But he said the UK Border Agency did not appear to have enough staff checking arrivals and he raised concerns about passport checks in Europe.

Mr Noble said Britain did a good job of screening identification documents against Interpol's database of lost and stolen travel documents. The same was true for Switzerland, France, the United States, Spain and Romania.

But he criticised other countries who, he said, were not doing what they should and could be doing to check the authenticity of passports and other identity documents. There were 31 million stolen identity documents on Interpol’s database for border officials to check against. We know terrorists use fraudulent documents, he said; every country in the world should deploy the highest possible level of screening.

Mr Noble said he was very concerned at the recruitment of people for terrorist training in Somalia and other countries where the rule of law was largely absent. And the inability of authorities to get to the sources of extremist websites was a huge weakness.

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Christopher Wyld
Photo: Stephen Simpson/LNP