Cameron holds security talks over defence of Britain in wake of Charlie Hebdo attacks.....................

David Cameron is to meet security and intelligence chiefs on Monday to discuss whether further action should be taken to defend Britain against terrorist attacks similar to the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

The Prime Minister, who has travelled to Paris to join a rally in memory of the murdered journalists, said that Britain faces a “very similar threat” from fanatical extremism and that it was important to learn the lessons from events in France.

The head of MI5, Andrew Parker, has warned that a group of core al Qaida terrorists in Syria is planning “mass casualty attacks” against Western targets, and there have been calls for the Prime Minister to revive the communications data bill – branded a “snooper’s charter” by opponents – to grant security services more powers to monitor suspects’ communications.

In a broadcast interview in Paris ahead of the rally, Mr Cameron said: “There’s always things to learn and it’s always important to look at what happened in France and think through those scenarios and other scenarios like them: how we’d respond, how well prepared we are.

“I’ll be meeting with security and intelligence chiefs on Monday morning to once again go through all of those questions and to make sure we do everything we can to in order to ensure we’re as well prepared as we can be to deal with this threat.

“It’s a threat that has been with us for many years and I believe will be with us for many years to come.”

Mr Cameron said that he had travelled to Paris “to show solidarity with the French people and the French government after the appalling attacks in Paris”.

He said: “We’re here to demonstrate that we all stand for the values of democracy, freedom, freedom of expression and tolerance.

“We in Britain face a very similar threat – a threat of fanatical extremism - and we have to confront that in every way we can.

“That means maintaining strong security, investing in our security services, it means being very vigilant.

“But it also means confronting the poisonous narrative of Islamist extremism wherever we find it. Whether in universities or schools or our prisons or throughout our society, we’ll only defeat this threat if we use all of the means at our disposal to confront and defeat it.”

He added: “If we make sure we have strong security, confront the poisonous ideology of Islamist extremism, we make sure we all play our part then I believe we can defeat it, because in the end the values that we stand for – of democracy, freedom of speech, of tolerance – these are not values that make us weak, they are values that make our societies, our economies, our countries, they’re values that make us strong.”