British Home Secretary: Terror threat level higher than before or after 9/11

LONDON, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- British officials issued news warnings concerning the threat posed by Islamist radicals, as Parliament prepares to consider a new Counter-terrorism and Security Bill.

The terror threat in Britain is "greater than it has been at any time before or after 9/11," Home Secretary Theresa May said in an interview with The Telegraph.

In order to counter the potential for an attack inside Britain, May said, "We need to do more to recognize the shared values we have -- the values of democracy, of the rule of law, of tolerance of faiths, of equality of treatment."

The home secretary also unveiled proposed legislation that would prevent British citizens who had traveled to Iraq and Syria to join Islamist forces from returning to the U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron spoke about the plans for new "temporary exclusion orders" at the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Brisbane earlier this month.

More than 500 Britons are believed to have joined IS in Iraq and Syria. Approximately half of them reportedly returned to Britain, 200 of whom were subsequently arrested in the last year.

"Four or five" plots were foiled in Britain this year, Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe disclosed on Sunday.

Islamist militants will pose a continuing risk to Britain, said Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley. "Whether it continues in that theater or whether it moves into other places I think there's a high prospect of it continuing in this nature for several years."