Chapter 4 – Protect Our People 37 D. Combating extremism and terrorism Extremism and international terrorism 4.80 The UK faces a significant threat from both extremism and terrorism. 4.81 We define extremism as vocal or active opposition to our fundamental values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. We also regard calls for the death of members of our Armed Forces as extremist. 4.82 Extremism, even where it does not break the law, divides communities and weakens the social fabric of our country. It often discriminates on the basis of faith, gender and race; and it normalises intolerance, hatred and bigotry. Extremist ideas are often also used to try to justify terrorism. Terrorist organisations and propagandists for terror routinely draw on extreme ideologies. 4.83 The UK’s current terrorism threat level is Severe, meaning that a terrorist attack on the UK mainland is highly likely, and since 2010, over 60 British nationals have been killed by terrorists abroad. The volume and scale of the threat in the UK and overseas is increasing, and its nature has changed, notably with the emergence of ISIL and its affiliates in addition to other Islamist terrorist groups such as Al Qa’ida. ISIL is radicalising large numbers of people, often using social media, and is seeking to inspire or direct them to conduct terrorist attacks in the West or to travel to Syria and Iraq. 4.84 As the terrorist threat has changed, we have updated and strengthened our response, building on our counter-terrorism strategy known as CONTEST, which we published in 2011. For example, the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 included a wide range of measures to deal with threats linked to Syria and Iraq. We will update CONTEST in 2016 through a new National Security Council (NSC) committee on Counter-Terrorism, chaired by the Prime Minister. Preventing people from being radicalised 4.85 We will continue to take action to stop people being radicalised and drawn into extremism and terrorism. We will implement our new Counter-Extremism Strategy, published in October 2015. We will counter extremist ideologies; build partnerships with all those opposed to extremism; disrupt extremists; and build more cohesive communities. We will defend and promote the values which unite us: we are proud of these values, and they are the basis for our diverse, multi-racial, multi-faith society. 4.86 Extremism is a global challenge. We will campaign for a more robust and effective international response to refute extremist ideology and propaganda, including through the UN Secretary General’s Action Plan on Preventing Violent Extremism. We will build partners’ capacity and willingness to take action against extremist groups and to tackle the root causes of extremism, as well as its violent manifestations, particularly in countries where the UK has a direct interest. 4.87 We will continue to implement the statutory duty which we introduced in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015, which means that all local authorities, schools, colleges, universities, NHS and Foundation Trusts, police, probation services and prisons have a specific legal responsibility to prevent radicalisation. We will also expand our work to