Ukip backs internment

Ukip leader Paul Nuttall has said that he would be prepared to back the detention without trial of suspected terrorists.

Mr Nuttall said he “wouldn’t take anything off the table” when it came to dealing with the threat of violent extremism, including a return to internment.

“When you read this morning there’s a suspected 23,000 jihadis living among us, obviously MI5 are stretched to capacity at this present moment in time,” he told BBC1’S The Andrew Neil Interviews. “I think we’ve got to look at ways of ensuring that our people are safe, whether that is a return to control orders, whether that is tagging these people, who knows in the future maybe a return to internment.”

A policy of internment was adopted by the UK government in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, but it was widely judged to have acted as a recruiting sergeant for the IRA.

Mr Nuttall said, while he was not advocating an immediate return to detention without trial, it should not be ruled out for the future given the scale of the terrorist threat.