Select Committee on Defence Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)

WEDNESDAY 26 MARCH 2003

MR ROGER CHING, MS SHEILA CLARK, CAPTAIN MARTIN PUTMAN, CHIEF CONSTABLE PAUL KERNAGHAN QPM, MR RICHARD MAWSON, COMMODORE AMJAD HUSSAIN, MR MALCOLM EASTWOOD AND MAJOR SIMON ANDREWS

  180. Generally. It worries me that you are all too well trained, apart from the Chief Constable—
  (Mr Ching) I can certainly comment from the local authority's point of view in that, as I said, we have a very meagre budget in terms of all we get is a civil defence grant and the only thing we can spend that on is the salaries of the officers employed, of which there are two and a half I believe. The experience of the city council in the past few years is we have had a number of real-time emergencies, the cost of which has been incredibly more than the budget that we have had available, and of course the opportunity to local authorities as and when that happens is you rely on the Bellwin Rules. You have got to spend as far as Portsmouth is concerned something like £240,000 before you can claim any money back, which is a tad unfair given the number of incidents we have had. I seem to recall reading in the evidence you took last time from the Secretariat that the LGA said local authorities nationally spend £10 million more on emergencies than the government makes funding available for. As you are aware, apart from the civil defence grant which is a specific grant for local authorities, the lion's share of funding comes through the formula of the SSA, and it is a brave person who says there is a specific allocation in there allocated to emergency planning.
  (Mr Eastwood) One of the problem you have got is that most of things go back through our professional bodies, CACFOA, ACPO and ASA, and that is quite a good mechanism, as I am sure you are aware because it keeps it very focused and held in. The problem is we do not get the funding allocation we would like. We have to be very pragmatic and realistic. We have all got wish lists but you have got to be realistic and when you have an incident you do not always get monies back. You expend it at the time because it has got to be done and then claw it back and see how much you can claim back. We spend a lot of time and finance dealing with initiatives from central government and other bodies and agencies belonging to central government which take up a lot of time and resource when we would like to be concentrating on other areas, but that is another story!

Mr Crausby

  181. Mr Ching, I understand that you have got £386 more in the civil defence budget for next year, which I accept would not buy the standard of meal that Andy Gilchrist is used to, but nevertheless the question of local democracy and local taxation would be a bit pointless without local decision making whilst the civil defence grant I understand is £74,500, how much do you spend in Portsmouth on emergency planning, you say £10 million more is spent nationally?
  (Mr Ching) I think the printed budget figure shows between £75,000 and £80,000 which relates to the cost of employing the emergency planning officer, his assistant and I believe a full time administrative assistant. There are an awful lot of other costs dotted around the other budgets which whether they should or should not be allocated to emergency planning is debatable, but they are not and of course the real issue is as and when the real emergencies come to light such as a fire, such as a flood, such as the fuel crisis we do our best to collate those costs and add them up, but certainly we have not been able to make any claim against the Bellwin Rules. The real issue is we spend significantly more than the present budget figure as a result of the emergencies arising.[1]

  182. It must be difficult, as anyone with any experience in local authorities will know, to make those decisions. Do you think that the lack of a statutory framework would make a difference to you? Would you welcome a statutory framework for emergency planning?
  (Mr Ching) I think it would give more clout in allocation of funds by elected members to the emergency planning process because, rightly or wrongly, emergency planning is not always seen as a priority given the priorities that local members have to face when allocating resources.

  183. This Defence Committee recommended last July that there should be a Civil Contingency Bill and it may well contain a statutory framework and we understand that a draft Bill is now being considered and that consultations are about, so what involvement have you had with these consultations, if any?
  (Mr Ching) Me personally, none whatever. I asked my emergency planning officer yesterday as to whether his organisation had been approached with regard to feeding comments into it. It is my understanding that consultation is taking place now. Certainly we would be extremely keen to feed in comments and be part and parcel of the consultation process.

  184. Have you any views on that that you would like to share with us as to what provisions the Bill should contain? We felt pretty strongly that the central funding should be put on a sounder footing. Have you any views on that?
  (Mr Ching) I certainly agree that central funding should be put on a sounder footing but I would rather get a comprehensive brief from my colleagues and put that in writing to you, if that is okay.[2]

  185. Do you expect more funding as a result of the Civil Contingencies Bill?
  (Mr Ching) I live in hope.

Chairman

  186. One thing this Committee has done is to look at emergency planning in Chicago and to see the incredible investment they have made in buildings, in technology, in communications, which is truly, truly formidable. If your budget is as miserly as it is, what scope do you have for buying additional equipment or, in the sense of a crisis, are you properly housed? There must be lots of bunkers remaining from the Second World War around. Can you give us an indication as to how you have withstood (or have you?) the pressure from commercial organisations who are very, very keen to sell you not just equipment but communications facilities and equipment that they say is the answer to all of your prayers and prayers you have not yet had. Give us some indication of the pressure you are under.
  (Mr Ching) It is very easy to say to commercial people, "Sorry, we do not want your products because we have not got the funding", but the fact of the matter, as I said earlier, and I think it is common across local authorities generally, is that emergency planning is not treated as a top priority. If you take an authority like Portsmouth which became a unitary authority in 1997 we have got a net budget of some £200 million of which half goes to education and a quarter goes to social services, so you are talking about pretty small beer in terms of the rest of the services. There are always competing bids for additional funding in the budget round. There have been bids for emergency planning in the past but members have chosen not to allocate money to that budget. As to what the effect of that is, as and when an emergency arises you are dependent on using equipment from other agencies. I have to say that that has worked with the emergencies that we have had to face as a result of close co-operation with our colleagues. That is basically it.

