A former head of counter-terrorism has warned of “unintended consequences” if terrorism laws are expanded to include attacks like the one carried out by Southport killer Axel Rudakubana.
Ex-Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said it would be a mistake to widen the definition of a terrorist, because some violent individuals would “revel” in it.
Sir Keir Starmer has announced a review of existing laws to address “extreme violence carried out by loners, misfits, young men in their bedrooms” following the murder of three young girls at a dance class in Southport last July.
Mr Basu warned this could divert resources and attention from combating existing terrorist threats.
Speaking in Downing Street on Tuesday, the prime minister said the country would have to rethink the way it protected people, because “terrorism has changed” and there was a “new and dangerous threat” from extreme violence.
The government has announced a public inquiry into the Southport attack. Sir Keir said failings by the state “leap off the page”, and a review would be conducted into “our entire counter-extremist system”.
Rudakubana had been referred three times to anti-extremism programme Prevent before murdering Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar.
Mr Basu told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme extending the definition of terrorism to encompass people like Rudakubana would be wrong.
He described the Southport attack as one of the most “horrific” he could remember and said it had been a “hellish week” for the Southport families, but added: “Bad legislation is made in haste in response to shocking incidents.
“We need to think very carefully about the unintended consequences. My opinion is it would be a mistake.”
Mr Basu suggested the people the prime minister was pointing to were not terrorists but “violent individuals” who used “any ideology as an excuse for their violent actions”.
Some of them, he argued, had “psychopathic or sociopathic thoughts” and would love the idea of being designated terrorists.
Adding to the workload of counter-terror teams would also “come with a very large bill”, he said.
He said the threats from so-called Islamic State militants and far right extremists were on the rise, so broadening the terrorist definition would also divert attention from tackling organised groups.
However, Lord [Alex] Carlile, the UK’s first independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, from 2001 to 2011, agreed with Sir Keir it was “high time” to review the definition of terrorism in law to include lone attackers without a clear motive.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs on Tuesday that several agencies had failed to spot the terrible danger Rudakubana posed.
The public inquiry would also “consider the wider challenge of rising youth violence and extremism”, she added.
She told the Commons 162 people were referred to Prevent last year for concerns relating to potential school massacres.
Mr Basu welcomed the public inquiry, but predicted that its final report would tell a familiar tale.
It would conclude that counter-extremism agencies did not share sufficient intelligence, and were underfunded, undertrained and “overwhelmed by demand”, he forecast.
