Armed soldier and armed police officer patrol outside Westminster Palace A total of nine terrorist attacks have been prevented in the UK in the past year, MI5 has said.
MI5 has previously said that 13 terror attacks were prevented in the past four years.
The director general of the UK’s domestic security service, Andrew Parker, told the Cabinet of the number of prevented attacks this morning, according to Downing Street.
Aftermath Of The London Bridge Terror Attacks Mr Parker told Theresa May that the defeat of Islamic State in Syria did not mean that the terrorist threat was over.
He warned that social media was being used to incite terrorist attacks from afar.
The numbers have been released ahead of the publication of an investigation into the internal reviews by the security services and police into a wave of terror attacks in Britain this year.
Attacks at Westminster Bridge, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park have prompted internal reviews by police and MI5. September’s attack at Parsons Green was not covered by the report.
Child holds up a message for the victims of the London terrorist attacks The reviews were to establish what intelligence the security services and police held on the attackers ahead of time and identify whether improvements could be made in the way potential terrorists were managed.
David Anderson QC, formerly the independent reviewer of terror legislation, was appointed by the government to provide independent assurance of these internal reviews.
Mr Anderson submitted his classified report to the Home Secretary in October, and a version of his findings is to be published by the Government on Tuesday.
Counter-terror investigators in the UK are estimated to be running 500 live investigations involving 3,000 individuals at any one time.
There is considered to be a wider pool of 20,000 subjects of interest who are continually being kept under review.