  187. So do you have dedicated facilities, albeit not as perfect as you would like, where your team would prepare for a major crisis?
  (Mr Ching) I think we have got a pretty good set of facilities here. We have got the staff but we have also got the emergency planning room which is directly across the corridor with all the facilities that are required. When the exercises take place within Portsmouth and indeed the real thing, we have got a whole suite of rooms here which is made available for the different agencies, for their separate briefings, combining in the emergency planning process in the emergency planning room as and when is necessary, so I think we are pretty well accommodated as far as that particular issue is concerned.

  188. Without revealing where the alternative location is, should there be a major attack which engulfs this part of the city, have you alternative accommodation to go to where you would have adequate facilities to undertake the onerous tasks that your emergency planners are going to have to take?
  (Mr Ching) Yes, we have. It is dependent on the type of emergency and the scale of things. We would be very happy to provide specific details of that to you.[3]

  189. We would love to look at the facilities so get the cleaner out and we will go in in the few minutes we have.
  (Mr Ching) It has been done.

  190. That is good. Thank you.
  (Mr Eastwood) Can I make a point. There is an issue here, which I am sure in your investigations and inquiries you have realised, which is over a number of years emergency planning was wound down to a very severe degree and we are now playing catch up. The problem is that in the local authority and the agencies represented around this table, over a period of time, the funding was removed and the people and expertise were removed because the threat had gone away virtually. It came back with a vengeance and now there is this element of it that has got to be done and done now. We look towards a plethora of different emergency planning departments, it needs centralising in respect of making sure it is done and done properly and adequately funded.

Mr Hancock

  191. Strangely enough, my next series of questions follows on from that and it is about the Government's ambition to set up some regional organisation under the government offices on that sort of basis. All of you and all of us who represent this area have seen the police budget increased by 25% on the precept.
  (Mr Kernaghan) I think it is actually more than that.

  192. City council tax is up 20%, the Hampshire increase was?
  (Mr Eastwood) For us, 4.8%

  193. No, the council tax went up 20%
  (Mr Eastwood) More than that, but around about that area.

  194. There is not a single mention in any of those things about the importance of simple preparedness, not a single line from any of you that mentions that. I think that is something we ought to address collectively as a unit and next year to establish a link between what people are paying and this element because I think people are right to question it. How do you all feel about the idea of having a Regional Resilience team, which sounds very nice but if our efforts to get money out of the Government Office of the South East for local authority deals at the moment is anything to go by, it is a pretty depressing set up. I am curious about how you would all feel about having to respond to a Resilience team based in Guildford.
  (Mr Kernaghan) The first thing I would say about spending the budget, I have always stated that I provide a full spectrum capability as a police force and that is not just about officers on the beat, it is not just about child protection, it is responding hopefully to any emergency that comes along. Performance indicators focus my attention in certain areas and professionally I have always felt I have a responsibility for plane crashes or whatever, and people expect Hampshire Constabulary to investigate that with colleagues from elsewhere and look after the relatives, etc. If it is a major disaster we would work to the centre. If it is a criminal dimension or a terrorist dimension we would work to the Cabinet Office briefing room. It may be on such a scale, and some of your colleagues have alluded to the size and scale. I would simply ask the question what would a regional tier add in terms of value? If it adds value, I would welcome it enthusiastically but if it is simply another bureaucratic level I would not. If I am being asked a question by a senior civil servant in London, I do not want a middle-ranking civil servant in Guildford to be asking me the same question, particularly if we are in a crisis situation. If it adds value, great, but it has got to be thought through. Are we going to operate on a regional basis or on occasion are we going to go directly through to national government? If it is a national issue we will go to COBRA. We have also set up a police information centre to co-ordinate the Police Service's response. I have to ask the question, I have not had demonstrated to me what value a regional tier would add in terms of my Service's operational response.

  195. I think that is very helpful.
  (Mr Kernaghan) I do not speak on behalf of the Association and I would not want to, but I think they would be asking the same question. If it is going to do something for them, they would welcome it but it has got to be demonstrated. I would not want somebody saying because of other reasons let us have a regional tier. It has got to add value to our operational response.

