Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003
RT HON
NICK RAYNSFORD
MP, ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
DAVID VENESS
CBE QPM AND MR
ZYG KOWALCZYK
Mr Howarth
300. I think it is in recognition of this Committee's
pressing that the armed forces should be included. I think we
can all take credit. You are jealous because you did not ask the
question, I asked it.
(Mr Kowalczyk) The armed forces have also been present
at all of the three capital exercises, the planning and the command
and control as well.
301. Obviously that is extremely good news.
Can you tell us a little bit about the civil contingencies force
locally here in London, how you see them shaping up and, in particular,
whether in the current climate you are satisfied that there are
enough people going to be around in the Civil Contingencies Reaction
Force for London who have not already been called up into operations
in the Gulf at the present time?
(Mr Raynsford) Could I ask David to answer that.
Chairman
302. You have a very broad brief, Mr Veness,
way beyond your copper's role. I am truly amazed every time I
hear from you.
(Mr Veness) Thank you, Chairman. I think it is important
to emphasise the regular contribution that is made by the established
full-time armed services which classically within the London area
involve bomb disposal, the EOD activity, they involve the work
on search, they involve a range of specialist assistance under
threat or a particular challenge. That is extremely well rehearsed.
In addition, I think the new development of the SDR New Chapter
has added two dimensions not only in London but around the UK.
It has reinforced the link that exists at the brigade level which
has been reinvigorated. Certainly within our equivalent London
district that was an extremely well-established part of the way
in which security in London functions. You cannot operate within
the ceremonial environment that is central London without those
being daily linkages.
Mr Howarth
303. That is directed to you at the Met?
(Mr Veness) It is directed to the counter-terrorist
community of London because we do not operate as the Metropolitan
Police alone, we operate within all of the other police forces
and indeed through the emergency services, it is a team endeavour.
We are looking forward and there has been very valuable progress
on the Civil Contingency Reserve Force. The target is that those
should be in place nationally by December of this year. In London
there has been welcome progress ahead of that.
304. Did you say December?
(Mr Veness) Yes.
305. October was the last date we were given.
(Mr Veness) You have the advantage on me, sir. Certainly
within London I think one would look to progress that is going
to be ahead of that, but clearly there are training issues that
need to be addressed and equipment issues in order to provide
an effective response.
306. How is that going?
(Mr Veness) It is going well. Our linkages with London
district are daily and certainly, at least formally, weekly in
the counter-terrorist context. For a long period they have been
full members of the security review arrangements that I have discussed.
307. Are you confident that the London Civil
Contingencies Reaction Force is going to be up and running by
October, hopefully earlier, and they will have had the training
and the kit?
(Mr Veness) Yes. There are some extremely gallant
officers who bear that responsibility apart from me, but I have
every indication that that will be the case. We are confident
in any event of the regular resources that have been regularly
made available in London emergencies.
Mr Cran
308. I wonder if we could move to the question
of informing the public. I note, Minister, you said at the beginning
that you and your colleagues had rejected the notion of a generalised
leaflet and on the basis of what you said and the reasons you
gave I think I agree with what you said. The question, however,
is what happens when an incident occurs, it could be a major incident
in the centre of London and you have tourists all over the place,
they are not sitting watching their televisions the whole time,
students all over the place and worse than that in a sense, commuters
going in all directions and I am indebted to my friend Jim Knight
for reminding me about the fact that there is also this question
of ethnic minorities or majorities in some communities, certainly
that implies different languages. All of that says you have got
a hell of a difficult job maybe on some occasions where you have
got no time whatsoever to inform the public. How are you going
to do it?
(Mr Raynsford) That is why it is necessary to have
the broadest possible range of communication networks and preparations
to use a variety of different media to communicate as I described
and our objective would be to use those media that are most likely
to reach the various sections of the public. I think it is right
that the broadcast and written press will provide one very obvious
channel of communication, people do watch television and listen
to the radio, if those are still operational. The other networks
I mentioned included the use of pagers and mobile phones. Many
people, particularly younger people, the more electronically clued
up, would be happy to receive a text message and would understand
that way of communicating. There are options using the local authorities
who will have already in place arrangements for contacting the
different communities in their area and will be sensitive to the
language issue that you have referred to and obviously the police
and other emergency services have their own means of communication.
So what we have been trying to do is to ensure that there is a
generic approach which will enable information to be imparted
in the quickest possible way via whatever media are available
to try and reach the largest possible number of people and that
is the ongoing task of our communications sub-committee, to keep
that under review and ensure that we are reaching out to the parts
that we have not altogether satisfactorily reached so far.
309. I predicate my question on the premise
that I do not have the answer to this either. This is a very very
difficult problem without any shadow of a doubt. We will be indebted
to your communications group if it can come up with the answer.
I suspect the probability is that all of these well meaning exercises
would miss quite a lot of people. Is that fair?
(Mr Raynsford) I think it is very difficult to be
confident you will get 100% coverage, but one must remember that
people do communicate with others and tourists is one particular
group. Providing the communication network reaches the hotel where
they are staying or the visitor centre that they are visiting,
they are likely to be informed by others. Particularly vulnerable
groups in the community who are not regularly in touch with others,
I think of elderly people, local authorities will be aware of
the location of a lot of those people because of the networks,
they will have community alarm systems that enable communication
between a warden or in some cases a remote centre which links
up to an elderly person. Those kinds of networks all provide opportunities
and that is why we are exploring this very wide range and trying
to get people to think about how to communicate with people who
might be otherwise difficult to get in touch with.
(Mr Kowalczyk) The government news network is setting
up a London Media Emergency Forum to work with local radio media
and ethnic media, etcetera, to address exactly this problem, how
to get it through to people who do not speak English as a first
language.
