Ken McCallum appointed new head of MI5

Ken McCallum has been appointed the new director general of MI5, succeeding Sir Andrew Parker who retires next month.

McCallum, who is currently deputy director general, led counter terrorism investigations during the London 2012 Olympic Games and MI5's response to the attempted assassination of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in 2018. In total, he has worked for MI5 for almost 25 years.

His work on terrorism has included both Northern Ireland-related terrorism and later countering Islamist extremist terrorism. McCallum also led the security service’s strategic response to the series of terror attacks that took place in 2017 and has also worked on cyber security.

Parker has said that he is ‘the right person to take MI5 forward’ as the country ‘deals with the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic’.