Government counter-extremism plans risk doing serious damage, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said at a lecture last week. Cardinal Nichols was responding to a question from the former business secretary Sir Vince Cable, who asked whether the cardinal thought the Government’s Prevent strategy went too far in addressing “non-violent extremism”. Cardinal Nichols said: “There is no doubt that the threat of active terror is real ... But my impression is that we are at a very delicate point at which the defining of extremism could go quite seriously wrong.” The cardinal was speaking at the Benedict XVI Lecture at Archbishop’s House in London. He was joined by the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, and the Islamic scholar Maulana Sayed Ali Raza Rizvi for a discussion entitled “Living as a Creative Minority in the UK”. Cardinal Nichols said the definition of extremism could become anything that is outside “the current social consensus”. The cardinal added that the Prevent strategy may alienate those who come under suspicion. He gave the example of teachers contacting police about pupils suspected of extremism. This “can do immense damage” to levels of trust, he said. In January Cardinal Nichols told Catholic teachers: “One month is all it takes to transform a dissatisfied and disorientated teenager into a terrorist.” Government ministers have spoken repeatedly about “British values”. The Home Secretary Theresa May listed these as “regard for the rule of law, participation in and acceptance of democracy, equality, free speech and respect for minorities” and said a rejection of them amounted to “extremism”. In his presentation, Cardinal Nichols suggested that “British values” should be placed on a deeper foundation of values such as the inherent dignity of the human person, building a better society and “openness to the spiritual and the transcendental”. The Prevent strategy has been criticised for the way it requires authorities, including teachers, to report suspected extremism. In one case a 14-year-old boy was reported after using the phrase “eco-terrorism”. He was taken out of class and asked if he was affiliated with ISIS. The Conservative MP Mark Spencer said that one part of the strategy, Extremism Disruption Orders, could be used against teachers who opposed gay marriage. Speaking at the lecture, Cardinal Nichols also warned listeners about an intolerant secularism which seeks “to clean the streets of religion”. He said: “A society which privatises religion and says it ‘doesn’t do God’ is weakening itself.” A country that marginalises faith, the cardinal added, will lose some of its most generous and creative resources. Earlier in the evening, the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said that minorities should support sports teams from their adopted country – citing the “Norman Tebbit test”. After discussing the need for minorities to “integrate but not assimilate”, Rabbi Mirvis said: “Minorities are responsible to maintain their own traditions, to be proud of their background, loyal to their faiths, and at the same time to be proud members of their countries. In a nutshell, minorities need to pass the Norman Tebbit test.”