UK:The UK's terror threat assessment has been downgraded from "critical" to "severe", home secretary Jacqui Smith announced last night. This reflects the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre's assessment that while further attacks may be expected none is considered "imminent".
Ms Smith made her expected announcement after prime minister Gordon Brown ordered an urgent review of recruitment procedures to the National Health Service (NHS) in the light of the attempted car bombings in London and Glasgow.
The review will be conducted by newly appointed terrorism minister, Admiral Sir Alan West, as intelligence chiefs attempt to unravel the international dimension to the terror plot.
All eight suspects arrested in connection with the failed car bombings are understood to have links with the NHS - five of them reportedly doctors, along with two medical students and a former laboratory technician.
None of the eight had been under surveillance by the security services although a number of the doctors - thought to have taken up NHS jobs since 2004 - were apparently on an intelligence database containing the names of an estimated 2,000 suspected supporters of terrorism. While questions will again be raised as to whether the suspects slipped the intelligence net, some experts suggested they would have been on the MI5 radar because of alleged connections to other individuals who were under surveillance.
It also emerged yesterday that a senior British cleric in Baghdad, Canon Andrew White, passed a general but not specific warning to a Foreign Office official in April, after an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq boasted of a planned attack on Britain, predicting: "Those who cure you will kill you."
Canon White told the London Timeshe met the al-Qaeda leader on the fringe of a meeting held in Amman, the Jordanian capital, about religious reconciliation.
The former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and new Conservative shadow security minister, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones said it sent "a chill down the spine" to think people's values "can be so perverted".
Reflecting widespread disbelief at the linkage to the NHS, Dame Pauline added: "It means obviously you can't make any assumptions, or have any preconceptions about the kind of people who might become terrorists. It does mean that you widen the net, obviously." With the arrest phase of the current investigation seemingly drawing to a close, Mr Brown told MPs the government would expand background checks in respect of highly skilled workers coming into the UK.
Appearing at his first prime minister's questions, Mr Brown said the government would widen the worldwide "watch list" of potential terrorist suspects to help warn other countries, while confirming a Privy Council review of the possible use of telephone intercept evidence in the courts.
Attempting to harness the broadly "bipartisan" response to the incidents, Mr Brown vowed he would take all measures necessary to protect the British people, urging MPs: "It is vitally important the message is sent out to the rest of the world that we will stand strong, steadfast and united in the face of terror."
However, Mr Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron were at odds over the government's plans to introduce ID cards with Mr Brown insisting ID cards were "complementary to a border police force" as advocated by the Tory leader.
"It is your party that continues to oppose ID cards," Mr Brown told him.
In general Mr Brown appeared slightly nervous on his first outing at the despatch box as prime minister, while Mr Cameron was clearly restrained by the continuing sense of threat facing the country.
Mr Cameron found Mr Brown flat-footed, or possibly simply badly briefed, when he asked why the government had failed to act two years after saying it would ban the "extremist" group Hizb ut Tahir.
Mr Brown at first replied : "In all these details, as I've had to deal with this at the Treasury when we were dealing with terrorist finance, you have to have evidence."
However, when Mr Cameron pressed, saying this was an organisation that said "Jews should be killed wherever they are found",
Mr Brown said it could be banned under the Terrorism Act, before suggesting Mr Cameron had forgotten he had "been in this job for five days".
The prime minister continued: "What we must do is look in detail at the evidence and the evidence can't just be one or two quotes . . . I hope you'll agree with me that we approach these things in a sustained and calm way - and we do not jump to conclusions, we look at the evidence."
Six of those arrested last weekend are still being questioned at Paddington Green station in London.
A seventh suspect remains in hospital after suffering severe burns in the Glasgow airport attack, while the eighth, Dr Mohammed Haneef, is still being questioned in Australia following his arrest at Brisbane airport.