George Osborne has said the government will provide all necessary support required by the security services to prevent a terrorist attack in the UK, in the wake of the Paris shootings.
The chancellor told BBC Breakfast: “This is the national priority. We will put the resources in, whatever the security services need they will get.”
“We need to give all the resources and all the legislation needed to protect us and to protect our freedoms,” he added.
Mr Osborne's pledge follows a call from the head of MI5 for new powers to combat the possibility of Islamist terror attacks similar to the Charlie Hebdo murders.
Speaking after the attack on the satirical magazine, which claimed the lives of 12 people, Andrew Parker warned of a "growing gap between the increasingly challenging threat and the decreasing availability of capabilities to address it".
He added that while three UK terror plots had been successfully disrupted over recent months, "we cannot hope to stop everything".
Intelligence and Security Committee chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind echoed the warning, telling the Today programme: “The evidence suggests that the terrorist threat in the United Kingdom is as serious as it has ever been.”