A public warning system to alert people to the threat of terrorist suicide attacks is to be launched, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
American-style warnings - currently kept secret in Britain - will inform the public of the likelihood of an attack by al-Qaeda or other terrorists. Details of the system, to be unveiled tomorrow by John Reid, the Home Secretary, will be published on the Home Office and MI5 websites.
It is understood that the number of threat levels will be reduced from the current seven to five - the same as in the United States - but they will not be colour-coded.
The levels will be updated and the public will be advised of what action to take in response to any threat. However, the intelligence behind a change to the threat level will remain secret. Senior figures in both the security and intelligence services are thought to have been against a public warning system initially, because they feared that it could be misinterpreted and cause panic.
In what is being seen as a concession to MI5 and MI6, however, another warning system - to cover the differing "response levels" of the security services to potential threats - will remain secret. A fuller explanation of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy, codenamed Contest, will be unveiled in the next few weeks.
At present, threat levels are determined by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (Jtac), based at MI5 in London, which handles more than 50,000 items of intelligence every year.
Jtac's role came under intense scrutiny after last July's London bombings when it emerged that the organisation had lowered the threat level from "severe general" to "substantial" only a month before the attacks. Jtac then raised it to "critical". It was about to downgrade it again on the morning of the failed attacks of July 21.
MI5 currently uses a seven-tier threat level system, which has been criticised as being cumbersome and confusing. The confidential levels range from "negligible", through "severe (defined)" when an attack is "likely", to "critical" when an attack is deemed imminent.
Patrick Mercer, the Tory shadow minister for homeland security, said: "At last the Government have done something positive. It's taken them three years and a complete report by the Intelligence and Security Committee to twist their arm into doing something."
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A public warning system to alert people to the threat of terrorist suicide attacks is to be launched, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
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