Gordon Brown yesterday called for better cross-border sharing of intelligence on terror as his new security chief warned the fight against extremism in Britain could last as long as 15 years.

Gordon Brown yesterday called for better cross-border sharing of intelligence on terror as his new security chief warned the fight against extremism in Britain could last as long as 15 years.

The warning from Admiral Sir Alan West, former head of the Royal Navy, coincided with the disclosure from Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, former MI5 chief, that more than 100 suspects were awaiting trial in Britain for terrorist-related offences.

Today, Sir Alan is due to give an interim report to the Prime Minister on his investigation into NHS overseas recruitment following the terror incidents in London and Glasgow in which all the suspects were revealed to have been medical staff.

Last night, Indian police said they had seized CDs containing material about the Islamist conflicts in Chechnya and Iraq from the home of two Indian suspects in the alleged UK car bomb plot. A senior police official said officers had found the CDs in the family home of Kafeel Ahmed, 27, and his brother Sabeel, 26, both arrested by police in Britain.

On Saturday, Bilal Abdullah, an Iraqi doctor, became the first person to appear in court charged in connection with the suspected car bomb plot. He was remanded in custody by City of Westminster Magistrates. The 27-year-old, who was arrested after a blazing Jeep was driven into Glasgow Airport a week ago, is accused of conspiring to cause explosions.

On the same day, around 1500 people attended the Scotland United Against Terror event in Glasgow's George Square organised by the local Islamic community.

Alex Salmond, the First Minister, has announced that baggage handler John Smeaton, 31, from Erskine in Renfrewshire and other members of the public who intervened at Glasgow Airport together with emergency workers at the scene, are to be honoured with an official reception in the city.

Mr Brown told Sky News that the current security "watchlist" system should be expanded to create a better flow of information between countries about "the potential recruitment or the actual recruitment" activities of terrorist groups.

"I want the system that we are trying to expand between Europe, a system whereby we know who are potential terrorist suspects, we expand that to other countries in the world and then we may have a better idea of people coming in to different countries, whether as professional recruits or in other ways, about what the dangers and the risks we face are.

"It is very important that we tighten this up and it is something we are looking at as a matter of urgency," he said.

However David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said while the Conservatives welcomed the PM's sentiments they were undermined by the revelation that Britain was not checking potential immigrants against an existing global database of terror suspects.

"Yet again, it is not the government's policy that is the problem, it is their lack of competence in delivering on that policy that is the problem, which is threatening our security," he said.

Mr Davis was referring to a claim by Ronald Noble of Interpol, who was quoted yesterday as saying: "We have the passport numbers, fingerprints and photos of more than 11,000 suspected terrorists on our database but the UK does not check it against immigrants coming into the country or foreign nationals it has arrested. The guys detained last week could be wanted, arrested or convicted anywhere in the world and the UK would not know."

Earlier, Sir Alan said preventing people being recruited to extremism was central to beating terrorism and called for some un-British "snitching" from the public to help the cause. The Falklands hero also launched an attack on the term "war on terror", saying: "I hate that expression. It's not like a war in that sense at all. It demeans the value of a war and it demeans the value of a lot of things."

Sir Alan, who conceded the government was "not getting our message across properly", said he did not like the concentration on the Muslim community. "We've got to be very careful. The threat is to our British way of life and all of our British people," he said.