UK Prime Minister David Cameron said that UK authorities are going to introduce a new scheme to enable parents to apply directly to get their child’s passport canceled to prevent travel.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — British parents will have the right to cancel their children’s passports to prevent them from traveling to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIL) terrorist group, UK Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday.

"I know how worried some people are that their children might turn to this ideology – and even seek to travel to Syria or Iraq. So I can announce today we are going to introduce a new scheme to enable parents to apply directly to get their child’s passport canceled to prevent travel," Cameron said in a speech at a school in Birmingham, as quoted by The Guardian.

Cameron’s Monday Birmingham speech sets out his five-year counter-extremism strategy due to be published in full this fall.

Islamic State is a religious fundamentalist jihadist group that seized large areas in Iraq and Syria in 2014, proclaiming a caliphate on the areas under its control.

Due to the group’s appeal to disaffected young people via intensive propaganda on social networking websites ISIL has recruited thousands of Westerners to join its ranks

According to the latest data from the UK Metropolitan Police, some 700 UK citizens are estimated to have left for Syria to fight alongside jihadists. According to British Intelligence services, the actual figure is likely to be three times higher.