Has MI5 learned its lesson from the Manchester Arena bombing?

The Manchester Arena Inquiry has adjourned for three weeks as its chairman Sir John Saunders considers the last, and most secret, part of the evidence. It involves the critical issue of why Salman Abedi was investigated by MI5 and found to pose no risk, and why his case was never re-opened.

At the centre of the Inquiry is a nugget of information which, MI5 says, cannot be trusted to the public, even five years after the attack. After Abedi’s case was closed, two pieces of intelligence were received in the months before the bombing. These were assessed to be ‘innocent activity’ or ‘non-terrorist criminality’. But in retrospect, the intelligence was ‘highly relevant to the planned attack’, the Security Service has conceded, even if ‘the significance of it was not fully appreciated at the time’. So could the Manchester bombing – in which 22 innocent lives were lost – have been prevented?

We now know that a meeting was due to take place nine days after the attack to re-assess the bomber, Salman Abedi. The