Infants in the UK have been referred to the government’s controversial Prevent counter-terrorism scheme hundreds of times since 2016, in what monitoring groups say has been a means of intimidating and scaring parents into engaging with officials.

Through a series of Freedom of Information requests by Hyphen, it was revealed that babies under the age of two were referred to Prevent 86 times between 2016-17 and 2023-24, with over two-thirds (59) of these referrals over so-called “Islamist” concerns. At the same time, children aged two to five were referred to Prevent a further 500 times.