Lockdowns may have increased UK terrorism threat

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph before the New Year, Security Minister Damian Hinds said that the terrorism threat to the UK may have been made worse by Covid lockdowns.

The MP for East Hampshire said that people spending long periods of time in their bedrooms during the restrictions could have pushed them towards radicalisation. He said that ‘if you start to make those kind of downward spirals’ then you can ‘quickly accelerate with the material that you come across’.

A report by the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate this month warned extremists had ‘sought to exploit pandemic-related sociocultural restrictions that have led people around the world to spend increasing time online, by strengthening their efforts to spread propaganda, recruit, and radicalise via virtual platforms’.

Since Hinds took on the security brief in August, there have been two alleged terrorist attacks, the killing of the MP Sir David Amess and the attack outside Liverpool Women’s hospital.

Hinds told the Daily Telegraph that ‘there has been a growth in extreme rightwing terrorism’ but that ‘Islamist extremism terrorism remains a potent threat’.