Terrorists “continue to explore ways to kill us in our streets” and will eventually use chemical and biological weapons on British soil, Britain’s Minister of State for Security Ben Wallace warned Tuesday, Anadolu reports.
The country must face up to the possibility of such attacks, Wallace said.
Speaking at a national security conference, Wallace said he sees plots where “the only limits to the ambition of our adversaries is their imagination”.
“Chemical and biological weapons are marching in closer,” he added.
He said the terrorists “have developed and worked on a better arsenal, and we have to be prepared that might come to our streets here”.
Underlining that there is no doubt over the reality of the threat, Wallace stressed that “our open, liberal and free societies are easy prey to those that fear little and care even less”.
A team of experts last week revealed various response measures in case of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) attack.
They said they have developed tools to determine casualty exposures through rapid tests, use of drones to measure toxicity in the atmosphere and crisis communication instruments to stop fake news.
Echoing Wallace and speaking at the same event, the country’s top security official, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, said those kinds of weapons “have been used on the battlefield, and what’s used on the battlefield will eventually be adapted to be used on domestic soil”.
Basu said Wallace was “as concerned as I am that these are the kind of threats that we’ve got to take very seriously and we’ve got to make sure that we have the right preparations to actually counter that threat, should it appear”.
In June, British Home Secretary Sajid Javid revealed new counter-terrorism strategy legislation.
The legislation, according to Javid, will have six key points, which are to disrupt threats earlier, to continue necessary support for counter-terrorism policing and intelligence services, to work more closely with international partners, to increase cooperation with key partners and the private sector, to work with technology companies to get terrorist material off the internet and to do more to prevent people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.
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The terror threat level in the UK is “severe”, which means that a terror attack is highly likely.
Last year, 36 people were killed and dozens of others were injured in terror attacks in London and Manchester.
The British government has claimed that in the most debated incident in Salisbury last March, two Russian military intelligence agents who were identified as Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov used a banned nerve agent called novichok targeting former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.
In another incident in Amesbury, which British authorities say involved the same nerve agent, a woman died and a man fell seriously ill.
Dawn Sturgess, 44, fell ill on June 30 after handling an item contaminated with novichok and was taken to a hospital, where she later died, while her partner, Charlie Rowley, 45, was also exposed to the nerve agent and was taken to hospital in critical condition but later recovered.
In both incidents, large public areas were cordoned off and closed to public access for lengthy periods of time for decontamination.

It was a 90-minute exercise in denial and a masterclass in deflection.
Alexander Yakovenko admitted relations between London and Moscow were “very low”, but continued to deny any Russian involvement in the Salisbury poisoning or The Hague spying case.
“We don’t see any co-operation, we don’t see any evidence,” he repeated. It is a well-rehearsed line of attack.
He said the four Russian spies caught allegedly trying to hack the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague were, in fact, just diplomats in the country to work on the embassy’s communications and IT systems.
“They came to Netherlands with a routine mission to the embassy to support technically the embassy and to check the communications line of the embassy for security reasons,” he said.

I asked Mr Yakovenko: “Why did they have onward train tickets to Switzerland then, the home of another OPCW laboratory?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
The evidence is piling up against Russia, the excuses are harder to come by and the broad smile occasionally slips.
This week the investigative website Bellingcat revealed the second identity of the Skripals’ attackers in Salisbury – Dr Alexander Mishkin, formerly known under the alias Alexander Petrov.
The ambassador accused Bellingcat of being an arm of the British dark state, but when challenged he said he couldn’t provide any evidence of that claim.
Given that he repeatedly asked the British government for evidence of their claims, this was a moment of blatant hypocrisy from Russia’s man in London.

He was asked about the embarrassment caused for Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, and if “heads would roll”. He didn’t answer the question.
He was asked if the men behind the Skripal attack would appear in a UK court to clear their name in public. His answer was vague.
He claimed the UK was preventing the extradition of 60 people the Russians want to put on trial, but when it was put to him that Russia could extradite the Skripal accused as a goodwill gesture, he rubbished the idea.
On occasions the journalists openly laughed at the claims and regularly interrupted to challenge him. This set-piece event has become a game between both sides.
The ambassador finished the press conference by asking the journalists when they wanted another one – he clearly enjoys the occasion.
But it’s hard to see they’re doing much to further Russia’s argument.