We must continue to prepare for the worst

Home Office minister (UK) Tony McNulty explains how, with a future terrorist attack highly likely, the government is working to ensure public servants are totally prepared

It is now over a year since the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism was established. In that time much has been achieved. We have increased funding for counter terrorism to over £2bn per annum – double pre 9/11 levels – rising to £3.5bn by 2011, and have taken the unprecedented step of agreeing a public service agreement target for counter terrorism which sets measurable success criteria.

We have brought forward important new legislation and have carried out a series of major reviews of the further measures necessary to reduce our vulnerability from terrorism. And as part of the ACPO led development of capability, three counter terrorism units (CTUs) have been established within the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire police forces (with a fourth to follow in the South East), alongside five further Counter Terrorism Intelligence Units. Through the hard work of the police, the Intelligence Agencies and the CPS, 74 terrorists have been convicted in our courts since the start of 2007. Nearly half of those individuals (33) pleaded guilty.

We have also worked to build our own organisation. A year ago OSCT was about 160 people, mostly those already working in the Home Office. Today there are 300, drawn from a wide variety of different organisations. OSCT is playing an increasingly important role in coordinating the national counter terrorism effort.

A crucial part of that role is to support the Home Secretary and other ministers in developing, directing and implementing the counter-terrorist strategy (CONTEST) across government. CONTEST is divided into four primary strands: pursue (stopping terrorist attacks), protect (strengthening our protection against attack), prepare (mitigating the impact of attacks) and prevent (stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism). There are also a number of cross-cutting areas such as the internet; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN); and science, innovation and industry.

The broad range of actions in our counter terrorism strategy demonstrates that we are not just focused on catching terrorists. We are also focusing on the difficult task of local delivery and partnership working to prevent people becoming violent extremists. We set out how we would do this in the new prevent delivery plan which we launched with the Department of Communities and Local Government on 3 June. A highlight of this plan was the creation of 300 new prevent police posts in 24 forces.

Nevertheless, despite current work to stop people becoming terrorists and violent extremists, the threat to the UK, as assessed by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), remains severe. This means that an attack is highly likely and possible without warning. This threat is serious and sustained.

As a result we must continue to prepare thoroughly to mitigate the impact of terrorist attacks and protect against attack to reduce our vulnerability.

Counter-terrorism exercises are a vital part of our resilience and contingency planning, to prepare for when the worst happens. The government and the emergency services regularly train and practise responses to a range of incidents from major accidents and natural disasters to terrorist attacks. As part of the UK’s response to the terrorist threat, OSCT leads and manages a counter terrorism exercise programme in co-operation with the Association of Chief Police Officers.

By their very nature, the details of most counter terrorism exercises must remain out of the public view; often detailed information is only available to emergency service personnel with a need to know. However, the objectives of the exercise programme are clear – to test the UK’s ability to respond to terrorist incidents and their aftermath, including chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, and to identify ways in which our ability to respond can be improved. At a national level, it is centred on three annual, large scale live exercises covering a range of scenarios, designed to be as realistic as possible. With our partners, we are also working hard to ensure that this programme contributes to the security of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.

Exercises at the national level have always been multi agency endeavours, reflecting the reality of counter terrorism. OSCT works with government departments, the emergency services, the military, local authorities, health providers and scientists to ensure that we are prepared to respond to any kind of attack. The participants are given no warning of what the scenario will be before it begins and are expected to put training plans and procedures into practice to respond to the incident or the threat which emerges. Exercises at this level can take months of planning to ensure the situation is as realistic and challenging as possible.

Our partner organisations in the UK also carry out counter terrorism exercises. For example, the Health Protection Agency tests emergency preparedness in the health service community to terrorist attacks. And there are many other different types of exercise – recently, participants in the UK, US and Canada had to react to coordinated ‘terrorist attacks’, testing incident management procedures as well as the flow of operational, time-critical intelligence between countries.

The exercises programme is just part of the wide range of counter terrorism work that OSCT leads on or is involved with – the refresh of CONTEST later this year will be a further milestone in the development of the UK’s CT response. OSCT will continue to grow and evolve, ensuring that the government continues to work effectively and proactively to protect the public from international terrorism.