  196. Have they asked for your opinion?
  (Mr Ching) I have not been asked personally and Hampshire has not been asked whether there should be a regional tier or not.
  (Mr Eastwood) What we are frightened of is another tier of meetings, another tier of bureaucracy coming in where we have already got enough of that. We want to deal and get on with things. We do collaborate on a regional basis anyway. I think that is echoed across the majority of people represented across this table here. That collaboration is extremely helpful and valuable. We do not need the bureaucracy that goes with some of the elements that come forward where you have got to attend another series of meetings and it causes a stumbling block.
  (Mr Mawson) From the Ambulance Service's point of view we recognise that there is tension between traditional planning for different locally based incidents moving upwards and perhaps in terms of the CBRN there is a national perspective or even a regional perspective. I would echo the point Paul made about added value. Anything that slows things down or would create a greater bureaucracy in the system is less than helpful. One of the things that is a concern from my point of view in terms of the programmes being introduced, because although there is a strong public health link, there does not seem to be such a strong link from the NHS specifically. If that is going to be developed that is one area I would wish to have looked at again.

  197. Can I ask Sheila, what do you think should be the role of the Regional Director of Public Health in this area?
  (Ms Clark) There is a strong link through the Public Health Network and the Regional Director of Public Health at the Government Office for the South East. In fact, we are seeing some added value from that. Specialist aspects of public health knowledge and expertise is not such that economies of scale would mean that you would want that in every primary care trust in the country. It would be wasteful and also very difficult for that number of people to remain the specialists and experts that they need to be. So from our point of view the potential is already there for added value with the expertise and knowledge that we get through the Public Health Networks. I do however agree, having been involved in a number of exercises and indeed live incidents, that the existence of another tier which is either performance monitoring or offering advice on management of situations needs to be very carefully thought out.
  (Commodore Hussain) I would like to add a comment from a slightly different perspective from other colleagues here who perhaps look across a county whereas someone like me looks very much closer to home. We have a regional organisation through 145 Brigade in Aldershot which marshals, if you like, all the military resources in the area in providing support to civil emergencies and that, I think, from our side is hugely important. We could not marshal those resources in any other way, they play a vital role and I believe it has been strengthened in doing that. There might be a difference in perception from services that already operate at a county level or an area level and those where it is pockets of service which we provide all based locally.

  198. It would be helpful, Commodore, if we were given a breakdown in writing of what you can call on from the brigade at Aldershot in the way of facilities that would be available to them if you chose to use them.
  (Commodore Hussain) We would be delighted to do that. I have someone here from 145 Brigade and I have asked that he be available to cover some of those angles with you this afternoon where an opportunity does exist on our tour. Perhaps if at the end of that you would come back to me or him on the specifics we will cover it in writing to the Secretariat.

Chairman

  199. I am sure that request will be examined by at least eight levels of bureaucracy between here and beyond Guildford. I hope we will see a document eventually. One question supplementing what Mr Hancock said, where we have been sitting in London looking down at different tiers of potential response, the picture is not always as pretty as it might look here. I am sure you see yourselves as incredibly professional people who can deal with almost anything on the basics of your training and with the British capability of adjusting to crises in a way which we know very well, but other authorities do not reach your level of competence and cannot and never will for a variety of reasons, so why I am more of a centralist than a localist is that there ought to be levels above so that should there be a crisis that you cannot cope with, and if the citizens of your city do not want to spend time on you acquiring the expertise, that those who would have expertise in the areas you are not able to cover would then be able to supplement swiftly, if not usurp, your position or at least sit behind those who are making decisions. Can you see any advantage of people from central government in the military sphere, the police sphere, supplementary specialists, Porton Down, which you would not want to have deployed in every region? There could be teams who could be called upon very quickly to come to your assistance to allow you at this level to discharge your functions more effectively than you are able to at the moment.
  (Commodore Hussain) I know from the military that those teams exist already and we have mechanisms for drawing on them through the MACA framework and I think all of us are aware of that.
  (Mr Kernaghan) If I could echo that. There is a mechanism. The Navy by definition is a national capability, etc, but there are mechanisms whereby we can do it. We go to the Cabinet Office in essence and Porton Down and, equally, Aldermaston, will be directed and told to give us specialist support, so that mechanism is there. It is about professional co-operation with the other services, particularly the police, etc, we do not have a national structure so it is about co-operation between colleagues and there is a wider debate, there is a very controversial debate one could have. As I say, in relation to specialist support you could not have it based regionally. Porton Down is one unique facility but there is a mechanism where I can task or, equally, Malcolm if he detects something we would together get the message to Porton Down and we would get a response.


1   Note from Witness: The full costs including accommodation and support changes but excluding training amount to £113,000 per annum. Back

2   Note from Witness: It should be based upon a risk assessment of the total amount of risks faced by the authority as opposed to the present allocation system based on area and population. An example to clarify this is that the funding given to Portsmouth with its Naval Base, Ferry Port and urban density etc is less than that given to Bath or Norfolk where there are little or no risks. Unitary Authorities also have a wider range of functions and responsibilities they need to carry out compared with County Councils. Back

3   The alternative accommodation is provided for at a City Council owned Sports Centre. A Memorandum of Understanding exists for providing accommodation at neighbouring Council Offices. Arrangements are also made with Portsmouth Football Club at an early stage. Back


 
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