Security chiefs have been handed a new £100million anti-terror fund to track British lone-wolf extremists, George Osborne has revealed.

The Chancellor said the cash had been handed over 'in the last few weeks' amid growing fears over the number of radicals going to fight in Iraq and Syria.

Mr Osborne also pledged to provide MI5 and MI6 with 'all the resources and all the legislation' they need to prevent a terrorist atrocity in Britain.

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The Chancellor pledged to provide MI5 and MI6 with 'all the resources and all the legislation' they need

The revelation comes in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in Paris on Wednesday, when two gunmen killed 11 journalists for insulting Islam.

In response to the attack on the Paris-based satirical magazine, Mr Osborne said the threat to the UK was 'severe' – but insisted security chiefs would get whatever they needed.

He said: 'It's clearly a big challenge for all countries including Britain and we face a terrorist threat. We have a severe terrorist threat; that is our national state of readiness.

'We have put a huge amount of planning and effort, from the police, from the security services, from the Government into anticipating what might try and happen, stopping some of these attacks and of course we have been successfully doing that over the last year.

'In the last few weeks we have put extra money, over a hundred million pounds into specifically monitoring people who are going to conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

'These sort of self-starting terrorists who get their ideas off the internet and then go and want to perpetrate horrendous crimes, so we are putting a huge effort in.

'As the director general of MI5 said over the last 24 hours, that is the threat we face and we face a threat from more complex plots.'

Armed British police patrol St Pancras station in London, where the Eurostar train runs to Paris

Mr Osborne said the security services would get all the resources they needed to keep people safe

Mr Osborne promised that the security services would get 'all the resources and all the legislation' necessary to prevent a terrorist attack in the UK.

'We have got to be vigilant, we have got to have the resources there and my commitment is very clear. This is the national priority. We will put the resources in, whatever the security services need they will get because they do a heroic job on our behalf.

'They often don't get praise, they don't often appear on sofas like this to talk about their work but they are absolutely in the front line with the police dealing with this threat and they will get the support they need and indeed in the last few weeks they have got that support.'

'Our national threat level is severe and that means we assess independently, it is not the politicians who make this assessment but the experts make this assessment, that an attack is highly likely.

'So, we have to be ready for that. We don't have specific intelligence that an attack is imminent or else we would increase the threat level, but we think it is highly likely and we have to be prepared. We have had terrible incidents on our streets.'

Director General of MI5 Andrew Parker warned that Islamist radicals were plotting terror attacks on the UK

Mr Osborne's remarks came amid warnings that amid warnings that the threat to Britain was now 'as serious as it has ever been' and the security services needed more powers to monitor fanatics.

Former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of the joint intelligence committee, said the security services must have the power to intercept communications between suspected terrorists in order to prevent future attacks.

He said: 'What is emerging in Paris is that the two individuals responsible for the terrible massacre at Charlie Hebdo, may have been linked to Al Qaida in Yemen.

'Now they must have ben communicating with people in the Yemen over the last few days, over the last few weeks.

'The highly important objective is to enable the intelligence agencies in Britain, France and other democracies to be able to get hold of these communications to try and prevent incidents of this kind.'

There is also growing concern about the threat posed by ISIS fights returning to the UK.

Radicalisation expert Shiraz Maher this morning told the BBC's Today programme that strict blasphemy laws in Muslim countries abroad were inflaming tensions in the West.

He said stricter controls on what could be said about Islam and the prophet Muhammad 'affect some European Muslim's tolerance of satire'.

Earlier, the Today programme heard from a number of British Muslims in High Wycombe who expressed anger at the journalists Charlie Hebdo for lampooning Islam.

One Pakistani gentleman, Sajjad Haidyer, told the programme that the murdered journalists were 'not innocent'.

He said: 'If the people make his cartoons or something else, they are hurting my heart. You can insult the peoples, you can insult me, you can insult anybody else – but not god, not the prophet Muhammad – we are not allowing that.

'If they are doing that, that will happen again and again.'

The Chancellor's remarks came as members of the French gendarmerie surrounded the two main suspects of the Paris massacre to Dammartin-en-Goele, north east of Paris

Downing Street said checks at ports and Eurostar terminals would be stepped up in the wake of the Paris attacks

He added: 'Some of these people were not innocent. The editor who makes the cartoons. He has no right to make cartoons or the prophet. He has no right to say Islam is bad.'

Another elderly Muslim man said: 'Democracy doesn't mean you can go and insult anybody. Insulting somebody, you shouldn't allow that. What are they achieving with the cartoon – what is the point?'