Home Secretary says ‘gap in law' on violent attackers will be closed
Yvette Cooper said the new tools will enable the criminal justice system to 'close the gap' between terror suspects, who can be jailed for life for planning attacks, and individuals not driven by a particular ideology.
Police would be given powers to apprehend them before they carry out attacks.
Ms Cooper told BBC Radio 4's State of Terror series: 'There is a gap in the law around the planning of mass attacks that can be just as serious (as terrorism) in their implications for communities, their impact, the devastation that they can cause and the seriousness of the crime.
'We will tighten legislation so that that is taken as seriously as terrorism.'
She said legislation would be similar to that which allows police to arrest terror suspects for steps taken to prepare for an attack, such as research, which is not currently available without links to an ideological cause.
'We've seen cases of growing numbers of teenagers potentially radicalising themselves online and seeing all kinds of extremist material online in their bedrooms,' she said.
'We have to make sure that the systems can respond while not taking our eye off the ball of the more long-standing ideological threats.'
Southport attacker Axel Rudakubana, who killed three girls at a dance class, is among the individuals who could have been covered by the legislation.
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The Guardian
a day ago
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Starmer is due to meet the US president on Monday. Trump on Friday dismissed Macron's move by saying it 'doesn't carry weight' and is 'not going to change anything'. The UK government's policy is that it will formally acknowledge Palestine as part of a peace process, but only in conjunction with other western countries and 'at the point of maximum impact'. Cooper and Rayner are among more than half a dozen cabinet ministers who are pressing for urgent action. The Guardian revealed this week that Wes Streeting, the health secretary, Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, and Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, have all pushed for recognition of Palestine at recent cabinet meetings. Ian Murray, the Scotland secretary, and Jo Stevens, the Wales secretary, have also brought up the issue in cabinet, according to a cabinet source. Murray and Stevens declined to comment. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, is also said to have called for action, and Lammy is said by colleagues to be pushing Downing Street to take a stronger stance. A government source said it was increasingly 'everybody versus No 10'. 'Too many people in No 10 just see this as a 'left' issue and actually don't get how widespread public anger is,' a Labour source said. Rayner issued a warning last month by saying that the West needed to avoid repeating past mistakes when it came to Gaza. Addressing a service at St Paul's Cathedral to mark the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed by Serbian forces in 1995, she said: 'The West took too long to act in the 1990s and we should have acted sooner. Now we must learn the lessons of history and the consequences of inaction.' 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The medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières said that cases of severe malnutrition among children under five at its Gaza City clinic have tripled in the last two weeks and the UN World Food Programme said nearly a third of people in Gaza were not eating for days, with the hunger crisis had reached 'new and astonishing levels of desperation'. Israel said it would allow foreign countries to resume aid drops into Gaza from Friday. The UN secretary general, António Guterres, accused the international community of sticking its head in the sand as Palestinians starved in Gaza, lambasting what he called a 'lack of humanity'. 'This is not just a humanitarian crisis. It is a moral crisis that challenges the global conscience. We will continue to speak out at every opportunity,' he said on Friday.
