Former Conservative minister Baroness Warsi hits out at new anti-terror plans

Baroness Warsi has blasted the government's new anti-terror proposals as being an "attack" both on British Muslims and British values.

Writing for the Conservative Home website, the Baroness, who now sits in the House of Lords, said that "authoritarian counter-terrorism strategies have undermined our values, yet not made us feel any safer".

She writes: "The plans felt like an attack on the very values we were professing to promote.

Baroness Warsi has previously clashed with Tory leadership on Muslim issues. She sensationally quit the last government in August 2014, after she described its position on the Israel-Gaza conflict as being "morally indefensible". Previously, she had been a Foreign Office minister and the Conservative Party Chairman.

"Let’s not legislate for tolerance by being intolerant," she argues in today's piece, claiming that the nation could be poised to "lose a generation of British Muslims to a tormented identity crisis" if we don't "relentlessly pursue a very British Islam".

She concludes: "The ultimate defence of freedom is freedom itself"