Britain has increased security checks at the French border in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris to ensure the suspects do not enter the country, Downing Street has said.
The heightened security measures, which include extra searches and scanning of vehicles, were revealed after Theresa May, the home secretary, chaired a Cobra meeting to discuss the terrorist threat level in the UK. This will remain at severe – meaning an attack is highly likely – rather than being raised to critical, which means an attack is expected imminently.
Ahead of a speech in London on Thursday night, Andrew Parker, director general of MI5, said the British security service would be offering its French counterparts its full support.
He said: “It is too early for us to come to judgments about the precise details or origin of the attack but it is a terrible reminder of the intentions of those who wish us harm. As you would expect, we are offering our French colleagues our full support as they respond.”
David Cameron did not attend the meeting as he was in Manchester with the chancellor, George Osborne. A No 10 spokeswoman said the extra checks at ports and train terminals would take the form of increased car and lorry searches, scanning of freight and the visible presence of border staff.
The UK is also sending an extra counter-intelligence police officer to Paris to work with the French authorities. “We think this is appropriate although there is no change to the threat level,” she said. “When there is an attack in a neighbouring country that has border crossings into ours, you would expect our authorities to be doing all they can to keep it safe.”
Downing Street said there was nothing to suggest either of the two suspects had any link to the UK at the moment, and the extra security was a precautionary measure.
Cameron has told France that Britain stands united with French citizens after Islamist terrorists shot dead 10 staff of the magazine Charlie Hebdo as well as two police officers. Media organisations and publishing houses in the UK worried about their security should contact police, Downing Street said.
Nick Clegg has defended the holding of the Cobra meeting a full day after the Paris attacks, reassuring the public that “security measures don’t only take place because a Cobra meeting takes place”.
Speaking on his phone-in show on LBC radio, the deputy prime minister said: “A meeting of Cobra is just a forum in which we can absolutely double check that any immediate after-effects … of the attack in Paris are being properly anticipated.
“I want to reassure all listeners that it’s not as if nothing happens until a meeting happens in Whitehall. A lot happens all the time and has done for months and years, and we constantly make sure that we tighten the arrangements where we can to make ourselves safer.”
Clegg pointed to the counter-terror and security bill, currently going through parliament, which includes plans to stop some British citizens who have travelled to the Middle East from returning to the UK. “We’re passing legislation as we speak to tighten further our protection against those who might go to Syria and come back, become drenched in blood and made even more dangerous through the ideological indoctrination that they experience there.
“We’re making sure that those people who do pose a danger when they come back, that we can properly cater for them.”
In response to a caller who suggested that issues such as torture by US intelligence services were not addressed after such terrorist attacks, Clegg said that – although he thought torture was “totally unacceptable in a law abiding society” – the two things cannot be linked.
“There can be no excuse, no reason, no explanation. They have killed cartoonists who have done nothing more than draw drawings that they happen to find offensive and … in a free society people have to be free to offend each other.”
