The Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, will see its numbers increase to a little under 3,500 by 2020 from around 2,500, the BBC said, citing unidentified sources. MI6 does not disclose its staff numbers, reports Reuters.
MI6 chief Alex Younger said this week that the Islamist terrorist threat to the West would endure for years to come because simply taking back territory from Islamic State will not solve the deeper global fractures which have fostered militants.
MI6, depicted by novelists as the employer of some of the most memorable fictional spies from John le Carré's George Smiley to Ian Fleming's James Bond, operates overseas and is tasked with defending Britain and its interests.