Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-279)
WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003
RT HON
NICK RAYNSFORD
MP, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
DAVID VENESS
CBE QPM AND MR
ZYG KOWALCZYK
260. Can I press you about how you measure progress
and success because at the end of the day, one can have endless
reports, one can have endless verbiage and so on, but the question
is how one applies this to it to decide that all of that means
that there is some progress. Have you got any performance measurement
of all of these areas yet or not?
(Mr Kowalczyk) It is as simple as saying that there
are a series of targets for each of the sub-committees and working
groups and whether they have been achieved and if not, why not,
and when then will they be achieved.
261. If we do not have this information, would
it be possible for us to see what these targets in relation to
each one of these sub-groups happen to be or is that confidential?
(Mr Raynsford) No, we could certainly let you have
the terms of reference of the sub-committees. That is not a confidential
matter. Perhaps I could just add one point to illustrate the way
in which we work and the difficulty of applying a traditional
performance management framework. In the case of mortuary capacity,
it became clear from the work of the health sub-committee that
there was a question mark as to whether in fact London would be
able to cope with the kind of scale of demand for mortuary facilities
in the event of a catastrophic incident. We, therefore, set up
a specific mortuaries working group to look into this because
we felt this was a specialist issue which needed to involve coroners
and others with specialist expertise. They carried out a survey
of the facilities available within London. They identified sites
that might be made available to provide additional capacity and
they also explored the possibility of mobile equipment for use
in certain types of emergency. That then led to reports which
we agreed in principle, but there was then a need to move on to
the actual identification and securing agreement for the use of
the appropriate premises, which I do not want to go into in detail,
if you will understand. That was overseen by the London Resilience
Forum with the mortuaries working group continuing to do that
work which they will do until that is complete and we are satisfied.
At that point there will be no longer a need for that particular
working group. I think that illustrates how we try to work in
a very practical way rather than have bodies which have got an
indefinite existence and are part of a structure for performance
management. We are much more task-focused and keen to get results.
262. Nonetheless, Mr Kowalczyk has had targets
and, therefore, it would be useful for us if we could just have
targets so that we might apply a bit of measurement to it. The
other thing that occurs to us is that expertise lies throughout
the whole country.
(Mr Raynsford) Yes[5]
263. Some are tempted to say occasionally that
it is all London and the rest of us are entitled to say that it
is not and it is elsewhere, that there is expertise everywhere.
Is the work of the sub-groups being, as it were, shared with other
regions?
(Mr Raynsford) Well, we are conscious of the need
to ensure that all regions are helped to develop their own arrangements,
although that is not my personal responsibility. The Office of
the Deputy Prime Minister has set up from this month a new arrangement
to ensure that there will be dissemination through each of the
English regions the lessons that have been learnt from what has
been achieved in London, but also to ensure proper coordination
between the regions because incidents, as you will understand,
can well spread beyond a regional border and a catastrophic incident
in London would certainly impact in a number of different ways
on the surrounding regions.
264. So you can assure us that good practice
is being, as it were, disseminated throughout the United Kingdom?
(Mr Raynsford) Yes.
265. You positively can say that?
(Mr Raynsford) I can and Zyg Kowalczyk might like
to add to that.
(Mr Kowalczyk) That is very much a process ongoing
at the moment. We have had seminars for emergency planning right
across all the nine English regions. We have regional resilience
directors meetings every month where we are sharing what is happening
in London. We will be running a seminar for the new regional resilience
teams to disseminate exactly our experience in reviewing the resilience
of organisations, et cetera, and we also have a dialogue with
the Scotland Office as well, so we are taking that forward.
266. Would you go as far as to say that the
work of the London Resilience Team or the sub-groups, or whatever
it is, might be peer reviewed by experts in other regions? Is
this something you have thought about because it has been suggested?
(Mr Raynsford) We have not actually considered that
up to now, but I can see no reason why that should not apply in
the future. I think our focus has been on getting the arrangements
in London into a state that we feel reasonably comfortable with,
I will not say "happy" with, but that we feel that we
are making progress and now we want to ensure that that is shared,
but we have certainly got a lot to learn from others and we would
want to have a framework which allowed that kind of peer review
at a future date, yes.
267. Minister, you have been quoted in the press,
and if you deny this quote, then of course that is fine. I do
not think it will destroy my question, but you can deny the quote.
