Service stalemate

The UK's current police structures for tackling terrorism have evolved from an outdated arrangement and are not appropriate to deal with the escalating threat from international terrorism. The excellent results being recorded in recent terrorism trials have been achieved in spite of the structural and operational confines.

It is inconceivable that if we were able to construct, on a blank piece of paper, an appropriate structure to deal with the threat of Al Qaeda, the current arrangement of collaboration between 43 forces would be the answer. Actually, our inability to break away from our current structure is probably playing more into the hands of terrorist groups than helping law enforcement thwart an attack.

Modern day terrorism has no boundaries and yet policing does. Almost every plot uncovered since 2003 has pushed the police service to operate across geographical policing boundaries and administrative borders.

We can talk of having close co-operation across forces or a national co-ordination mechanism but neither really plugs the operational gap of achieving a large and deep footprint that can stretch the globe.