Despite the best efforts of the MI5, there will be terrorist attacks in the United Kingdom at some point in the coming years, according to the security service’s most senior official.

Andrew Parker, who heads the MI5, told the Guardian newspaper that the threat of terrorism to Britain is “severe” and warned that multiple attacks will take place, despite the intelligence and resources available to his team.

Speaking to the Guardian this week, Parker said: “International terrorism in its latest shape, based on twisted ideology, brings terror to our streets and most of the developed world, including North America, Australia, and Turkey.

“Currently, the flavour of it is Daesh, or Isil [Islamic State], and we still have the al-Qaida brand. This is something we have to understand: it’s here to stay. It is an enduring threat and it’s at least a generational challenge for us to deal with.”

Parker, who is the first serving MI5 chief to agree to a newspaper interview in the body’s 107-year history, said plots to commit terrorist attacks in the UK are more frequent than at any point in his career. MI5 was first publicly acknowledged as actually existing in 1989, following the introduction of the Security Service Act.

“That sort of tempo of terrorist plot and attempts is concerning and it’s enduring.

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“Attacks in this country are higher than I have experienced in the rest of my career – and I’ve been working at MI5 for 33 years. The reality is that because of the investment in services like mine, the UK has got good defences. My expectation is that we will find and stop most attempts at terrorism in this country.”

However, Parker’s admission that “most” attacks can be stopped, not all, was a key part of the interview.”There will be terrorist attacks in this country,” he said. “The threat level is severe and that means likely.”

In the same interview, Parker said Russia’s use of sophisticated cyber-tactics to infiltrate the UK makes it a “prominent” threat to the country, at a time when relations between Putin and the west continue to deteriorate.

He added that the MI5 was looking to increase the diversity of its recruits in the coming years, to make agents they employ less susceptible to being exposed. This will include aiming to achieve a 50-50 gender balance and increasing the number of Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) hires.

“We need to be able to do surveillance of terrorists. We have to approach, cultivate and recruit people to be agents to work for us. That does not work so well if everybody looks like me.”