Foreign Secretary says security services need capability to match new threats

FOREIGN Secretary Philip Hammond has claimed Russia and the Islamic State pose the “greatest challenge” to national security in decades.

Mr Hammond said nobody could “confidently and accurately” predict the causes of further security threats, but the agencies must have the capacity to effectively monitor causes for concern.

He warned MI6 and GCHQ are currently facing an “unprecedented” level of challenge in the face of a wide range of global threats.

He told the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London: “The sheer number and range of cases, old and new, amounts to the greatest challenge to our collective security for decades and places u npr e c e dent e d demands on those charged with keeping us safe,” he said.

He added that while in the past they had simply had to focus on “ideologically-driven expansionist states”, they now had to deal with international terrorist groups, state-sponsored aggression and self-radicalised, “lone wolf” terrorist threats.

At the same time, he pointed to the renewed threat to international order posed by Russia after years of re-engagement with the West after the end of the Cold War.

“We are now faced with a Russian leader bent not on joining the international rules-based system, which keeps the peace between nations, but on subverting it,” he said.

“President Putin’s actions – illegally annexing Crimea and using Russian troops to destabilise eastern Ukraine – fundamentally undermine the security of sovereign nations of Eastern Europe.”

Mr Hammond said the “clandestine nature” of the threats underlined the need to have a “highly effective, secret capability” to identify, monitor and act against them.