About us

Introduction to OSCT

The Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) was established in 2007 in the Home Office, in order to bring more cohesion and greater strategic capability to our fight against terrorism. OSCT celebrated its first anniversary in July 2008.

OSCT's primary responsibilities are to:

Support the Home Secretary and other Ministers in developing, directing and implementing counter-terrorist strategy (CONTEST) across Government.
Deliver aspects of the counter-terrorism strategy directly e.g. legislation, policing, borders, protective security policy.
Facilitate oversight of Security Service / police counter-terrorist operations in the UK and manage CT related crises.

Countering terrorism is a cross-Government function, involving a range of Departments and Agencies as well as the Police, who are operationally independent from Government. The Home Secretary has the lead policy responsibility within Cabinet, and is supported in this role by a Minister of State whose responsibilities include Counter-Terrorism (currently the Rt Hon. Tony McNulty MP) and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Security and Counter-Terrorism (currently Admiral the Lord West of Spithead).

The Government's strategy for countering international terrorism is known as CONTEST. An unclassified description of the strategy was published in July 2006. Its aim is to reduce the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from international terrorism so that people can go about their daily lives freely and with confidence.

CONTEST is divided into four main strands:

Pursue - Stopping terrorist attacks
Protect - Strengthening our protection against attack
Prepare - Mitigating the impact of attacks
Prevent - Stopping people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremism

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