Police officers have been given beefed-up powers to stop and question suspected spies from hostile states as part of the response to the Salisbury novichok attack.
Officers will be able to stop, question, search and detain individuals as they travel through UK ports to determine whether they are involved in malicious activities on behalf of states such as Russia.
The Home Office said that the measures were designed to help identify and combat hostile state activity in the wake of the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian double agent, and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. The government has blamed the attack on the Russian state.
The new powers, contained in the 2019 counterterrorism and security bill, come into force
