Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-259)
WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003
RT HON
NICK RAYNSFORD
MP, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
DAVID VENESS
CBE QPM AND MR
ZYG KOWALCZYK
240. So the bulk of the practical work which
you report through to the Cabinet is done by the Forum?
(Mr Raynsford) Through the Forum, but, above all,
by its committees and working parties of which there are a number.
David Veness chairs the blue light one, Zyg Kowalczyk chairs that
one related to CBRN and there are others related to health issues,
to local authorities and so on. There are a number which are doing
the detailed scrutiny of the work needed to ensure resilience
in each of those sectors.[3]
Chairman
241. Part of Mr Howarth's question related to
transparency. Now, I know that a balance has to be struck between
the requirements of informing the public as to how your system
is operating and obviously the need for secrecy. Are there any
rules you adapt as to how much information is divulged, whether
you have got it right and whether you give out more information?
(Mr Raynsford) It is a very difficult issue and one
that we spend quite a lot of time considering. It was put to us
some months ago that there would be some value in circulating
to the whole population of London a small leaflet setting out
certain contingency arrangements. Our conclusion was that this
would not actually be helpful because our whole approach to planning
has been to accept a very wide range of potential risks and the
need for generic responses. Because of that wide range, the number
of eventualities that would have to be taken into account would
make any leaflet either over-complex and confusing or potentially
misleading. Therefore, we formed the view that the right way to
communicate to the public is to have in place the best possible
arrangements for fast-time communication in the event of an emergency
so that people will have access to information for a range of
different possible sources. The communications sub-committee of
the London Resilience Forum has been giving a great deal of attention
to that as well as ensuring that there is a certain amount of
upfront information through our London Prepared website and through
the Mayor of London's regular magazine which is published every
two months which does contain a regular column related to London
resilience issues.
242. What about the people who are not very
familiar with getting into a website or do not read anything that
the Mayor decides to put out? That must be a fairly sizeable number
of the London population, so what happens to them and in the event
of a crisis, do they have to run and follow people to wherever?
(Mr Raynsford) The whole strategy is based on using
a range of different media and obviously the broadcast and published
media are crucially important to people's communication. Some
may not be available in the event of a particular crisis, therefore,
we cannot depend on any individual single source of information
and there has to be a range of options. In addition to the broadcast
and published media, there are of course the emergency services,
the local authorities themselves who have means of communication,
and there is considerable scope through the use of modern technology,
through text-messaging, for example. In the business community
a very sophisticated text-messaging communication system is being
developed to ensure that business can be contacted in a hurry
in an emergency with appropriate messages. All of this is being
overseen by the communications sub-committee.
243. And you think you have got the balance
right?
(Mr Raynsford) No, I do not say we have got it right,
no, but we are putting a lot of thought into it because we want
to get the right balance to ensure that good information is made
available via a variety of different means so that in the event
of failure of any one, the system does not collapse and to ensure
that that gives up-to-date, accurate information of what to do
in the specific circumstances, understanding that in the event
of a chemical or biological attack, quite different advice would
need to be given to that as against any traditional terrorist
incident. That is why, as I say, it is probably not helpful to
circulate written literature which might be actually confusing
or, at worst, counter-productive.
Syd Rapson
244. Minister, could I just ask for clarification
here. The Civil Contingencies Committee has three sub-committees
under it, which is the CBRN committee, the London resilience one
which you chair and the UK resilience one. Now, that has changed,
has it not, so that it is now DOP(IT)(R), which is chaired by
the Home Secretary, which will now control those three sub-committees?
(Mr Raynsford) The Civil Contingencies Committee is
still in existence and the two DOP(IT) committees exist in parallel.
They have replaced the UK Resilience Committee and the CBRN Committee
which existed previously, but that is not my responsibility. My
responsibility is specifically the London one which still remains
in existence and which I described as the channel between the
Forum, which is the main body bringing together all the partners
in the London resilience operation, and the Civil Contingencies
Committee itself.
245. Have you got a large drawing of the committee
structure? I do not need it now, but perhaps later. Those from
ex-local government find it a lot easier to use line drawings
to understand the process.
(Mr Raynsford) Yes, we have and we will issue one
to you.[4]
246. Thank you, that will make it a lot easier
for simple minds like mine. How do you coordinate your work and
that of your sub-committee, as such, with all of the other resilience
committees? Who would have the lead in the preparation of a CBRN
attack? I know that John Denham is temporarily out of the way,
and we just assume that a minister will replace him, but who would
take the lead and how do you coordinate between yourselves?
