July 25, 2007: New Counter-Terrrorism Strategy

In a parliamentary statement today, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Britain is to have a unified border force to 'strengthen the powers and surveillance capability' of those working to stop terrorists from entering the country.

The force will integrate the work of the Border and Immigration Agency, Customs and UK Visas, and would operate both overseas and at the main points of entry to the UK.

The Prime Minister also announced a review of allowing intercept evidence to be used in court, and increasing the 28 days suspects can be held for questioning before being charged. The announcement came as part of a wide-ranging assessment to parliament of the UK's anti-terrorism efforts.

The Prime Minister credited the calmness and steadfastness of the nation during the recent failed terrorism attacks in London and Glasgow, which he said were the 15th attempted terrorism attack on British soil since 2001:

'Britain, led by London and Glasgow, stood firm in the face of threats, and our calmness and steadfastness sent a powerful message across the world that we will not yield to terrorism, nor ever be intimidated by it.'

At the moment, police and security services currently were dealing with 30 known plots, while monitoring more than 200 groups and in excess of 2,000 suspected terrorists. He said the country - and all countries - faced a 'generation-long challenge to defeat al-Qaeda-inspired violence.' Because of that, he said, the government created the new National Security Committee (NSC) to oversee the new Office for Security and counter-terrorism. The announcements he made today, he said, came out of the NSC's first two meetings.
Among those announcements were:

• a national security strategy will be published in the autumn
• there will be a single security budget starting at the next spending review
• the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee will be independent
• the government will consult on how the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee should be appointed, and how it should report to Parliament

The first line of defence against terrorism is overseas, the Prime Minister said, where people first embark on journeys to the UK. He called for accelerating plans to remove old and ineffective paper-based systems and replacing them with 'real-time monitoring', which would allow for immediate action and full coordination across immigration, police and intelligence:

'The way forward is electronic screening of all passengers as they check in and out of our country at ports and airports - so that terrorist suspects can be identified and stopped before they board planes, trains and boats to the United Kingdom.'

For that purpose, the Home Office will enhance the existing E-Borders programme to incorporate all passenger information to help track and intercept terrorists and criminals.

While new biometric visas are already in place for immigrants from high-risk countries, within nine months biometric visas will be extended to all applicants. And from 2009, the government will introduce a new, enhanced system of electronic exit control, checking passports against lists of known or suspected terrorists.

At the same time, the government will work to enhance existing cooperation agreements with other countries, to smooth the process of exchanging information about terrorists and criminals, and to join up criminal records databases with other countries in the EU.

As part of that process, the UK 'watch list' will be linked up with the Interpol database of lost and stolen documents.

The Prime Minister said the government wanted to consult widely on the sensitive issues of using intercept evidence in court, and on pre-charge detention and post-charge questioning.

In terrorism court cases in recent years, police and investigators have had to wade through masses of information in relatively limited amounts of time. In one case police had hundreds of mobile phones and computers to investigate, as well as thousands of gigabytes of data, more than 70 locations to search and thousands of documents on multiple continents.

In recent years, he said, six people had to be held for 27 - 28 days while the investigation was underway. Because of that:

'It is right to explore whether a consensus can be built on the most measured way to deal with this remaining risk.'