Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what his policy is on achieving parity of approach from law enforcement and the security services between domestic extremism and international counter-terrorism.

The UK’s updated strategy for countering terrorism, CONTEST, was launched on June 4^th this year. We have been clear that it is a strategy for countering all forms of terrorism. The strategy reflects the findings of a fundamental review of all aspects of counter-terrorism, and includes lessons from the attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, to ensure we have the best response to the heightened threat in coming years.

One of those reviews, the joint Counter-Terrorism Policing and MI5 Operational Improvement Review, which took place following the attacks last year, said that there should be equivalence of processes in analysing and dealing with all kinds of terrorism, irrespective of the ideology that inspires them. This included recommending an increased role for the intelligence services on, in particular, work to counter extreme right-wing terrorism. The recommendations in the review were summarised in Lord Anderson’s assurance report which was published in December 2017. Work has been ongoing since then to implement the review recommendations. Lord Anderson has agreed to provide the Home Secretary with a stocktake on the delivery of the recommendations early in 2019.

The Operational Improvement Review recommended that the terminology we use should be specific to the particular terrorist threat, for example, extreme right-wing terrorism or Daesh-inspired terrorism. This recommendation was applied in the writing of CONTEST.