Independent Scotland 'would have better intelligence services than MI5', says Alex Salmond
Alex Salmond has claimed that an independent Scotland would have a better intelligence service than the UK.
The SNP's Westminster spokesman on foreign affairs also suggested that the Belgian authorities did not have the kind of close relations with their immigrant communities that would have helped them capture fugitive terrorist Salah Abdeslam.
Appearing on his weekly phone-in show on LBC radio, the former First Minister several times stated that intelligence north of the border would be better than that offered by MI5.
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"Scotland would have better intelligence, incidentally, and the reason we have better intelligence is you’ve got contacts with your immigrant communities," he said.
He contrasted what he described as the close relations north of the border with the difficulties faced by the Belgian intelligence services in the run-up to yesterday's atrocity in Brussels.
"Your intelligence is only as good as the information you’re given – why did the Belgian security service have such difficulty? They’ve had terrorists in the last five, six months fleeing Paris living in a district of Brussels without the information of where they were and only in the last few days tried to grab them.
"That couldn’t happen in Glasgow, I don’t think it would happen in London incidentally – and congratulations to the security service in foiling the seven plots – but what we’ve got to understand is the radicalisation of our communities and the danger to intelligence is not getting the information and trust from your immigrant communities to allow the authorities to act."
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