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1 March 2009 Pursue Prevent Protect PrepareThe United Kingdom s Strategy for Countering International TerrorismThe United Kingdom s Strategy for Countering International terrorism March 2009 Presented to Parliamentby the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for the Home Departmentby Command of Her MajestyThis is a corrective reprint incorporating the changes of the correction slip provided on 8 May 2009 Cm 7547 Crown copyright 2009 The text in this document (excluding the Royal Arms and other departmental or agency logos) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium providing it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context.

2 The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright and the title of the document specified. Where we have identified any third party copyright material you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders any other use of this material please write to Office of Public Sector Information, Information Policy Team, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 4DU or email: 9780101754729 The United Kingdom s Strategy for Countering International TerrorismPage 4 ContentsThe United Kingdom s Strategy for Countering International TerrorismForeword: Prime Minister Foreword: Home Secretary Introduction Executive summary Part 1 Strategic context 1 International terrorism and the UK.

3 Background 2 The impact on the UK 3 The current threat to the UK 4 How the terrorist threat has changed 5 Strategic factors 6 The future Part 2 The CONTEST Strategy 7 The UK strategy for countering international terrorism 8 Pursue : stopping terrorist attacks 9 Prevent : stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism 10 Protect : strengthening our protection against attack 11 Prepare : mitigating the impact of attacks 12 Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons and explosivesPart 3 Delivering CONTEST 13 Managing delivery 14 Delivery partnerships Part 4 Communications 15 Counter- terrorism communications ConclusionAnnex A: PSA outcomes Annex B: Departmental roles and responsibilities Annex C: Acronyms and abbreviations End notes ContentsPage 5 The first priority of any Government is to ensure the security and safety of the nation and all members of the public.

4 While recent events have shown, tragically, that the threat of terrorism in Northern Ireland is still with us, the most significant security threat to the people of the United Kingdom today comes from international new form of terrorism is different in scale and nature from the terrorist threats we have had to deal with in recent decades. It is intent on inflicting mass casualties without warning, motivated by a violent extremist ideology, and exploits modern travel and communications to spread through a loose and dangerous global network. This is the threat on which this updated strategy, CONTEST, is focused.

5 In the six years since we first developed CONTEST, the many thousands of hard working men and women in the police, the intelligence and security agencies, our armed forces, the emergency services, local authorities, businesses, community groups and others have achieved a great deal in their work to counter this ongoing threat. I pay tribute to the threat remains, and is always evolving. We can never afford to assume that the established way of doing things is enough. We are continuing to increase investment to ensure the police, agencies and others are fully prepared, and we will make whatever changes are necessary to Protect our security as well as ensuring we have learned the lessons of recent experience to make sure we have the strongest possible believe that if people are better informed about the threat they will be more vigilant but also more assured.

6 And I am therefore pleased that this published strategy gives a more detailed and wide-ranging account of our response than ever sets out our comprehensive approach for tackling international terrorism from the international, through the national, to the local. It outlines how we are tackling the immediate threat through the relentless pursuit of terrorists and the disruption of terrorist plots; how we are building up our defences against attacks and our resilience to deal with them; and how we are addressing the longer term causes particularly by understanding what leads people to become radicalised, so we can stop them becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism or violent extremism in the first believe this updated strategy leaves us better prepared to meet the terrorist threat.

7 And to achieve our objective of ensuring that the people of the United Kingdom can go about their normal lives in confidence and free from Brown MPForewordThe Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP Prime MinisterThe United Kingdom s Strategy for Countering International TerrorismPage 6I am very pleased to publish this new version of the UK s strategy for tackling international terrorism , known as of the primary duties of Government is to keep our citizens safe and secure, and to Protect the freedoms we all enjoy. Tackling the threat we face from international terrorism remains an important strategy aims to reduce the risk to the United Kingdom and our interests overseas, so that people can go about their lives freely and with have had considerable success in countering the terrorist threat since CONTEST was first adopted six years ago, including disrupting a number of planned terrorist operations against the UK and bringing those responsible to the threat is always changing.

8 New groups emerge and terrorists continue to develop new methods and make use of new technologies. Learning from our experience over the past few years, we have updated all aspects of our strategy to take account of this changing across government departments, CONTEST is one of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging approaches to tackling terrorism anywhere in the world. We set out here for the first time a detailed account of the history of the threat, how in recent years a new form of international terrorism has emerged, and the impact this has had on the UK. We also describe the strategic factors that sustain terrorism , the principles that underlie our response to the threat, our key achievements to date, and the challenges that we will face in the publishing this strategy, our aim is to provide the people of the UK and our partners overseas with as full and as open an account as possible of why and how we are tackling this threat.

9 And in setting out clearly the steps we are taking to Protect the public and to Prevent the rise of violent extremism, I pay tribute to the dedication of the thousands of people police and intelligence officers, the emergency services, local authorities, businesses, and voluntary and community groups who are working together to make Britain Smith MPForewordThe Rt Hon Jacqui Smith MP Home SecretaryForewordPage 7 IntroductionSince 2003, we have had a comprehensive strategy in place to counter the threat to this country and to our interests overseas from international terrorism .

10 The strategy is known as aim of the strategy is to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from international terrorism , so that people can go about their lives freely and with confidence . We believe that to date the strategy has achieved its intended aim. We have now revised this strategy to take account of the evolution of the threat and of our understanding of the factors which are driving it. The strategy also reflects the lessons we have learned since 2003 and the increasing resources we have made available for counter- terrorism . These revisions will help us ensure that the strategy meets its aim in is the first time we have published this strategy in such detail: we want to be as open as possible in describing the threat we face and the responses that we believe are appropriate to address it.