Schools, colleges and universities will be among the many public institutions that will be legally required to put in place terrorism prevention measures under a new Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill to be presented to the British Parliament on November 26.
‘Extremist speaker’ policies must be adhered to by educational institutions, and prisons will have to show they are dealing with extremist prisoners “in an appropriate way,” said Home Secretary Theresa May in a speech that outlined a diverse and rapidly changing terrorist threat to the U.K., and the response it needed to put in place.
Rigby murder reportMs. May’s speech comes at a time when Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has submitted a report on whether the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby, by two extremists in May last year, could not be prevented due to an intelligence failure.
The report found errors in security operations, including the fact that the killers appeared in seven intelligence reports prior to the murder, although it added that these were “not significant enough” to have made a difference.
The U.K. anti-terror strategy has been criticised as “counterproductive and failing on almost every level,” by Isabella Sankey, director of policy for the human rights organisation Liberty.
Though the report “catalogues staggering Security Service failures in dealing with the men responsible for this horrific crime” the ISC extricates itself from blame by “shamefully” spinning facts and “seeking to blame the communications companies for not doing the Agencies’ work for them.”
