To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department with reference to Appendix A of the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ Nineteenth Report of Session 2006-07, how many of the individuals arrested and charged with terrorist offences were (a) released on bail and (b) had their charges subsequently dropped. (197346)

[holding answer 31 March 2008]: Of the 24 individuals arrested as a result of Operation Overt, as listed in Appendix A of the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ Nineteenth Report of Session 2006-07, 17 were charged. Of these 17, four individuals have been granted conditional bail by the court while awaiting trial. An additional two, charged with having information about an act of terrorism, have had their cases dismissed at court. These statistics were compiled from figures provided by the Metropolitan Police Service.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the evidential basis was for the figures quoted in the National Security Strategy, and her interview in the News of the World newspaper of 13 April 2008, on the number of individuals, networks and active plots being monitored by anti-terrorism agencies in the UK; and to what period of time these figures were relevant. (200514)

The Director General of the Security Service spoke publicly in November 2007 about the scale of the terrorist threat facing the United Kingdom, as did his predecessor 12 months earlier. Based on available intelligence and their judgment, they described it in terms of numbers of plots, groups or networks and numbers of individuals. Those were the figures to which I referred in the interview and are included in paragraph 3.4 of the National Security Strategy.