he UK the threat of terrorism is rising in risk therefore is a greater issue than the likelihood of war. Security policy for terrorism is carried out by the security service MI5 who are responsible for protecting UK residents against threats. To reduce terrorist threats research suggests defensive measures such as mitigation of impacts can be used. This involves lowering the benefits from terrorist attacks which can occur through decentralisation or changing media practices for reporting attacks. Decentralisation makes attacks less attractive as the effects and damage are smaller. Restricting media attention results in terrorist groups failing to reach large audiences therefore they struggle to implement fear on society. Frey and Lucchinger provide a counter terrorist approach the UK could implement to enhance security policy. This involves the government manipulating media recognition of terrorist groups so to reduce the benefits of the attack for the terrorists. Empirical findings carried by Frey highlight that media attention and terrorism share a bidirectional causality relationship. This results in increased media attention causing more terrorist events and vice versa.

Alternatively, the UK could implement proactive policies in order to enhance security policy. These measures are more direct and arguably, due to the UK’s economic position may be more beneficial. An example includes employing intelligence and surveillance to detect activity and capture perpetrators. Because of the UK’s capable army and funding this method may be superior to protect the UK from threats. As a result, the focus for proactive policies is on denying terrorists the resources they require including finance, manpower and weaponry to disrupt their activities. However, critiques of this approach include how it is difficult to deny terrorists finance. To effectively freeze assets, it requires cooperation between the banking sector and government and terrorists have shown to diversify their source of income. Moreover, proactive measures can have the inverse effect of aggravating terrorists consequently leading to increased behaviour issues.

It could be argued the biggest issue with counter terrorism is the cost to society. This involves both direct and indirect effects. Preventing terrorism requires resources resulting in a direct cost to society through the investment of various methods. Other effects involve increase costs for example tighter airport security increases the cost of travel for UK residents. Moreover, the government experiences a great cost from funding the schemes which can result in reduced expenditure in other areas such as education leading to an opportunity cost. Counter terrorism leads to increased spending however guaranteeing a terrorist attack will occur is difficult. Another indirect impact is the ex