Run as far away as possible if there’s an IS attack in London, says terror chief

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“That person who’s suspicious may be someone doing reconnaissance because they want to attack a shopping centre or it may be someone who is preparing in a different way, hiring a car or a lorry, it could be all sorts of ways, but we say to the public, trust your instincts and pick up the phone to us.

“We the police aren’t being defeatist, we a re a r re s t i n g more a n d more people, we are bringing more firearms officers on patrol, we’re putting more the streets. “The critical point is that this is 24/7, specialist officers with the weaponry and equipment to confront a terrorist. This is high calibre, highly trained specialist people.

“They are on patrol in vehicles across London, sometimes they will be on foot, and based on intelligence, based on disrupting terrorism, they will vary between shopping centres, places like Oxford Street, sometimes sporting events, religious premises. We will have a much bigger, stronger capability to deal with any thing that hits us in London.”

On the scale of the threat, Mr Rowley said: “What we see reflects what’s going on across Europe. Most of them aren’t people who have travelled to Syria, but they are being inspired, trying to pick up weapons, to plan an attack here. That’s what we’ve been wrestling with most of all. We’ve had a steady flow of people thinking about that sort of attack.

“The second thing that we’ve got to guard against is people returning from Syria more determined, more deadly, more highly skilled in weaponry. If those people were to reach the UK that would be a major concern.

“We have got hundreds of investigations ranging from extremists right on the periphery through to small numbers of the highest risk operations of people who are looking to do an attack.”