Expanding terror definition could ‘overwhelm’ police and MI5, says watchdog
Jonathan Hall has been tasked with reviewing the scope of terror laws in the wake of the Southport attack.
Widening the definition of terrorism could overwhelm the police and MI5, the lawyer carrying out a review of the definition has warned.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, suggested the security services lacked the resources to deal with an expanded definition of terrorism that could end up including football hooligans and regular criminal gangs.
His comments, made in an interview with The Times, follow a speech by Sir Keir Starmer in which the Prime Minister tasked Mr Hall with investigating whether terror laws should be widened to include people such as Southport killer Axel Rudakubana.
The teenager, who is due to be sentenced on Thursday for offences including the murder of three young girls, is said to have been fascinated by violence “for its own sake” rather than possessing the clear ideology that current laws require for an act to be considered terrorism.
That lack of an ideology meant he did not fit the criteria for the counter-extremism Prevent programme, despite being referred to it three times amid concerns over his fixation with violence.
Sir Keir said the Southport case demonstrated there was now a different kind of terrorism and suggested expanding the definition to address “extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms”.
Speaking to The Times, Mr Hall insisted he would “keep an open mind”, but suggested such a move would be “expanding the definition too much”.
He said: “The PM talked about whether we should have a new sort of terrorism where violence is used to terrorise.
“But it’s quite hard to create a barrier, if that is the new criterion, between real terrorism and stuff that is not.
“For example, football hooliganism will terrorise people, criminal gangs will terrorise, arguably domestic violence terrorises, and, if I were a moth in Lucy Letby’s ward, I would be terrorised.”
Arguing that the point of a new definition would be to “unleash pre-crime offences that allow police to intervene early”, he added this would only be possible with adequate resources.
He said: “Police and MI5 are focusing on the existing terror threat and the huge increase in state threat activity which now takes a significant amount of their time.
“They would be overwhelmed.”
His comments follow similar remarks by Neil Basu, the former national head of counter-terrorism, who said on Wednesday it would be a “mistake” to label something as “terrorism if it is not terrorism”.
Suggesting it would lead some to seek out a “day of infamy”, Mr Basu said he would be “wary of expanding terrorism law to cover lone actors…that isn’t what terrorism is about”.
