King's Speech 2026: National Security Bill

Wednesday, 13 May 2026 12:33

“[My Government] … will respond to the horrific tragedy in Southport with measures to protect the British people from extreme violence, and honour the victims, the injured and their families” The UK faces national security threats that are evolving and escalating. Longstanding threats such as Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorism endure. Foreign powers are increasingly deploying new hostile tactics in our communities and on our streets,...Request free trial

“[My Government] … will respond to the horrific tragedy in Southport with measures to protect the British people from extreme violence, and honour the victims, the injured and their families”

The UK faces national security threats that are evolving and escalating. Longstanding threats such as Islamist and extreme right-wing terrorism endure. Foreign powers are increasingly deploying new hostile tactics in our communities and on our streets, including using proxies to do their dirty work.
But we face new risks too. Violence-fixated individuals. Cyber attacks on an unprecedented scale. These threats are not atomised but inter-related, and all of them are enabled and multiplied by the online environment.
To give ourselves the tools to tackle them and keep this country safe, we must bolster our defences through a new National Security Bill.

What does the Bill do?

The National Security Bill will make the UK a harder target for states, dangerous groups and individuals seeking to attack the UK.

The Bill will create new offences to protect the UK from the proliferation of extreme violence online, amend existing legislation to reform the cyber landscape and close gaps within our state threats legislation, aligning it more closely with terrorism legislation.

It will enhance our ability to counter the full range of threats waged against us by providing law enforcement and security services with new, stronger powers to keep our country safe – online and offline.

The Bill will:

Criminalise the creation and sharing of the most harmful violent material to stop the spread of content that glorifies, trivialises, or normalises serious violence. The Bill will enable law enforcement to disrupt individuals who are encouraging violence, and reduce the circulation and supply of this material online. The Bill will take a proportionate approach that protects freedom of expression and legitimate public-interest activity while ensuring that those who create,

share, or use extreme violence content to encourage or glorify violence can be held to account.

Criminalise planning a mass casualty attack, closing a clear gap in the current law by capturing cases where a lone individual undertakes preparatory steps towards a mass casualty attack without an ideological motive. This is not currently covered by existing conspiracy, attempt, or terrorism offences. By closing this gap, the Government will strengthen operational partners' ability to disrupt the most serious threats posed by violence-fixated individuals, and to intervene before such plans result in real-world harm. The offence will contain appropriate safeguards to ensure the mass casualty offence captures only those who pose a genuine risk to the public.
Reform the cyber landscape, including by updating the Computer Misuse Act 1990. This will provide law enforcement with updated powers and capabilities, so they remain effective in the digital age. This will include the creation of a Cyber Crime Risk Order to place robust controls on the behaviours of cyber criminals, alongside new powers to search individuals believed to be concealing evidence on behalf of suspects. It will also unlock the power of cyber security professionals to better enable them to secure computer systems. It will also seek to tackle the pervasive threat to the UK economy and businesses, posed by ruthless cyber criminals
Consolidate the Government's approach to countering state threats to align more closely with the approach to countering terrorism. This includes making the most serious state threat offences eligible for an extended determinate sentence (EDS) and adding polygraph testing as an available licence condition for state threat offenders.
Complement the separate Tackling State Threats Bill, where we are introducing a new state threats proscription-like tool to combat hostile powers and their proxies.

Territorial extent and application

The majority of the Bill will extend and apply to England and Wales. The Government is considering the extension of measures to Scotland and Northern Ireland with the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.

Key facts

In a review following the Southport attack, conducted by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation (Jonathan Hall KC), gaps were identified in current legislation in relation to lone individuals who plan mass casualty attacks without an ideological motive. An offence of planning a mass casualty attack is needed to ensure that individuals who plan an attack can be stopped and held to account.

Children frequently encounter violent content online, often unintentionally; TikTok and X are common exposure points. Ofcom research in 2025 found that children aged 13-15 may be most likely to encounter violent content online; 16-17 year olds may be at greater risk of encountering more extreme violent content and be more desensitised to such content. Independent research in 2024 found that TikTok is the social media platform where children are most likely to encounter violent content.

Adults as well as children express concern over viewing violent content. Ofcom research shows that 74 per cent of adults (alongside 53 per cent of children) have expressed high levels of concern over content depicting or encouraging violence or injury existing online.

Gore sites (websites that host graphic and violent content such as cartel violence, beheadings or extreme animal cruelty) attract UK traffic. The top 24 gore websites, primarily in English, collectively have an average of 1 million monthly visits from the UK, with the most popular sites drawing up to 334,000 UK visits per month, with spikes around real-world violent events; audiences skew young and male.

Five per cent (469) of Prevent referrals from April 2024 to March 2025 were due to concerns regarding 'fascination with extreme violence or mass casualty attacks', where no other ideology was listed. This category recorded a large increase in referrals in the latest quarter (January to March 2025), rising by 240 per cent compared with the previous quarter (from 82 to 279).

Cyber crime is significant, financing hostile actors at a huge cost to the UK taxpayer and businesses. Recent industry and DSIT research estimates significant cyber crime attacks cost UK businesses £14.7 billion in 2024. In 2025 a single cyber incident is estimated to have cost the UK economy £1.9 billion, the costliest cyber attack in our history. Frontline public services are also subjected to serious cyber attacks: three London councils were hit by an attack that led to “weeks of disruption” to services in late 2025.

Security partners support stronger sentencing and post-release arrangements for state threat offenders, to manage the risks they pose,

better protect the public and deter attacks from states and their proxies. This is particularly important considering the recent rise in arrests and convictions under the National Security Act 2023 , and states' increased use of entities or individuals to carry out hostile activity on their behalf. In 2025, the Director General of MI5 said that the UK had seen a 35 per cent increase in state threat activity from the previous year. Over the same period, MI5 had tracked more than twenty potentially lethal Iran-backed plots.

In his previous role as Interim Independent Prevent Commissioner, Lord Lord Anderson of Ipswich KBE KC, said “While terrorism is often presented as a uniquely serious threat, crimes falling outside its definition can bear many of its hallmarks: grievances reinforced in online echo chambers, victims chosen at random or for their shock value, extreme or mass violence, desire for notoriety or revenge…Some of the risk factors, including social isolation, mental ill-health and the widespread availability of violent and extremist content online, appear to be on a steadily worsening trajectory.”