The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Monday 6 March.
“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a Statement about the inquiry into the horrendous attack on Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017.
I work closely with MI5. While its activity is necessarily discreet, the whole country should be profoundly grateful for the patriotism and courage of its staff. They work indefatigably every day to keep the British people safe. Since the start of 2017, MI5 and the police have disrupted 37 late-stage attack plots.
An Islamist suicide bomber murdered 22 people and injured more than 1,000, as well as inflicting incalculable psychological damage and misery. I know that the whole House will join me in expressing our profound sorrow and extending our heartfelt condolences to everyone affected by this barbaric act. They were supposed to have a brilliant time and come home safely. What should have been a simple pleasure turned into a hellish nightmare. It is vital that we understand what happened and what lessons we need to learn, because we must do everything possible to prevent a repeat of this outrage.
Volume 3 of the inquiry was published last Thursday. I would like to thank Sir John Saunders and his team, who have spent more than three years on it. Sir John finds that there was a failure by the Security Service to act swiftly enough, and that there were
‘problems with the sharing of information between the Security Service and Counter Terrorism Policing’.
Following the publication of the report, the director-general of MI5 and the head of counterterrorism policing offered their profound apologies for not preventing the attack. Sir John does not blame any of the educational establishments that the bomber attended for failing to identify that he was a risk, but he does find:
‘More needs to be done to ensure that education providers share relevant information about students’.
Sir John concludes that the bomber
‘should have been subject to a Prevent referral at some point in 2015 or 2016. However, it is very hard to say what would have happened if’
the bomber
‘had been approached under Prevent or the Channel programme.’
The police investigation into the attack, Operation Manteline, is praised.
Although Sir John cannot conclude whether the attack would have been prevented, he finds that there was a significant missed opportunity to take further investigative action that he judges might have led to information that could have prevented it. While this is welcome, and the Home Office will work at pace with both organisations to act on the chairman’s recommendations, we must not lose sight of the fact that responsibility for the attack lies with the bomber and his brother. These conclusions require careful consideration.
Since 2017, the Government have made a number of changes to how we deal with and seek to prevent terrorist attacks. We have given law enforcement and intelligence agencies improved powers. We have strengthened the controls around access to explosives precursors. We have strengthened the management of terrorist and terrorist-risk offenders in prison and on licence. We have ended the automatic early release of terrorist offenders in England, Wales and Scotland, and we have ensured that the sentences served by terrorists reflect the severity of their offending. We have strengthened the tools for monitoring dangerous people in the community.
We have invested heavily in counterterrorism. We unveiled a new counterterrorism operations centre in 2021 that brings together partners from counterterrorism policing, the intelligence agencies, the criminal justice system and other government agencies. This will allow minute-by-minute collaboration between teams in the police and MI5. Last year’s integration of Special Branch into the national CT policing network will improve our response to the full range of national security threats, boost skills and ensure better communication between agencies and a more consistent and effective national response.
Work is under way to develop a new faith security training scheme to raise security awareness among faith communities and help them to mitigate threats. We continue to engage with faith organisations and security experts to develop the scheme. In April, my right honourable friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) announced the continuation of the Jewish community protective security grant for 2022. In May, new funding was allocated to provide protective security at mosques and Muslim faith schools.