§ 12. Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East)What assessment he has made of co-ordinated al-Qaeda activity against British interests abroad. [84332]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mike O'Brien)We constantly monitor the threat to British interests posed by all terrorist groups worldwide. All the intelligence that we receive is sifted and carefully assessed by the intelligence agencies. All the resulting threat assessments are then passed to policy makers.
§ Dr. LewisGiven that the Australian Government managed, nearly a fortnight before the event, to pass on a specific warning to their holidaymakers about the threat of a terrorist attack in Mombasa, why did the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, with access to the same intelligence, fail to pass on a similarly specific warning to our holidaymakers in the area?
§ Mr. O'BrienThere was no specific intelligence of an attack being planned in Bali—[HON. MEMBERS: "Mombasa."] I am sorry; Mombasa. As far as we are concerned, there was no specific intelligence. If there had been, we would certainly have made that information available.
As the Prime Minister recently said, hardly a day goes by without a terrorist warning of some kind. Indeed, each month the security services get between 300 and 400 pieces of information about terrorist activities. Of those 300 to 400 pieces of information, usually none results in a predicted incident. Some of the information is partial, imprecise, unreliable or deliberate disinformation; rarely is it precise. It is a matter for the intelligence services to give professional advice on their assessment of the quality of that information. The intelligence services are not infallible, but they make the best professional judgment that they can. We support the way in which they analyse that information. Other countries may take a different view about the way in which they give warnings and analyse information. We believe that our intelligence services are doing the best that they reasonably can to ensure that they assess the information in a professional way.
§ Mike Gapes (Ilford, South)My hon. Friend is aware that for many years a large number of British people have been going on holiday to Kenya. He will also know that last week the British embassy there had to be closed on security grounds. Can he reassure constituents who contacted me last week that he will further consider updating the website that gives advice about the situation whenever circumstances change so that people do not have to rely on press reports or radio broadcasts when they are about to go on holiday and, understandably, anxious about whether they should cancel it, even if they are going to a part of the country far from the incident?
§ Mr. O'BrienWe amended all our travel advice on 18 October to warn travellers of the increased threat from international terrorism. The fact that that was a global warning should not detract from its relevance. Travel advice is kept under constant review in the light 154 of all the information available to us. It was changed on 28 November to reflect the implications of the Mombasa attack and the risk of terrorist groups carrying out further attacks in east Africa.
We cannot guarantee that anywhere is completely and totally safe. What we do know is that al-Qaeda is a threat and that there are other terrorists at large in the world. There is therefore a need to be vigilant. We try to assess professionally all the information that we get and make a good judgment about it. We are currently reviewing the way in which we make those decisions to ensure that we improve wherever possible the way in which that intelligence information is assessed and to ensure that we provide information of the best possible quality to members of the public when they travel abroad.