Gordon Brown today called for a global register of terror suspects to help to prevent future attacks.
Mr Brown said that he wanted improved information-sharing between the security services of different countries to help to identity potential terrorists.
“We do now need more information flowing internationally about who are potential terrorists and who are potential suspects,” he told Sky News.
“I want the system that we are trying to expand between Europe, a system whereby we know who are potential terrorist suspects, we expand that to other countries in the world and then we may have a better idea of people coming in to different countries, whether as professional recruits or in other ways, about what the dangers and the risks we face are.
“I think it is very important that we tighten this up and it is something we are looking at as a matter of urgency.”
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Earlier, Britain’s new security minister warned that it could take 15 years to reverse the way young British Muslims have been radicalised.
Admiral Sir Alan West said that preventing people being recruited to extremism was central to beating terrorism, and called for some un-British “snitching” from the public to help the cause.
“This is not a quick thing. I believe it will take 10 to 15 years,” Admiral West said in a newspaper interview published today. “But I believe it can be done as long as we as a nation apply ourselves to it and it’s done across the board.”
He went on: “Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone. I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.
“We’ll have to be a little bit un-British, I think ... and say something and tell something.”
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Admiral West is due to report to the PM shortly on NHS overseas recruitment in the wake of the London and Glasgow attempts.
The security minister, a former head of the Royal Navy and one of Mr Brown’s ministerial appointments from outside party politics, also used the interview to condemn the use of the phrase “war on terror”.
“I hate that expression,” he said. “It’s not like a war in that sense at all. It demeans the value of a war and it demeans the value of a lot of things.”
Admiral West also said he did not like the concentration on the “Muslim community”. “I don’t like the fact that we talk about ’the Muslim community’ and this sort of thing,” he said. “I have a lot of Muslim friends and they see themselves as British. We’ve got to be very careful. The threat is to our British way of life and all of our British people.”
Jacqui Smith, the new Home Secretary, has carefully calibrated her language to avoid using phrases such as the “war on terror” or “Muslim extremists”. She has referred instead to “criminals”.
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Sir Alan told the Sunday Telegraph that he would seek consensus across political parties where possible, but he accepted that differences would cause problems.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, has warned today he is not ready to back any extension of the 28-day period suspects can be held without charge.
“We now have the longest period of detention without charge almost anywhere in the western world,” he told GMTV’s Sunday programme.
“The period during which the police have those powers has gone from four to seven to 14 to 28 days in a very short space of time.
“You cannot reasonably ask opposition parties in my view to breach yet further one of the cherished principles of due process, if you like, just because hypothetically it might be necessary in the future.”
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New rules to allow the police to carry on questioning suspects even after they have been charged should be tried first, he said.
Yesterday an Iraqi doctor became the first person to appear in court charged in connection with the suspected car bomb plots in London and Glasgow.
Bilal Abdullah was remanded in custody when he appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court in central London. The 27-year-old, who was arrested after a flaming Jeep was driven into Glasgow Airport a week ago, is accused of conspiring to cause explosions.