David Anderson (QC)

David Anderson QC is a British lawyer who was the UK government's 'Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation' until early 2017.

Review into UK's response to the 2017 attacks

In December 2017 Anderson released his independent review into the UK response to the Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, and Finsbury Park attacks.

His key recommendations urged UK security officials to get tougher on the rising threat of right-wing extremism and to treat it in the same way as Islamist terror threats. Security authorities should, he wrote, implement an 'equivalence of processes in analysing and dealing with all kinds of terrorism, irrespective of the ideology that inspires them'.

Anderson's 61-page report noted that in the 12 months leading up to October 2017, there were 'instances of attack-planning' from far-right extremists, including 'the construction of viable explosive devices and the acquisition of firearms'. However, he noted that it was difficult to quantify exactly how many attacks had been thwarted 'in part because of uncertainty as to whether a lone actor was actually planning an attack and, if so, whether it would have crossed the threshold from hate crime to terrorism'.

The murder of Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016 by far-right extremist Thomas Mair 'exemplified' this threat said Anderson.

Anderson's report was published just five days after US president Donald Trump had retweeted fakeTwitter videos posted by the far-right Britain First deputy leader Jayda Fransen. Fransen is currently on trial in January 2018 for charges of religiously-aggravated harassment.

External resources

• Witnesses: David Anderson QC, former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Home Affairs Committee Tuesday 30 January 2018 Meeting started at 2.44pm, ended 4.18pm

Contact

Twitter:David Anderson QC (@bricksilk)