The following are the excerpts of the proceedings in the House of Commons wherein members debated on Contest, the United Kingdom’s counter-terrorism strategy
Contest has a clear mission: to reduce the risk from terrorism to the United Kingdom, our citizens and our interests overseas, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence
Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will make a statement on Contest, the United Kingdom’s Strategy for Countering Terrorism 2023.
Suella Braverman
(The Secretary of State for the Home Department) …the Government published an update to our counter-terrorism strategy, Contest. A written ministerial statement was laid alongside the Command Paper in Parliament.
Contest has a clear mission: to reduce the risk from terrorism to the United Kingdom, our citizens and our interests overseas, so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence. The terrorism threat level, set independently by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, has not changed, but the threat from terrorism is enduring and evolving.
…the threat we see today and in the coming years is more diverse, dynamic and complex: a domestic terrorist threat that is less predictable, harder to detect and harder to investigate….
It is within that context that we judge that the risk from terrorism is once again rising. By far the biggest terrorist threat comes from Islamist terrorism. It accounts for 67% of attacks since 2018… Our counterterrorism response will be even more agile in the face of an evolving threat….
…we will place greater focus on using all the levers of the state to identify and intervene against terrorists. …There is no greater duty for this Government than to keep the British people safe, and I will not rest in delivering that mission.
Holly Lynch
The Contest update has very much been a sobering reminder of the threats we face. Our agencies, to which we are so grateful, have prevented 39 late-stage terror attacks in the past six years…. However, we are concerned by certain omissions from the update…. On artificial intelligence, the update recognises the challenge, saying that “terrorists are likely to exploit the technology”.
We have called for new offences criminalising the training of chatbots to radicalise individuals, but concrete measures are woefully lacking in the update, so how are the Government going to tackle that? ….
… Can the Home Secretary tell the House how many terrorist prisoners are due to be released in the next 12 months, and whether every one of them has been engaged in intensive de-radicalisation programmes and assessed for terrorism prevention and investigation measures?
Finally, perhaps the most glaring omission is on state threats, despite the fact that the director general of MI5 made it clear in his annual threat update in November that Iran is “the state actor which most frequently crosses into terrorism”…. so why do the Government continue to reject those proposals and why have they not finally proscribed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps?
Suella Braverman
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. I know that she recognises the gravity and the sensitivity of this subject, and she will share my view that we must face the threat of terrorism united as one unified country.
Since March 2017, our agencies and law enforcement have disrupted 39 late-stage terrorist plots in the UK, as the hon. Lady said. These have included the targeting of public figures such as Members of Parliament, specific communities and events such as Pride, and public locations such as iconic sites in London…. I am very proud of this Government’s track record when it comes to keeping the country safe….
The hon. Lady referred to the use of artificial intelligence and technology. Foundation-model AIs undoubtedly hold vast potential, and they are crucial to the UK’s mission to become a science and tech superpower, but there are still many unknowns with this class of technology …. I am particularly concerned about the rapid development and public deployment of generative largelanguage models like ChatGPT, and we are alert to the exponential pace of their development…
We look forward to promoting and enabling an open and constructive dialogue and deepened collaboration with tech company leaders…. as we seek to ensure that the gifts of this technology are delivered and that society is protected …
To conclude, I am very clear that we need to face the threats united as one country. I hope that the Opposition understand the heavy weight of that responsibility and that we will work together constructively to keep the British people safe.
