Hostile states are continuing to pose a threat to Britain in the wake of the Novichok attack, Sajid Javid warned today as new counter-terrorism powers became law.
The Home Secretary said the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act would help to protect the public through a measure giving police the power to stop, question and detain anyone suspected of being a foreign agent.
The aim is to make it easier to identify those who are acting for a rogue state, such as Russia, and to refuse them entry into the country before they are able to carry out espionage or even a state-sponsored assassination.
The legislation also increases sentences for some terrorist offences, including propaganda crimes which encourage others to carry out attacks, and update the law to cover those who stream, rather than download, terrorist material.
Another provision will make it a criminal offence to travel to any “designated area” — such as the war zone in Syria — unless the person concerned is engaging in an exempt activity such as humanitarian work or journalism. That reform has been prompted by concern that existing legislation has hindered the police’s ability to bring cases against Britons who have gone to Syria to fight for the Islamic State because of the inevitable difficulty in obtaining evidence about specific offences committed whilst there.
The threat posed by hostile states in the wake of last year’s Novichok attack, in which two Russians flew into Britain to poison former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury using the rare nerve agent, is a key element of today’s legislation however.
The Government has blamed the Kremlin for the attack because of the nerve agent’s origin in Russia and the security-service background of the two would-be assassins, and warned that the attack forms part of a pattern of concerted Russian aggression.
