

In October 2007, Policy Exchange published another report on the Muslim community in the UK, claiming to uncover the extent of extremism within mainstream British mosques and Muslim institutions. The report entitled The Hijacking of British Islam: How extremist literature is subverting mosques in the UK was described as [9]

"a year long investigation carried out by Policy Exchange into the character of the literature currently available in mainstream sites of Islamic religious instruction in the UK."

Susequently Policy Exchange conceded it was not a year long report as previously claimed but only a six month exercise.

According to the report, four Muslim research teams visited nearly 100 Islamic sites in the UK "to determine the extent to which literature inculcating Muslim separatism and hatred of nonbelievers was accessible in those institutions - both in terms of being openly available and also being obtainable 'under the counter'." This material was then compiled by Denis MacEoin, with the assistance of 'a team of independent [translation] experts', into the report. The report is published almost as a directory, with the name and address of each institution, followed by the discussion of the extremist materials allegedly found at each site. The researchers claimed to have found offensive material at around a quarter of the sites visited and this became the report's most publicised claim in the media.

On 12th December 2007, just under two months after the publication of this report, BBC's Newsnight presented evidence[1] that some of the data supporting its conclusions may have been forged. Newsnight had originally been offered the report on an exclusive basis, but one of the mosques denied selling the book, and claimed that the receipt supplied as evidence was not one it had issued. Newsnight selected six of the receipts for further investigation and concluded that five of these looked suspicious. These five were supplied to a forensic scientist, who concluded that all five had been created on an inkjet printer (as would be used with a PC, as opposed to being professionally printed), that two receipts from different mosques were written by the same hand, and that a receipt from one mosque had been written while resting on another receipt from a mosque 40 miles away, strongly suggesting that the two were written by the same person at the same time and place.

Policy Exchange has stated that the accusations made by the BBC are "libellous and perverse", and in a letter threatened to pursue the BBC with legal action "relentlessly, to trial or capitulation"[10][2] although no legal action has yet been forthcoming. Newsnight also asked to speak to the eight researchers involved but was told by Policy Exchange that "they were all away on a religious retreat in Mauritania".

The chairman of Policy Exchange, ex-Telegraph Editor Charles Moore, has since responded in the Daily Telegraph [3] saying that Jeremy Paxman "accused Policy Exchange itself, which the Newsnight report had not done, of fabricating receipts" and claimed that the forensic expert concluded that "the relatively limited amount of writing available for comparison has prevented me from expressing any definite opinion". The editor of Newsnight, Peter Barron, disputed these assertions subsequently in a letter to the Telegraph stating, "Charles Moore's attack on Newsnight's investigation into a report by Policy Exchange is a distortion of the truth and does him no credit".[11] Since then, Seamus Milne in The Guardian newspaper has claimed that up to 9 of the receipts used for the report may have been forged.[12] Many of these allegations were disputed in a letter to The Guardian by Policy Exchange's Director Anthony Browne.[citation needed]


After the Newsnight investigation, The Times (one of the newspapers that originally have gave prominence to the Policy Exchange report when it was first published) issued an apology to one of the mosques which Policy Exchange accused of selling extremist literature for incorrectly linking it to the sale of such material.[13]

Staff

  • Anthony Browne, Director
  • Charles Moore, Chairman
  • Sian Hansen, Managing Director
  • Dr Steven King, Director of External Affairs
  • Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, Chief Economist
  • Dean Godson, Research Director, Security
  • Roger Gough, Research Director, Government and Constitution
  • Gavin Lockhart, Head of the Criminal Justice and Health Units
  • Sam Freedman, Head of the Education Unit
  • Tara Singh, Head of the Environment Unit
  • Louisa Mitchell, Research Director, Families and Society

See also

References

  1. ^ "Cameron must rein in these neo-con attack dogs".
  2. ^ Policy Exchange, Charity Commission, charity number 1096300
  3. ^ http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/libimages/241.pdf
  4. ^ "British Muslims and multiculturalism".
  5. ^ "The abuse of research".
  6. ^ "Questions remain over what British Muslims think".
  7. ^ "1990 Trust Survey on Muslims and Foreign Policy".
  8. ^ "Muslim youth report a "sham"".
  9. ^ "The Hijacking of British Islam" (PDF).
  10. ^ "Talk about Newsnight". BBC. 12 December 2007. Retrieved 2007-12-12.
  11. ^ "Moore and Barron in Newsnight Clash".
  12. ^ "Cameron must rein in these neo-con attack dogs".
  13. ^ "Times issues apology to East London Mosque".

External links


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