It is simply this in general terms, that emergency planning is
very good in London, but it may not be the case in the rest of
the country. Is that something you recollect?
(Mr Raynsford) I do not recall using those words.
268. Well, that is why we must get the quote
next time.
(Mr Raynsford) I think what I would say is that I
believe that the work that has been done over the past 18 months
in London has considerably improved London's preparedness and
that that is right and proper because London was identified very
obviously as likely to be a principal target. Nevertheless, there
are many other parts of the country that could be vulnerable to
serious terrorist attacks and whilst an exactly comparable structure
to what has been done in London is probably not necessary, there
are certainly lessons that could be disseminated and are being
disseminated. That is how I would put it, but that is not a soundbite.
As you know, the media often prefer to quote a few words sometimes
out of context in order to produce a soundbite rather than a measured
response.
269. If I had the quote, I would press this,
but I am defenceless without it, so I will not. Mr Veness, I would
like to come on to you. You will recall that we had a very enjoyable
encounter, that is, the Committee and you, in, I think it was,
May 2002 in which you said this: "Put in a nutshell, it is
when and not if a further attack will occur. . .", and although
Britain, relatively speaking, has a good record in respect of
integrated emergency management, "to regard that as the answer
to this problem is to miss the scale of the challenge", and
the important words out of all of that are "the scale of
the challenge". Now, are you getting to grips with the scale
of the challenge now? Do you think we have got anywhere closer
to solving that?
(Mr Veness) I think to underline the point there,
those comments, I note, precede both the tragedies of Bali and
Mombasa, let alone, sadly, a series of other incidents around
South-East Asia, the Indian Sub-Continent and, notably, the Middle
East. I regret that not only in the British context, but elsewhere
that is proving to be the reality of the challenge that we face.
The point that I was seeking to make at that time, and it has
been underlined by the comments that the Minister has just made,
is that we had a structure of counter-terrorism until the period
of 18½ months ago which was calibrated to the degree of public
harm that we then experienced which was classically that which
was caused by a large lorry bomb or a car bomb. The scale of public
impact, I think, has necessitated, as indeed I think has been
taken ahead by the work that has been described, a different level
of response, a scale and a breadth. Where I think the achievements
of London resilience have been encouraging from an operator's
perspective is that in order to address that scale of challenge
and to respond to cope with a disaster, what it is necessary to
do is to bring on a large number of team players who did not at
the original stage of the process realise that they were an essential
part of the solution. I think the breadth, which sounds as if
it is mighty extensive in terms of committees, this actually brings
on people who are critical to dealing with the crisis and in coping
with the subsequent disaster who are essential to the recovery
of a city like London or indeed any other location in the United
Kingdom. Therefore, I think the breadth of the agencies has been
one of the achievements of the work and certainly to identify
where the gaps exist, that would be to me, as an operator, to
answer your question about performance measurement, the area we
have not got covered and, as a result of that work, trying to
bring the team together in a larger sense, we are actually creating
the chances. Nobody underestimates just how grave this is going
to be in terms of the reality of responding to this form of crisis,
but the scale of the response is now beginning to match that particular
challenge.
Chairman
270. One of the terms we used in our report,
which was a little bit cruel and I deny any responsibility for
devising that phrase and I would not like to say who did, was
something like, "We must not confuse activity for achievement".
Now, it seems to me you have been incredibly active. You have
set up these myriad committees and I am convinced that you understand
completely how they operate while I am still in the process of
trying to understand, the Committee discusses, makes a recommendation.
Where I am rather lost is in the process of implementation, not
in performance management, but what happens on how that process
of implementation is devised. Having produced these reports and
recommendations, what happens then? Who is responsible for passing
them on, sure, to a higher committee, but after that, who says,
"This has to be done", or "We don't think this
recommendation is the right recommendation"? Who is the progress-chaser
and how are you going to incorporate all of the elements which
will be involved in implementation of these complex decisions?
Bureaucracy rarely reacts even under pressure in the way in which
it is wished to react, so who decides? Who is the head-banger?
Well, we have got a lot of head-bangers, but who bangs the heads
if what is wished is not implemented? Maybe you can drop us a
note. After your response to this Committee, maybe you can give
us an illustration, a further illustration because you have touched
upon it with the mortuaries, but a good illustration of a committee's
recommendations, how you would pursue it so that it would get
through the system and then the question which James meant of
how you evaluate how successful it has been.