(Mr Raynsford) When necessary, I would always have
a discussion with John Denham when he was responsible for CBRN
about the interface between arrangements in London and arrangements
in the rest of the country. Those could, for example, relate to
procurement of equipment where issues of interoperability are
important. It could relate to spreading good practice where evidence
of what we have done in London might be helpful to other parts
of the country. It could involve checking the compatibility of
arrangements that are being put in place in different parts of
the country to deal with CBRN incidents. There was a regular communication
between John Denham and myself and although I have not actually
specifically met the Home Secretary to discuss these matters since
John Denham's resignation, I would obviously do so.
247. Would John Denham have taken the lead and
asked you to come in or would you have taken the lead and asked
John Denham to come in to discuss the coordination if there was
a CBRN attack?
(Mr Raynsford) It was never quite like that because
we were working very much in parallel and my responsibility was
to ensure London's preparedness to cope with a CBRN attack, whereas
his was a more generic approach towards the CBRN issue generally.
248. How does the London Resilience Team itself
coordinate its work with the CCS, the Secretariat itself?
(Mr Raynsford) Well, Zyg Kowalczyk, who is the Director
of the London Resilience Team, can perhaps best explain that,
but the arrangements for coordination are just the same as at
the political level, the ones I have described.
(Mr Kowalczyk) We effectively work as the London wing
of CCS. When we were first set up, we were a part of CCS and then
we were moved to the Government Office for London, so our linkages
are very close. I go to regular meetings with the CCS and I am
regarded as part of the management team at CCS, so we are that
close.
249. How do the Metropolitan Police fit into
this?
(Mr Veness) I think it is important to stress that
in two particular contexts. One is in relation to the development
of contingency planning, as the Minister has described, in which
we are key members, I trust, of the London Resilience Forum, and
bring together the coordination of our blue light colleagues in
that context, all of whom are represented at chief officer level
on the London Resilience Forum. The key development would be when
we move from planning and preparation to the operational response
to an incident and in that context it is there that the Cabinet
Office machinery would begin to operate and we would function
at the "gold", as it is described, level, which is the
operational coordination of all of the services that are part
of the solution, and we would also be contributing at the Cabinet
Office briefing room level in order to play a role in the strategic
and political development. So our contribution would be in helping
to prepare and also in coordinating the response.
Chairman
250. Mr Veness, would you like to add anything?
(Mr Veness) I think I was discussing the broad arena
of responsibilities, but I am very happy to add anything that
would be helpful, Chairman.
Mr Crausby
251. The Metropolitan Police Force are of course
politically accountable to the Home Secretary, but the London
Fire and Emergency Planning Authority is directly accountable
to the Mayor of London, so I guess that complicates things somewhat.
Can you tell us, Mr Raynsford, how the division of responsibilities
is working with you and the GLA?
(Mr Raynsford) Let me just clarify that the Metropolitan
Police are, as you rightly say, responsible to the Home Secretary,
but they also are responsible to the Metropolitan Police Authority,
which is one of the functional bodies of the Greater London Authority,
so there is a line of communication to the Mayor as well, though
not a unique line of responsibility as in the case of the Fire
Service in London. There are very well worked-out arrangements
for cooperation between all the emergency services, the Police,
the Ambulance Service and the Fire Service, in London. Those have
operated for many years and they continue to operate through the
blue lights sub-committee of the London Resilience Forum which
I have already referred to. As far as the Mayor is concerned,
the Mayor is my Deputy on the London Resilience Forum. We have
close relations. There is a clear understanding that whilst the
Mayor will not be directly involved in operational decisions in
the event of an emergency, he will be the spokesman for London,
as is appropriate for the elected Mayor of London, and there will
be close relations and close liaison between him and myself in
that context.
252. The London Fire and Emergency Planning
Authority has some quite specific roles which are quite clearly
defined. In practice, how does the London Fire and Emergency Planning
Authority take a wider interest in emergency planning procedures?
(Mr Raynsford) Well, through what used to be known
as the LESLP forum, which was the London Emergency Services Liaison
Panel. That was the framework which provided the close coordination
between the emergency services in London and that is now, as I
say, a sub-committee of the London Resilience Forum. David Veness
might like to add something because he has practical working experience
of these arrangements between the emergency services.
(Mr Veness) I think the helpful distinction might
be between the provision of resources and the planning and preparation
and moving to the delivery of actual operational services. For
example, that would apply in the context, as the Minister has
described, in the relationship of the Metropolitan Police Service
to the Metropolitan Police Authority who have the constitutional
task to deliver an effective and efficient policing arrangement.
