Police must develop a network of Muslim spies to gather intelligence on terror suspects plotting attacks in Britain, the former head of MI5 has recommended.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller’s demand comes as the country’s new Security Minister urged the public to “grass” on individuals about whom they have suspicions.

An MI5 map indicating the extent of terror networks has been circulated to all police forces in the country.

The terror hot spot is the West Midlands, with about 80 suspected terror networks under surveillance by MI5 and the police, according to security sources yesterday.

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The conurbation, centred on Birmingham, has more than double the number in London, where 35 networks are being monitored.

Other areas highlighted are Leeds and Bradford, the Manchester area and Merseyside. There is a total of 219 suspected terror networks in Britain.

Dame Eliza, who retired as head of MI5 this year, said there was a “pressing demand” for the police to create a network of spies from within the Muslim population to help to gather intelligence on suspects and plots.

She said that the networks “scattered across the country” are thought to be plotting up to 30 attacks at any one time.

Her comments, written before she retired but published recently in Policing: A Journal of Policing and Practice, indicate the difficulties the police face in getting information from within the Muslim community.

Yesterday the Government’s new Security Minister also called for people to inform on their neighbours if they had suspicions about terror attacks.

Sir Alan West, the former First Sea Lord who is now security minister in the Home Office, also warned that Britain faces a 15-year battle to tackle the radicalisation of young Muslims.

Britain faced a threat from a “disparate core” of “racist” people, often based abroad, who wanted power, he told The Sunday Telegraph.

He said that preventing people being recruited to extremism was central to beating terrorism and called for some unBritish “snitching” from the public to help the cause.

“This is not a quick thing. I believe it will take 10 to 15 years. But I believe it can be done as long as we as a nation apply ourselves to it and it’s done across the board.”

He added: “Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone. I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.

“We’ll have to be a little bit unBritish, I think . . . and say something and tell something.”

Sir Alan, who will meet the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, today to report on his review of recruitment into the National Health Service, said that the overall threat had increased since he left the Navy 16 months ago.

The map, leaked to the News of the World, shows that about 80 terrorist networks are currently being monitored in the west Midlands compared with 35 in London.

Sixty networks are under surveillance in Leeds, Bradford and Manchester, 20 in Merseyside, 10 in Wales, 12 in Scotland and two in Northern Ire-land. The map highlights the spread of terror groups in Britain.

The greatest concentration of networks under surveillance is in areas with high concentrations of Muslims such as Birmingham – where more than 140,000 Muslims live – Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire and London.

The Prime Minister said there was a need for better cross-border sharing of information on potential terrorists.

He said an expanded system for sharing data on potential threats was required as “a matter of urgency”.

“We do now need more information flowing internationally about who are potential terrorists and who are potential suspects,” Mr Brown told Sky News.

“I want the system that we are trying to expand between Europe – a system whereby we know who are potential terrorist suspects – [to be expanded] to other countries in the world and then we may have a better idea of people coming in to different countries, whether as professional recruits or in other ways, about what the dangers and the risks we face are.”

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