(Mr Raynsford) We are very happy to do so, but I will
give the structure first before I go on with another example.
The structure involves the individual working group or sub-committee
coming forward with proposals and recommendations. Those will
be considered at the London Resilience Forum. If they are agreed
at the Forum, then it will be Zyg Kowalczyk's responsibility to
ensure that they are implemented. The Forum will decide that something
has to be done and he will then oversee the implementation and
report back to me on the progress. Now, to give another illustration,
apart from mortuaries, it became clear some while ago now there
would be particular challenges posed in the event of a need for
a mass evacuation of part of London. Therefore, we asked for a
lot of work to be done specifically on that issue of how evacuation
would be handled. This does not just involve one group of agencies,
transport operators very obviously, but it poses particular challenges
to others, let's say the Heath Service, where there may be a hospital
in an area which is to be evacuated with seriously ill patients.
These kinds of issues all had to be looked at, so the work did
not just involve one group of people, but did involve rather more
widely the full range of bodies involved. The police had to develop
a protocol for handling a mass evacuation and there were communications
issues of how we informed people and the arrangements, as they
were put together, had to work generically because clearly we
could not be aware as to where, if ever, those arrangements would
need to be operated. That was the planning process and we now
have in place a series of plans and protocols which should ensure,
in the event of the need for a mass evacuation of any part of
Central London or indeed any part of London because this could
be elsewhere, that the arrangements will work very much better
than they previously would have. I am not going to say that they
will perfectly because there are huge challenges and huge risks
associated with a mass evacuation, but those have all been considered
and there are plans and protocols in place to cope.
Mr Cran
271. It might be hypothetical, but the point
is that if in the scenario which you gave, that response was called
for, how we evacuate quickly and so on and so forth, I think what
the Chairman was trying to say, and I, in my own inadequate way,
was trying to get across beforehand clearly not to his satisfaction,
is simply this: that if the information is not coming forward
quickly enough and somebody is messing up the system, who says,
"What the hell is going on here?" Is that your job?
(Mr Raynsford) The answer is that I do and on one
or two occasions in the course of developing this, I have had
to say, "We need to move faster on this particular aspect
of work".
Chairman
272. So we chase the decision and it gets to
Mr Kowalczyk and then I presume, having made the decision, you
then will have a number of sub-committees and committees set up
as to how actually to implement it. This is where it gets a little
bit messy, especially with vested interests and people knowing
exactly how things ought to be done. Here we are talking about
integrating organisations and individuals in order to implement
swiftly a decision. We are not asking it just because it is a
very interesting academic management question to ask, but it does
illustrate the nature of decision-making and bureaucracy at the
end of the day producing the correct decisions.
(Mr Raynsford) Perhaps I can reply to that by saying
that it illustrates the whole importance of coordination because
virtually all of the agencies involved would have a role to play
in the event of that scenario that I have described. I have only
touched on some of them and I have not explored the others. For
example, local authorities are closely involved in the provision
of alternative accommodation if there is a need for the evacuation
of one part of London. Mutual aid between London boroughs can
play a role and indeed beyond London because there might be a
need for help from other areas beyond. All of these issues involve
coordination of a wide range of bodies and that is why it is not
easy to have a very simple structure which looks neat on a piece
of paper, but I do think the arrangements broadly are working
and Zyg Kowalczyk can add a little bit on the actual way in which
he chases progress on the agreed work-plan rather than banging
a head when it needs to be banged if things are not moving as
fast as they should, which I think is probably my role.
273. There might be a few heads in my constituency,
Minister!
(Mr Raynsford) I have tried to do so.
(Mr Kowalczyk) I would give one other illustration
which is command and control. It was agreed by the Cabinet Committee
and then by the London Resilience Forum that we needed a single
integrated system for command and control across London in the
event of a catastrophic incident that involved all the key players.
That task was given to the blue light sub-committee who came up
with the principles that should be in that command and control
model. A detailed protocol was brought together by people working
for the blue light sub-committee. That was then shared with the
other groups, the local authorities, health, the utilities, transport
operators, etcetera, their input was put in. The protocol was
then brought to the London Resilience Forum where it was approved,
it was then tested at an exercise called Capital Focus, we are
now de-briefing on that, we will revise the protocol and in due
course at the next meeting of the Forum it will be approved by
the Forum in its new form and then put to the Home Secretary.
