REVIEW AFTER

SECURITY services must do more with tech firms to spot potential terrorists faster, a report says.

- BY DAVE BURKE

The review ordered after the Southport murders and the killing of MP David Amess also called for teachers to be trained to detect signs of extremism.

Lord David Anderson's report said there had been a series of errors after Axel Rudakubana and Ali Harbi Ali were referred to the counter-extremism programme Prevent.

Rudakubana, who murdered three young girls in Southport last year, and Ali, who stabbed Tory MP Sir David to death at a constituency surgery in 2021, were referred to Prevent by their schools, but their cases were not escalated before they went on to kill

Lord Anderson, the Interim Independent Prevent Commissioner, said: "Whether different decisions might have spared their victims will never be known: both attacks came years later, and many imponderables intervened.

"But wrong decisions were taken; more should have been done; and from these failures, lessons must continue to be learned."

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper vowed to act immediately on a string of recommendations in the report.

Lord Anderson said social media can help create "an unpredictable mashup of resentment, rage, rigid certainties and normalised violence".

He also suggested it could be worth exploring whether serious and repeated breaches of tech platforms' rules could lead to direct Prevent referrals.