Yes, we are delivering that message and our partners around the world are active. We have seen action over the past few days in many countries, with people providing support networks to ISIL being disrupted, arrests being made and so on.
In seeking to establish its extremist state, ISIL is already seeking to use the territory it controls as a launch pad from which to attack the west, including the
United Kingdom. The unprovoked attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels, the brutal beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and the explicit threat to the life of a British hostage have made it clear that ISIL will not hesitate to attack western citizens wherever it has the opportunity to do so. As the House will know, our intelligence agencies estimate that more than 500 British nationals have travelled abroad to fight in Syria and Iraq for extremist groups, particularly ISIL. On the face of it, one of those individuals, nominally British although sharing none of our values, was responsible for the beheading of the American journalists. The potential return to the shores of hundreds of these radicalised jihadis, some of whom will have undergone training in the conduct of terrorist atrocities, represents one of the most serious threats to our national security and was directly responsible for the decision to raise the threat level for international terrorism from substantial to severe.