That is the process of getting the work done and getting it approved.
If we had difficulty along that track that I could not resolve
then it would be a question of bringing it either to the appropriate
committee chair or ultimately to the Minister to bang heads together
and to resolve it.
274. Who decides on the allocation of resources,
because each of these decisions must have many resource implications?
(Mr Raynsford) This is a more difficult question to
answer than it might initially appear because a number of the
resource allocation decisions would go way beyond our remit. For
example, the need for decontamination equipment will impose quite
significant demands on the budgets of ODPM in relation to the
Fire Service where we have committed some £56 million-worth
of additional expenditure to procure the necessary equipment and
undertake the appropriate training to have mass decontamination
kits in place.
Jim Knight
275. Have they agreed to the training?
(Mr Raynsford) Could I come back to that question
in a moment? Secondly, the Health Service clearly also have requirements
for decontamination kits, so these have to be agreed through the
respective budgets of the respective departments on major resource
allocation issues like that and one of our roles is to ensure
that where these needs are identified the relevant ministers are
alerted and hopefully action is taken to ensure that the resources
are secured.
Chairman
276. We have a better idea now of why things
are taking rather longer than anticipated in some cases. As you
know, Mr Veness, yesterday was an important day because of the
launch of the Security Industry Authority, which is putting a
degree of professionalism ultimately on an industry which in many
cases has been bereft of that professionalism. ACPO has made statements,
you gave evidence to us, you made a number of interesting comments
and proposals about the use of the private sector in dealing with
problems, most of which are rested fairly and squarely on the
shoulders of the private sector. Could you give us some indication
as to what progress you have made from the police perspective?
I know you are already pushing fairly hard and perhaps Zyg Kowalczyk
can comment and then you, Minister on how—bearing in mind
most of the heads of security in major establishments are ex-colleagues
of Mr Veness anyway—you see the incorporation of expertise
from the private sector into your overall framework. One way would
be to tell us how many are derived from the private sector in
your numerous committees, sub-committees, working groups.
(Mr Raynsford) Could I ask David Veness to deal with
that.
(Mr Veness) The role certainly in relation to the
development of the new authority is one that we welcome enormously
and I think it is going to be a particularly valuable lever to
take ahead this discussion. I think you as a Committee observed
extremely accurately that the role of reinforcement that could
be provided by the private security industry was actually dependent
upon a structure such as the SIA being the context in which that
could occur and I am absolutely certain that is right. That means
that the more exciting developments are ahead of us rather than
behind us. The role of the private security industry as well needs
to be seen in the context of all of the other reinforcement we
are looking at for London. There is the mutual aid we could achieve
across the blue light services, there is the role of the non-governmental
sector, there is the new role under the SDR New Chapter and the
evolving role of the military and the civil contingency reserve
forces, there is the growth of community police support officers
within London (up to 500 this month which again is adding to that
capacity), there is the special constabulary and then there is
the critical role of private security. The developments that have
occurred with private security since we last discussed this subject
are effectively at three levels. At the strategic level there
is now a much more vibrant debate particularly between the representative
bodies of private security, BSIA and JSIC, who are now engaged
in a regular series of exchanges on how they might support the
work of the blue light agencies in particular contexts and that
is not academic, that is moving to particular scenarios, particular
challenges and discussions at chief executive level of how practical
assistance might be provided. So the strategic level is enormously
important. There is then the level of working with the SIA and
using the opportunity for the creation of the SIA to build in
competences in terms of the skills that will be widespread throughout
the private security industry. So, for example, we as the Police
Service will be contributing counter-terrorist awareness as part
of the basic competency framework that is going to be developed
within the Private Security Agency. We will also be asking that
those who are engaged in that training are effectively our eyes
and ears—maybe that would be too ambitious but that is what
we are seeking with the general public awareness, but things that
might be wise to be suspicious about that are worth reporting
and notifying beyond the original awareness. In terms of the SIA,
there is a real opportunity. There is then the rather more challenging
territory which is the third dimension on how we will be able
to achieve reinforcement if, heaven forbid, there was a 11 September-type
incident and we were confronted with all of the issues of evacuation,
coping with a disaster in a major city context, how would that
be achieved and how could we return to something approaching normality
in a reasonable period of time. That would require an enormous
amount of strength of individuals to do. We are exploring how
that might be possible. None of that would have occurred had we
not had the degree of contact that is now developing at senior
level within the private security industry. It remains very much
work that is being driven hard ahead, but I am much more optimistic
that that is now on a realistic footing and I think we are much
indebted, to be candid, to the response of the private security
industry and its leadership in taking this on board and recognising
this as an opportunity for corporate citizenship in the best use
of that word.
