Member

For 20 years, the greatest focus of our national security work was on terrorism—primarily from Islamist terrorism, with additional threats from Northern Ireland-related terrorism and other areas—and those threats have not gone away. Fifteen terrorist attacks have taken place since 2017, and there have been 43 late-stage disruptions of terrorism plots, but alongside that we have seen a serious, growing and complex challenge from state threats. Last year, Sir Ken McCallum, the director-general of MI5, said that MI5 state threat investigations had increased by 48% in the previous 12 months. He added that, since January 2022, the police and MI5 had responded to 20 Iran-backed plots presenting potentially lethal threats.