POLICE are warning that without a huge increase in manpower and money they will struggle to combat the threat of suicide bombings.

A senior figure at the centre of the fight against terrorism has told The Times that the Prime Minister and the Government are felt to have reneged on assurances to give police forces everything they need to fight the “war on terrorism”. Scotland Yard chiefs fear that the majority of extra resources for national security, to be allocated next month, will be awarded to the intelligence services, whose failings were exposed by the July London bombings.

Of the £135 million pledged to the war on terrorism at least £85 million will go to MI5 and MI6. The remaining £50 million has to be split between various agencies including the police and GCHQ.

Scotland Yard insists that it needs all that money to recruit more officers by the time new anti-terrorist measures are in place on the streets by April. However, senior police sources told The Times that they expect to be disappointed even though they believe that the nation is entering the most perilous 12 months since the upsurge in Islamist terrorism.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has already indicated that his force is fully stretched but has foiled three credible terrorist plots since the July attacks which killed 52 people in London.

They are understood to be a plan to set off car bombs, a missile attack and an attempt to obtain a cache of weapons. Sir Ian has revealed that the security services now send daily alerts to the police all of which have to be investigated. Before the 7/7 bombing the alerts were issued monthly. Resources will be further stretched when senior anti-terrorist officers leave frontline duties to take part in four major terrorist trials scheduled for 2006.

No arrests have been made in connection with the July 7 bombings and the suspected mastermind behind the plot has never been identified. The inquiry has, however, forced Scotland Yard to throw away the existing intelligence profile of a terrorist because none of the bombers fitted the model.

Senior officers are engaged in trying to draw up “a new topology” of the radicalisation of a young Muslim to attempt to stem the influence of extremists and prevent further attacks.

Scotland Yard also wants an initial £60 million to establish a new Counter Terrorist Command with 2,000 officers — an increase of 33 per cent on the current combined strength of the anti-terrorist branch and Special Branch. However, its case is unlikely to have been helped by the intervention yesterday of Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, who said the terrorist threat came from “fairly disorganised and small groups of disaffected people”.

He added: “This is not a great organised international conspiracy with orders flowing down the chain.”

Overall spending on domestic security will have risen from £1.5 billion in 2004-05 to £2.1 billion by 2007. The security budget has more than doubled since the September 11 attacks in the US.

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