British intelligence services get £100m anti-terror fund

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It has emerged that the UK Chancellor George Osborne had pledged additional funding to Britain’s secret services in order to protect the state from a heightened threat of terrorism. Osborne said that Britain’s intelligence services were given the money “in the last few weeks”

MI5 and MI6 will get whatever resources they need, stressing that security was the national priority, Osborne assured.

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RT reports: Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Osborne said the extra funding would be used to monitor “self-starter” terrorists traveling to Syria and Iraq.

“In the last few weeks we have put extra money, over a hundred million pounds, into specifically monitoring people who are going to conflicts in Syria and Iraq, these sort of self-starting terrorists who get their ideas off the internet and then go and want to perpetrate horrendous crimes, so we are putting a huge effort in,” he said.

The chancellor promised the security services will get “whatever” they need.

“We will put the resources in, whatever the security services need, they will get because they do a heroic job on our behalf,” he said.

“Watching what has happened over the last few days, it is just a reminder that we need to give all the resources and all the legislation needed to protect us and to protect our freedoms.”

Osborne’s mention of legislation could be a reference to the Communications Data Bill, widely known as the Snooper’s Charter.

The controversial legislation was previously blocked by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party on the grounds it would infringe the right to privacy.

The chancellors revelation came just after Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, called for new powers to fight terror threats in the UK in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

Parker said the terror attack at Charlie Hebdo was a “terrible reminder” of Islamist extremists’ agenda of harming the West and that an attack on the UK was “highly likely”