Responding to the threat

Key points

  • Government is pursuing a long-term strategy for countering terrorism
  • Security Service resources have been greatly increased
  • Public and businesses have vital role to play

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The threat of international terrorism presents a complex problem for all of the UK's government agencies and citizens.

Since early 2003, the UK has had a long-term strategy called "CONTEST" for countering international terrorism. This is based around four strands:

  • Preventing terrorism by tacking the radicalisation of individuals;
  • Pursuing terrorists and those that sponsor them;
  • Protecting the public, key national services and UK interests overseas;
  • Preparing for the consequences.

See "Countering International Terrorism" for further information on the Government's strategy.

The Security Service has undergone major changes in response to the growing threat of international terrorism. The Government has allocated a large increase in the resources allocated to all three of the UK's intelligence agencies. We have nearly doubled the number of our staff since 2001, allowing us to do much more work, and we have shifted extra resources into investigating international terrorism. Nearly 90% of the Service's resources are now used to support our anti-terrorist work (see "Our major areas of work" for details).

We have also greatly improved our ability to cover all parts of the UK by setting up a network of regional stations around the country. In addition, the UK security and law enforcement agencies, including all of the various regional police forces, maintain a close working relationship. This has enabled us to prevent a number of major terrorist plots and disrupt other terrorist activity.

However, as our former Director General Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller has noted, "we can never stop all such attacks and no security intelligence organisation in the world could do so." The public and businesses have a vital role to play: