Mercer claims terror threat level ‘lowered’
The Conservative homeland security spokesman Patrick Mercer has said that the official terrorist threat level in the UK has been reduced.
Mr Mercer told the Today programme that the threat level had been reduced from “severe general” to “substantial”.
The BBC says they have confirmed this through sources in the intelligence community.
The Government refuses to comment on specific threat levels.
Speaking this morning, Mr Mercer called on the Government to inform the public about the change – and the reasoning behind it.
According to Mr Mercer, the “severe general” was imposed after intelligence received in November 2003 suggested there was likely to be an attack across the United Kingdom – “that a real plot was being hatched”.
But following several successful arrests by the security services it has been decided to reduce the level to “substantial”, which means “there is still a threat but precisely where it’s coming from or against whom it is targeted is not known”.
Mr Mercer said: “If we have this graduated series of threats – and the other way of looking at this is from threat one to threat six, we’re now going from threat two to threat three – then why aren’t we told this?” he asked.
“Why haven’t we got a single minister for Homeland Security that can say, look people, actually things are a lot better, so without taking your eye off the ball you can perhaps ease things off a little bit. Otherwise we stay as we have been since November 2003 at a higher security state than even the United States.”
And he did not believe releasing this kind of information could be of help to terrorists.
“I think that if we’re going to try and enlist the public, if we’re going to try and make them understand what the threat is, if we’re going to try to say to the average man on the street, keep an eye open please, help the security services and the police, then we need to know what’s going on,” he said.