277. What about not so much the companies providing
the service but the personnel in the major enterprises, London
Transport, the City of London, the Stock Exchange, banks, etcetera,
how successful have you been, Minister, in incorporating that
expertise into your planning process because at the end of the
day they are the ones who hire security, they are the ones who
have to have their own exercises, they are the ones who have to
purchase equipment, they are the ones that might have to deal
in a crisis, because if it is a major crisis the blue light services,
the police will not be there in sufficient numbers to help them?
What success have you had in incorporating them into your decision-making
framework and listening to what their anxieties are about the
way in which perhaps things are evolving?
(Mr Raynsford) One of the important elements in the
work of London Resilience has been the involvement of the business
community and the creation of a separate sub-committee specifically
dealing with matters of concern to the business community has
been incredibly useful to informing our decisions. The Corporation
of London helped to organise a seminar very early on in the course
of our work in which we were able to review the experience of
New York. We invited speakers specifically from New York to come,
there were some 200 to 250 people attended the seminar which was
incredibly useful in identifying a number of the kind of issues
we have touched on in our discussion this afternoon and which
were part of that wider dimension that we knew had to be addressed
in the aftermath of 11 September that was not previously part
of the contingency planning against terrorism. I think we have
opened up a lot of lines of communication. I could not possibly
say that we have got everything right, we have not, there are
bound to be areas where we can do better, but that very broad
approach that we have adopted has ensured that we have got feelers
out in many sectors and we are identifying the scope for engaging
people who can help in a very constructive way, as David Veness
has said, and perhaps who might not previously have been involved.
278. One of the criticisms I have heard when
I have been round most of these organisations and more that you
have been talking about is that the security industry is quite
elitist and those who do have heads of security who are former
senior coppers or senior intelligence personnel have a very good
network of informing each other as to what is going on, but if
you are not part of that network it can be quite difficult. Are
you satisfied that sufficient information is disseminated from
your own operation—you cannot speak on behalf of how much
information is disseminated by the intelligence and the security
services—so that if you were the security manager of X bank
you would have sufficient information and access to sufficient
intelligence and expertise to be able to tell the facilities manager
within your enterprise exactly what he or she ought to be doing?
I really do feel there are many companies that feel excluded,
that they are not getting sufficient information that those who
are the security managers or directors or advisers of the major
banks in the City of London get.
(Mr Raynsford) My reply to that would be that, and
I think you probably anticipated this, while I think a lot has
been done to ensure that there is appropriate business continuity
planning among certainly larger businesses, inevitably the degree
of awareness and the degree of commitment reduces as you get into
the long tail of much smaller businesses, but that is a characteristic
of the whole economy that one would expect larger companies to
be better prepared to cope with the kind of challenges of the
sort of incident we have been talking about than relatively small
newly established businesses that have got other things on their
mind. We are trying very hard through the business sub-committee
to reach out to those smaller businesses who are not necessarily
keyed in to the networks and so would not be likely to understand
what they need to do without a special effort being made to reach
them.
279. There have been some startling surveys
and we referred to one in our July report and said that over half
the enterprises in the country—and I presume those figures
will be relatively similar in London—have no business continuity
plans and those that do in fact do not and many of them have not
updated them since 11 September. How are you going to penetrate
those closed minds as to the need to take a lot of measures on
their own responsibility and not rely on central government or
regional government so that if there is a disaster at least they
will be able to be up and running fairly quickly?
(Mr Kowalczyk) That is one of the work streams of
the business community sub-committee. They are putting together,
with London First in the lead, an awareness campaign for businesses.
I think the figure was 40% of the FTSE-250 companies do not have
a business continuity plan, so it is very much a priority there.
The Minister and the Mayor will be involved in that later in the
spring. I think the other point to make on the business community
sub-committee is that they are identifying gatekeepers, security
managers at all the key businesses so that they can build linkages
with the police to make sure that they are receiving information
quickly, the right sort of information and that they are briefed
on their response to particular information from the police.
5 Ev 63. Back
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