Children with extreme right-wing ideologies are “getting substantially younger”, police have revealed after 19 youngsters were arrested last year.

       Matt Jukes, national head of counter-terrorism policing, said there was a “real concern” about a shift in the terror threat towards a younger cohort of self-radicalised people with extreme right-wing ideologies who are moving from discussing and sharing terrorist material to actually planning attacks.

       The Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner revealed under-18s now make up about one in eight terrorism-related arrests.

       A total of 20 children were arrested in connection with terrorism offences in 2021, he said, 19 of whom were linked to extreme right wing ideologies.

       The youngest was a 13-year-old boy arrested in Darlington in July who was later convicted of possessing information useful to a terrorist.

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       Mr Jukes said the youngsters being arrested were predominantly boys aged 14 or 15, some of whom were being targeted via online gaming messaging and propaganda videos presenting as first person shooter games.

       He added that while some may imagine “this was all aligned to disenfranchised, poorer, disengaged white communities” the evidence actually showed a “much more complex picture” which included children who were middle class and well educated.

       He told a counter-terrorism media briefing at New Scotland Yard: “We see the threat from extreme right-wing groups principally being in the space of the inspired radicalised self-initiated terrorists.

       “But this is a group which is substantially younger than we have seen in the past and than we see in other cohorts.

       “People who are spending a great deal of time online day and night living their lives in that space, building friendships and relationships in that digital world.”

       He added: “We are certainly seeing this is very heavily dominated by the online community and gaming is present absolutely both as a messaging platform and reflected in some of the propaganda.

       “The videos produced by some of the extreme right-wing groups very much pick up the tropes and presentation of first-person shooter games. You can see they are presenting something which is very attractive potentially to a vulnerable young person, young boy who spends a lot of time gaming.

       “I want to be really clear: there is a picture here of young people who are spending a great deal of time discussing, sharing and exchanging material online but we are absolutely seeing some of that shift to plans to carry out terrorist attacks.”

       In the year up to the end of 2021, just over 40 per cent of arrests by counter-terrorism police related to suspected extreme right-wing terrorism, the police chief said.

       Police foiled four late-stage terror plots in that same year, three of which were related to extreme right-wing terrorism.

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