The latest journal from the Royal United Services Institute contains a perceptive article, entitled “Terrorism: The New Wave“, which was widely reported last Friday.

It follows concerns I raised in the House of Lords last month:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, what is the rate of conversion to Islam within prisons and what steps are the Prison Service taking in terms of monitoring radicalisation and external speakers who come into prisons?

Lord McNally: I do not have precise figures on conversions, but I know the background to this question of whether or not there is radical Islamisation in prisons. The studies that I have been shown reveal no conclusive evidence of this, although there are examples which give rise to concern. The staff and the wider Prison Service keep a close eye on imams in prisons. Bringing them in to lecture, preach and minister within prisons has been one of the benefits, but we must make sure that it is a positive influence, as the noble Lord suggested.”

The RUSI study warns that one of the key threats from this next generation of terrorists comes from within the ranks of the 8,000 Muslims currently serving prison terms who are at risk of being converted to extremism by hardcore inmates jailed for terrorist offences.

The report cites estimates by prison probation officers that up to one in 10 Muslim inmates are being successfully targeted while inside jail, leading to the creation of a new generation of potential attackers who are due for release in the next decade and whose previous convictions do not relate to terrorism.

The report suggests that radicalisation is taking place in British prisons at a rapid rate, especially in the eight high-security establishments where most terrorism offenders are detained.

However, newspaper reports the study’s findings as being dismissed by the Coalition Government:

“The Ministry of Justice said it did not agree that radicalisation was widespread within the prison system. A spokesman said: “We run a dedicated expert unit to tackle the risk posed by those offenders with violent extremist views and those who may attempt to improperly influence others.”"

The response smacks of complacency.  I trust the complacency does not extend to one of the other major findings that large-scale and co-ordinated attacks such as the 7 July bombings are likely to be replaced with terrorist assaults by highly motivated but poorly trained lone individuals whose lack of connection with any major terrorist organisation will make them more difficult for police or MI5 to detect.

RUSI, which is very well-connected and whose reports are normally highly respected, has produced a timely and important contribution to the discussion of the terrorist threat faced by the UK.  Its conclusions should be taken seriously and not brushed aside by the Government.

The Washington Post reports that the US Deputy Defense Secretary has publicly acknowledged what is being described as the most significant breach of U.S. military computers.

The cause was a flash drive inserted into a U.S. military laptop in the Middle East in 2008.

And the consequence was that the malicious code, which had been placed on the drive by a foreign intelligence agency, uploaded itself onto the network run by the U.S. military’s Central Command. Apparently, the code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead, from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control.

This disclosure was apparently part of a deliberate strategy to raise the awareness of the US Congress and the American people of the cyber-threat being faced by the USA.  Apparently, the Pentagon’s 15,000 networks and 7 million computing devices are being probed thousands of times daily and the US Government’s concern is that cyberwar is asymmetric and that traditional Cold War deterrence models of assured retaliation do not apply to cyberspace, where it is difficult to identify the instigator of an attack.

The problems faced by the Pentagon are no doubt faced – on a smaller scale – by the UK Ministry of Defence and the British armed services.  I do not, however, detect a similar openness about the threat by the UK’s Coalition Government – perhaps because the strategy to address the problem is nothing like as well-developed as it should be.

The BBC reports today on the loading of the first nuclear fuel at the Bushehr reactor in Iran tell us that the international community can be reassured on the basis that (1) the nuclear fuel rods are all being supplied by Russia and (2) the spent rods and waste will go back to Russia.

At the risk of sounding like an unreconstructed cold warrior, I have to confess to not finding this at all reassuring.

Why does Russia want to do this and what do they expect to get out of it?

And as for the waste, the work I have been doing in recent months on the safeguards (or lack of them) at reprocessing plants hardly makes any of this sound any better.

Please somebody persuade me that this is good news ….

From 25th September 2009:

The Parliament Education Service runs an annual Discover Parliament Programme aimed at 16-18 year olds studying higher level politics, citizenship and general studies.  This afternoon I met 80 students taking part in the Programme.  They were from three schools in Pinner, Chelmsford and Bristol.

