Terror threat

Children radicalised by parents are taken into care amid ISIS national security fears

Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner for specialist operations at the Metropolitan police and head of national counterterrorism policing says the moves show the scale of the threat of homegrown Islamic extremism.

In an interview assistant commissioner Rowley said it represents an unprecedented problem and that this is the first time national security has become an issue for family courts.

He told the Sunday Times: "The most extreme cases that end up ... with children being made wards of courts or care proceedings is real tricky stuff because we've never had to deal with national security issues before in a family court ... We had never done [a case] before 2015 but ... the fact that it's [now] into 40 or 50 cases is illustrative of the scale of the problem.