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Britain’s terror threat level was raised from ‘substantial’ to ‘severe’ in response to fighting in Iraq and Syria, meaning that an attack on Britain was ‘highly likely’. Three days later, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in a hesitant statement to the Commons, proposed that: police should be able to seize temporarily at the border the passports of people travelling overseas; there should be all-party talks on drawing up powers to prevent suspected British terrorists returning to Britain; those under terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims) should be subject to ‘stronger locational constraints’. The Celtic Manor Resort (rooms from £77), near Junction 24 on the M4 outside Newport, prepared to accommodate the Nato summit, the largest gathering of international leaders ever to take place in Britain.
Brett and Naghemeh King took their son Ashya, aged five, who has a brain tumour, from a hospital in Southampton. Hampshire Constabulary obtained a European arrest warrant and the couple were arrested in Spain and sent to jail in Madrid for two nights while a judge considered a British extradition request; their son was taken to hospital in Malaga. After 100,000 people signed an online petition demanding the boy be reunited with his parents, the British Crown Prosecution Service went to court to withdraw the arrest warrant. Mr Cameron tweeted: ‘I welcome the prosecution against #AshyaKing’s parents being dropped.’ On LBC radio he said: ‘Watching the pictures of him brought back memories of my desperately ill young boy, Ivan’ (who died, aged six, in 2009). The handling by South Yorkshire police of the searching of a house belonging to Sir Cliff Richard, which was shown live on BBC television, was ‘incompetent’ in the opinion of the Home Affairs Select Committee, its chairman Keith Vaz told David Crompton, the chief constable, when he appeared before it.
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