May calls for terror inquiry
We must ask why we failed… says the person in charge
RATTLED Prime Minister Theresa May has admitted a major inquiry will be needed into the failings that allowed the London Bridge terrorists to slip through the net.
The PM, who was Home Secretary for six years, expects the police and security services to study why they did not stop killer Khuram Butt, who appeared on a TV show about jihadis.
Mrs May said: “MI5 and the police have already said after the Manchester attack that they will be looking and reviewing how they dealt with that.
“I would expect them to do exactly the same after London Bridge.”
The PM effectively admitted her anti-extremism policies since 2010 had failed. As Home Secretary between 2010 and 2016, she was in charge of drawing up and implementing Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy.
But she said after the London Bridge atrocity: “We need to deal with extremism in our country. We have been too tolerant of it in the past.”
Mrs May is facing mounting criticism over her decision to scrap terrorist control orders and axe more than 20,000 police, including more than 1,000 armed officers.
She has also dismissed as “crying wolf” warnings from senior police officers that the cuts would make Britain less safe.
The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan piled the pressure on Mrs May with a warning that Scotland Yard faces losing almost 13,000 officers under fresh Tory cuts.
He said: “Police officers act as the eyes and ears of the security services, providing the intelligence that allows us to disrupt attempted terrorist attacks. Cuts on this scale would make it harder to foil future attacks.”
Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, blasted the failure to clamp down on Butt and alleged associate Anjem Choudary.
The hate preacher radicalised scores of young men before he was jailed.
Mr Shafiq said: “We have been telling the authorities for years about Choudary and they did nothing. The same happened with Butt. “She has claimed [Muslims] are not doing enough but it is her that is not doing enough.” Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson admitted yesterday: “People are going to say, ‘How on earth could we have let this guy or possibly more through the net?’ I can’t answer that now.” His comments enraged Home Secretary Amber Rudd, who said on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: “It’s not really for me, or the Foreign Secretary, to say how that happened or what happened.” Mrs May, who was at a rally last night in Slough, Berks, said she would “make it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries”. She added: “If human rights laws get in the way of doing these things, we will change those laws to make sure we can do them.”