Sir Keir Starmer’s official definition of Islamophobia risks “inhibiting” free speech about Muslims and their religion, the Government’s counter-terrorism tsar has suggested. Jonathan Hall said the Prime Minister’s proposed definition could stop people from freely criticising Islam or issues affecting its followers.

He made the comments before confirmation of the definition on Monday afternoon. Speaking to the BBC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation said: “The worry will be with loose language, people will feel inhibited about talking about things that they do think which are genuinely important today.” He also warned that it could fail to stop anti-Muslim attacks, and told how a similar definition for antisemitism had failed to prevent a rise in attacks on Jews.

Mr Hall was sceptical that a similar new definition for anti-Muslim hatred would be any different.

He said: “The IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition, which is the antisemitism definition – which has been adopted since 2016 – has not, in practice, reduced antisemitism or indeed terrorist attacks.

“And you could say, what is the upside of an anti-Muslim hate definition? It hasn’t worked for Jews. I do wonder whether it will work for Muslims. There is no doubt about it, Muslims are targets of terrorist attacks and attack planning.”

Communities Secretary Steve Reed, who is set to unveil the Government’s cohesion plan in the Commons on Monday, confirmed the Government is looking at appointing an anti-Muslim hate tsar, similar to the antisemitism tsar already in place.

But Mr Reed said the new definition is “very robust, defines the problem of anti-Muslim hostility and therefore helps us to tackle it, but doesn’t infringe those things people were concerned about, such as freedom of speech”.

He added: “There will be no blasphemy laws by the back door, absolutely not. And the task force under the chairmanship of Dominic Grieve, the former Conservative government minister, have been very focused on making sure that the definition doesn’t operate in that way.

“Freedom of speech and the right to criticise religion in general, or any religion in particular, is an absolute, and we would not put forward a definition that in any way restricted that.”

On Monday, Sir Keir insisted the UK is a diverse country where people can live alongside each other in tolerance – something he said Britons should be proud of.

But the PM said one of his biggest concerns “is that there are people in politics who want to set up grievances between different groups of people, to point fingers and divide and say that we can’t be one country, we can’t be one community”.