Fortress Britain

Globalisation has changed the world we live in. Our economies are more interconnected; capital movements do not respect national boundaries, and the world's media has expanded exponentially, opening up new horizons and collapsing the distance between the people of different countries. As John Lloyd rightly pointed out in the Evening Standard yesterday, people increasingly move around the globe, whether as economic migrants, refugees, students or tourists. In Britain alone, passenger journeys into the country have almost doubled, from 50 million at the beginning of the 1990s to nearly 100 million now, and individually most of us travel abroad more often.

The dark side of this process of globalisation was represented by 11 September. It showed us, in the most appalling and brutal way, that the new openness and movement taking place in the world could be exploited by those seeking to commit acts of terror and violence. In recent days, there has also been speculation about whether our asylum and immigration systems could be too easily abused by those who would attack us and our way of life.

While it would clearly be inappropriate for me to comment on any ongoing police investigation or the status of persons being investigated, the issue of asylum seekers and terrorism has been widely reported in the media, and I want to deal with these concerns. I won't pretend that they aren't real, but I want us to pause and inject a degree of common sense.

We should not assume that asylum seekers are any more likely to be terrorists than anyone else. That would be wholly wrong and deeply damaging to social cohesion and good race relations in this country.

However, terrorists are devious, dangerous people. They will exploit whatever opportunities they can to commit their crimes. It is our task to ensure that terrorists cannot pose as asylum seekers or avail themselves of the protection of the Geneva Convention.

So it is important that I spell out what the Government is doing to secure the country's borders, deal with abuse of the asylum system and meet the specific threat posed by terrorists. But we should remember that London is a global city and in the same way as there can never be 100 per cent intelligence, neither could every visitor to our shores be under 100 per cent surveillance. Nor - in a free democracy - would it be desirable.

We are currently embarked on a major process of strengthening our border controls. We are setting up for the first time joint immigration controls in France and Belgium. New detection technology has been installed at the Channel Tunnel entry points and other French ports, Belgium and the Netherlands. These steps will effectively export our border controls across the Channel.

In addition, we have comprehensive visa regimes and extensive systems for checking passengers whom we consider to be a security risk on arrival at our ports and airports.

There is more to be done, but more has been achieved in recent months than many are prepared to acknowledge. In the past year, we have issued all new asylum seekers with an Application Registration Card, with their photo and a fingerprint on it.

It contains recorded details about each asylum seeker and is issued to those under the age of 18, as well as adults. There are linked security checks on individuals. And when asylum seekers claim support, they are required to present the card when turning up to get their entitlements.

We also now require asylum seekers regularly to report to the authorities. They can't just stay in the country without maintaining close contact with us. Furthermore, I have taken steps with the new Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act last year, to ensure that terrorists or other criminals cannot hide behind their refugee status.

We can now deport a refugee or asylum seeker who commits serious crimes. There is no bar to taking action, if necessary, against those under the age of 18.

We took firm action after 11 September in the Anti-terrorism Crime and Security Act. This means that a foreign national who is suspected of involvement in terrorism, who poses a threat to our national security, but who cannot immediately be removed from this country, can now be detained until we are able to deport them. It is amazing how vehement the opposition was to my proposals at the time.

I also believe that, here in the UK, we need new forms of establishing and securing the identification of people who are in our country - both our own citizens, and those working or studying here.

The Government is currently consulting on proposals for Entitlement Cards, which are widely accepted in the rest of Europe as a necessary and valuable means of ensuring that people working and accessing services in any nation state are entitled to be doing so.

I don't pretend, and have said so repeatedly, that entitlement cards are the answer to terrorism. But I do believe that they are an increasingly important part of how any advanced society can balance freedom with responsibility and basic social order.

However, to tackle the terrorist threat, we also rely crucially on our security and police services to identify people who pose a risk and arrest them and disrupt their activities. That task is never complete, and we must continually learn lessons and anticipate where the threat is coming from next, but we should pay tribute to the work these services have done over many years to secure the public.

Make no mistake: the threat isn't from some alien force from whom we can protect ourselves by creating "Fortress Britain" but from individuals and groups, whether British nationals or not, whose allegiance lies elsewhere.

Meeting this threat, while retaining a balance between protecting us from attack and retaining our liberties, is therefore as much about creating a sense of identity and sense of belonging to the UK, as it is about the security and administrative measures necessary to track and identify threats from people in our country.

The task I have, and which we share as a society, is to create the conditions in which we defend our democracy in depth, through common purpose, shared values and social cohesion.