In terms of operational delivery, we would function together with
the other police forces in London and indeed the Fire and Ambulance
Services in operational coordination and if that led to a position
where the incident was of such a magnitude that it required government
involvement, it would be the COBR machinery which would be taking
the strategic and political leadership, so although it looks a
complicated wiring diagram, in terms of understanding who does
what on the day it is rather more direct.
Rachel Squire
253. Minister, the Home Secretary's written
ministerial statement of 3 March stated, "A new strategic
emergency planning regime in the capital has been established
by the London Resilience Forum which Nick Raynsford chairs".
Can you tell us what are the principal new elements in that regime?
(Mr Raynsford) The first new element is the coordination
of all the bodies that need to be brought together to ensure effective
resilience in London. If I can express it in these terms, London
has had, sadly, 30 odd years of experience of terrorist attack
and, therefore, is quite well prepared in many ways for the conventional
terrorist attack, but the lesson of 11 September was that the
scale involved of the kind of terrorist threat that we now have
to face up to will require a much larger and better coordinated
response. For example, were there to be a requirement for mass
evacuation, this imposes all kinds of demands and stresses on
a scale far greater than we were previously prepared to deal with.
Therefore, there has been a need to bring together a much wider
range of bodies, including the transport operators, the utilities,
the business community as well as the emergency services, so there
is that wider grouping and that closer interrelationship between
the various players, all of whom will have a role to play. There
is a streamlined command-and-control structure which David Veness
has referred to. That links into the COBR arrangements for government
involvement in the event of a major catastrophe and also there
have been plans to ensure, for example, fall-back centres in the
event of New Scotland Yard, which is the police main base station,
not being operable, so a number of steps have been taken to respond
to the different scale of threat to which we now must address
ourselves in the ways I have described.
254. Clearly one of the crucial players will
always be London's local authorities and I note that following
the 11 September tragedy London Resilience sent out a questionnaire
to all London local authorities and that was then followed up
by in-depth visits to each of the local authorities. Could you
tell us, Minister, about how the conclusions of your work with
London's local authorities were fed into this new regime?
(Mr Raynsford) Yes, I can. The local authorities are
involved in the new framework and indeed only two days ago I was
holding a meeting with the chief executives of almost all the
London authorities and it was an impressive occasion to gather
so many together for one single event in which we briefed them
of the latest situation. David Wechsler, the Chief Executive of
Croydon, who is the lead Chief Executive and is a member of the
London Resilience Forum, briefed them on the arrangements for
the local authority "gold", which will ensure a local
authority presence in the gold command structure which will operate
in the event of an emergency situation. They are very much involved
and we are seeking to ensure that they are properly informed of
all the developments as they come through.
Jim Knight
255. Minister, you talked about the different
scale of threat post-11 September and obviously that single event
signalled very clearly to the whole world the nature of the threat
posed by al-Qaeda in particular, but that type of terrorist. There
are clearly incidents prior to that, such as the first attempt
on the World Trade Centre, such as the embassy bombings in West
Africa and others which demonstrated that there was a different
nature of terrorism from the IRA and that there was a character
of terrorist in al-Qaeda which was intent on mass casualties and
was not fussed about civilian casualties or Muslim casualties
or anything of that sort. In the United States it was clear that
whilst President Clinton was concerned about al-Qaeda, the FBI,
the CIA, the Immigration Service and a number of agencies in the
United States could not be dragged out of their complacency. Did
we only respond post-11 September for the same sorts of reasons
of complacency and did we need to see the threat even though we
already knew of the threat prior to 11 September?
(Mr Raynsford) Well, I am not competent to comment
on the position in the United States. What I can say is that as
soon as I was asked by the Home Secretary to oversee the London
resilience, I obviously tried to brief myself on existing arrangements
in London and it was clear that we had a very well-developed contingency
plan to cope with the kind of terrorist threat which had been
envisaged up to that time and whilst you mention the previous
attack on the World Trade Centre, that rather more conformed to
a traditional terrorist attack which would not necessarily have
involved the hijacking of aircraft or mass suicide as we saw on
11 September, and that is where the scale became very clear indeed.
As I said earlier, London, sadly, because of the experience of
IRA terrorism, has been reasonably well prepared by comparison
with most other big cities, but the scale of the threat, which
we became acutely conscious of after 11 September, required a
step change also in our preparedness, so it was a trigger. I would
not say it was the case that we were not prepared before that,
but we certainly now recognise the need for a much greater scale
of readiness.
