£54m funding hole makes fight against terrorism 'harder'

The fight against terrorism will be made harder by a potential £54 million gap in funding, Britain's most senior police officer has said.

A document put together by the National Police Chiefs' Council showed that counter-terrorism police bosses applied for a rise of £104 million in 2018/19, but will receive an increase of £50 million.

Speaking to Nick Ferrari on LBC, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said that counter-terrorism teams have "an enormous amount of work to do". Police and security services have stopped 10 deadly plots since March 2017, and dealt with 4 terrorist incidents in London and one in Manchester.

She would not comment specifically on the leaked figures, which were reported in the Sunday Times, but said: "We all know the threat has gone up, we all know that the teams are working incredibly hard and that there is an enormous amount of work to do."

Asked about the impact on the fight against terrorism of getting less than half the requested increase she said: "If we got very, very, very much less than we asked for it makes it harder, of course it makes it harder. But the Government have their job to do and I respect that, and my colleagues respect it as well.

"There may well be room for us in the coming months to put in a further bid and that is absolutely what we will be doing if there is that room to do so.

"Meanwhile we have got some extra resources and we are building up the capability of the [counter] terrorist teams."

The Sunday Times quoted a senior Home Office source as saying: "Operational requests, like those for surveillance operations, were all met. Other requests like new IT systems will be looked at."