As ever on such occasions, the questioning was lively, sometimes challenging and extremely wide-ranging.  We covered – amongst other things – such topics as:

• aren’t MPs too old (I’d explained that the average age of members of the House of Lords is 69);
• why aren’t 16 year olds allowed to vote or to sit in Parliament;
• what did I think of Gordon Brown;
• should taxes be put up in the current economic situation;
• should the age for getting a driving licence change;
• what were my views about David Cameron, Lord Mandelson and the BNP (interesting grouping);
• what should be done about knife crime and gangs;
• was “kettling” of G20 protesters fair (from a teacher);
• should children be taught more about current affairs;
• did the LibDems have a better record on MPs’ expenses;
• is the threat of terrorism rising;
• should there be limits on immigration;
• was the war in Iraq right; and
• did I think Labour would win the next General Election and when would it be?

As I said, a lively hour – and an exhilarating one too.

Effectively, these Discover Parliament programmes can only take place during school term time and when Parliament is not sitting.  In practice that means they are only possible for about four weeks a year from the early part of September.  A by-product of Speaker John Bercow’s proposal to shorten Parliament’s summer recess might well be to end these programmes. Whatever the merits or otherwise of Parliament sitting in September (something I personally would favour), it would be a retrograde step to lose this outreach work with young people.

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

I am not looking for any recognition, as you know these things don’t matter to me at all and I am profoundly disinterested in where this blog comes in the annual Total Politics ranking of political blogs, so I really am not asking for you to vote for me or my blog ……..

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Ken Clarke, the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, has said that Bloody Sunday inquiry conducted by Lord Saville has been a “disaster in terms of time and expense” and got “ludicrously out of hand”.

I doubt whether there will be many people (apart from the many lawyers who have done extremely well out of the process) who would disagree with the sentiment that the inquiry has taken an extraordinary length of time and has therefore been monumentally expensive.

However, Ken Clarke’s timing is interesting.  His comments were made just 48 hours before the report was due to be published.  Is this part of a process of softening-up, so that, when David Cameron does introduce the report, the Coalition Government is able to distance itself from the inquiry’s twelve years of deliberations and the conclusions it has reached?

Apparently, an elite jihadi forum with strong Taliban links has been warning subscribers that it has been “infiltrated”.  It is not clear who has done the infiltration nor what the nature of it is (although potentially it would enable the infiltrator to obtain details of those logging into the site and identify their location).

There has, of course, been a large amount of discussion in the United States about the importance of building not only a defensive cyber capacity but also an offensive capacity.  Usually, the offensive role is described as being available for retaliation against an individual, organisation or nation that threatens US cyber space.  However, the principle might easily be extended to others – such as the Taliban – who threaten US interests and troops.  So is this the first example of the talked-of US offensive capacity in action?

Over the last few months, I have been doing some work on the danger of nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists and had the opportunity to raise the issue during Lords Question Time this afternoon.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer had tabled the following question:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what contribution they will make to the work required to achieve progress on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons following the resolution passed at the review conference in May.”

Lord Howell of Guildford, the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, answered as follows:

“My Lords, as we promised on taking office, we pushed hard for agreement of a final document at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. We will give the highest priority to reversing the spread of nuclear weapons, keeping them out of the hands of terrorists and cutting their numbers worldwide, and we will work with partners to translate those commitments into action.”

I came in with the following supplementary:

“My Lords, the IAEA’s illicit trafficking database has recorded 336 incidents involving unauthorised possession of nuclear materials and associated criminal acts in the past 15 years. There have also been incidents of terror teams carrying out reconnaissance of nuclear weapon trains in Russia. Can the noble Lord tell us, first, whether Her Majesty’s Government are satisfied with the security arrangements around the nuclear facilities in this country and what steps they are taking to protect them? Secondly, what steps are they taking to ensure that security arrangements around both civil and military nuclear facilities elsewhere are being properly maintained?”

And this elicited the following response:

“I thank the noble Lord for his question. We are satisfied, but we are always on guard and always watchful for any need for improvement. The international security of nuclear materials was discussed, analysed and strengthened at the Washington conference in April that preceded the nuclear NPT review conference. A whole series of measures was put forward there and agreed. In so far as one can, one can say that these measures are a step forward in what is undoubtedly, as the noble Lord fully realises, a very dangerous situation.”

I will be returning to the issue later in the Session.