256. Mr Veness, do you want to comment further?
(Mr Veness) I am very happy to do so. I think to reflect
upon the factors which have impacted upon the world as seen from
the West and the significance of the events of 11 September, it
was that, and you are absolutely right, there were dire acts of
terrorism occurring around the world of which we were very closely
engaged in the investigation as we have been, regrettably, on
the international and the Irish front for a great many years and
against the groups who were involved in this particular threat
there has been very close British security involvement and success
back through the 1990s. What was different about the tragedy of
11 September is that here were extremely detailed, long thought-out
plans which were driven ahead with the unequivocal intention of
causing mass casualty by those who were willing to perpetrate
those by suicide in the West against an unequivocal Western target.
That was the nature of the change of realisation. Of course that
degree of threat existed before. The understanding of the impact
of that threat and the scale of public harm that it could do was
a tragic consequence of 11 September.
Mr Cran
257. Minister or maybe it is Mr Kowalczyk, I
do not know, but we understand that the London Resilience Team
works, I suppose, very much the same as the Civil Contingencies
Committee, through a number of sub-committees and sub-groups.
Do you work through sub-committees or sub-groups, or whatever
they are called? If so, what subjects do they cover, how long
have they been established and what progress are they making because,
after all, if they are not making any progress, there is no point
having them? If you do not work in any of those ways, how do you
work?
(Mr Raynsford) The London Resilience Forum sets the
remit for all of its sub-committees and there are a number which
I have referred to, but I will give you the full list. There is
a utilities sub-committee, which engages all of the utilities,
telecommunications, gas, electricity, water. There is a communications
sub-committee, which I have already referred to in an earlier
answer, which is concerned with communications arrangements. There
is a health sub-committee, which deals obviously with NHS and
health-related issues. There is a blue light sub-committee, which
I have already referred to, which brings together all the emergency
services and is the successor to the LESL Panel in that respect.
There is a business continuity sub-committee, which brings in
the business community, and I have referred to some of the work
being done to ensure fast communication with business. There is
a transport sub-committee, which involves all the transport operators,
the London Underground, Transport for London, the train operating
companies, Network Rail, et cetera. There is a local authorities
sub-committee, which we have also just referred to in relation
to their input. Then, in addition, we have a number of specific
working groups, one dealing with evacuation procedures, one dealing
with rubble and one dealing with mortuaries and we have just set
up a consequence management working group under the chairmanship
of Anthony Meyer, the Chief Executive of the Greater London Authority
and that has only just come about. All the other sub-committees
or working groups have been in existence for at least a year and
are doing very important, ongoing work, monitoring what is happening
in their areas and reporting back to the London Resilience Forum.
258. Well, if we do not already have it, I think
we would want to have details of all of those that you have outlined.
Obviously you are making progress, there is no doubt about that,
but how are you measuring this progress? There is a whole load
of work going on in all of these sub-groups, but who measures
this progress and how are you are doing?
(Mr Raynsford) What I should have also added in answer
to the question is that framework is paralleled by the London
Resilience Team that Zyg Kowalczyk oversees and that team is not
just a group of civil servants, although there are civil servants
in the team, but it involves secondees from all the relevant agencies,
so the utilities, the local authorities and so on are engaged
directly through staff seconded to the London Resilience Team.
Zyg may wish to add a little bit about the work of that Team as
to how they set targets, how they monitor the targets and how
they ensure implementation of what is agreed by the Forum.
259. I would love to hear about it, but just
so that I understand this, you have set out all of these sub-groups
and sub-committees, which you just went through, and they operate,
as it were, separately, do they?
(Mr Raynsford) They are sub-committees of the London
Resilience Forum. They report to the Forum and I expect a report
from each one at each meeting of the Forum. That is why we do
not have enormous numbers of meetings of the Forum, but the Forum
meetings do oversee the work of all of those sub-committees and
working groups.
(Mr Kowalczyk) Each of the seven sub-committees in
the London Resilience Forum was at its inception given terms of
reference and a work plan, so originally it was recommendations
from the review that we did of London's resilience, but that has
been added over time. My Team supplies the coordination and support
for each of those sub-committees for London resilience as a whole
and detailed reports are prepared for each meeting of the London
Resilience Forum. At the same time we provide a quarterly situation
report to all the members of the partnership right down to the
emergency planning officers of the boroughs to keep everybody
informed of progress. Where there are glitches, where there are
issues that need to be handled, we take those outside the sub-committees
and, if necessary, we bring them to the Minister for the Minister's
attention.
3 Note from Witness: David Veness does not personally
chair the Blue Lights Committee. The chair rests with he Metropolitan
Police and is presently chaired by Commander Mick Messinger. Back
4
Ev 61. Back
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