310. You said you had a communications sub-committee.
Would it be possible to have an idea from them about the sort
of issues they are covering so that we can have a look at this
and evaluate it for ourselves? Is that possible?
(Mr Raynsford) We could certainly give you a full
note on it, but their remit is to keep under review the methods
of communication necessary in the kind of incident we have been
describing.
Mr Cran: If we could just have a note
of the details up to today or whenever so that we can take a judgment.
Mr Howarth
311. Can you hack into my mobile phone and send
me a government text message without my having requested that
I be on your network?
(Mr Kowalczyk) The short answer is yes. Our telecommunications
group are looking at precisely that with the emergency services.
So swamping a particular area with a particular message, that
is work in progress, but it is entirely possible and work is going
on to do that.
Mr Cran
312. Good idea. And we will get this out of
the note that you are going to send us?
(Mr Kowalczyk) Yes.
Chairman
313. It occurred to me, without being frivolous,
that the method of communication in this place, which is almost
telepathic when the Whips tell us we can go home early and there
is no vote, must offer some models as to how the wider public
can have important information disseminated to them.
(Mr Raynsford) You have rightly reinforced in the
most graphic way the point I was making to Mr Cran about people
talking to other people.
Jim Knight
314. I want to move on to talk about exercises.
When Susan Scholefield was here a week or two ago she told us
she believes in exercise, exercise, exercise and we are aware
of Trump Card in June 2000 and last year Capital Spring and Capital
Response. Could you just tell us briefly if there are any other
exercises you have run since the London Resilience and which agencies
were involved? You have said that the military were present. Were
they actively involved or were they just observing?
(Mr Raynsford) The most recent exercise was conducted
last month and that was exercise Capital Focus which was designed
to test the new command and control structures that were put in
place as a result of the report from the London Resilience Team
which I referred to earlier in my evidence. I still have not got
a full evaluation of that particular exercise, but what it certainly
has indicated is that the new arrangements did work well, the
military were involved and the presence of David Veness representing
the Metropolitan Police at COBR clearly did help to ensure a better
integrated response and that is something that gave us a lot of
encouragement. It also has highlighted other issues which we will
need to work on in the months ahead. So exercises like that are
very useful, they are very much part of our programme and they
will continue to be used as such.
315. The Trump Card in June 2000 was an enormous
multi-site exercise. You have just said that Capital Focus was
really exercising the Gold coordinating group and COBR and reading
the marvellous organ The Job, which I gather is a police
newspaper, the Chief Superintendent, Bob Mackie, who heads up
the Met's involvement with London Resilience Team, said, "We
used to create really big exercises that tested everybody out
from the Gold commanders down to the fitter that would come down
to unlock the railway cabin. But you end up testing so many different
aspects that nothing gets tested properly . . ." Does that
imply that you are unlikely to go for another exercise on the
scale of Trump Card because the railway industry can test its
own internal procedures, the police can test theirs and it is
more the Capital Focus-type exercise of the integration at command
level or are you going to go for another big Trump Card?
(Mr Raynsford) From a London perspective my judgment
is we will need to have further London-wide exercises such as
Capital Focus and also more specific and focused exercises. There
was a desk top OSIRIS I. OSIRIS II was planned to be a real life
exercise on 23 March which we postponed because of the outbreak
of hostilities in the Gulf. We were advised that it was not sensible
to proceed in the international situation that we were in, but
that will be run at the earliest opportunity when we feel it is
appropriate to do so. Those kind of exercises are vital to give
us further information and from a London perspective I am sure
there will be a need for both types.
316. What are you hoping to learn out of that
exercise when you run it?
(Mr Raynsford) OSIRIS II?
317. Yes.
(Mr Raynsford) OSIRIS II was designed to test the
recovery from a deep underground train of people who were incapacitated
following a chemical attack. I do not want to say anything more
than that for obvious reasons, but it would have been an exercise
and will be an exercise which will certainly test the capacity
of the emergency services and London Underground to cope with
a pretty demanding scenario of the sort which might arise in the
event of a chemical attack. We want to be ready for it.
318. In Portsmouth last week the Committee was
told about a recent multi-agency exercise in Birmingham which
apparently will be very successful. How do you tap into the experience
of exercises held outside London?
(Mr Raynsford) I depend upon my experts to do so because
my remit only extends to London.
(Mr Veness) I can comment specifically in relation
to the counter-terrorist exercises nationally. Indeed, Trump Card
was an example albeit on a grand scale of precisely that sequence
which occurs roughly once a quarter somewhere within the United
Kingdom and all of the process of umpiring ensures a pretty robust
debrief of the lessons emerging which are all read, collated centrally
and disseminated not only within the counter-terrorist community
but those dealing within management of the consequence of a disaster
as well, so there is a well-rehearsed system to achieve that.
Just to endorse the Minister's perspective, I think London and
indeed the country will continue to need a range of exercises.
Trump Card was two years in the creation and was intended to create
a step change whereby we brought all of the blue light and other
services in in order to address what was then effectively the
post-Tokyo change in dimension. The particular challenge facing
us now where Capital Focus has been helpful is in addressing the
scale and pace of the events that we are now dealing with and
ensuring that we have got the linkage between the operational
command and central government as effectively as we might. That
is a major challenge and we are industriously engaged in developing
that.
319. In this two-way process of information
do you listen to the Scottish Executive because obviously they
have got law and order issues?
(Mr Veness) Yes. The counter-terrorist exercise programme
is a national exercise which encompasses the United Kingdom. So
Scotland as a kingdom is addressed within that context and indeed,
through particularly the policing dimension, our liaison with
colleagues and ACPO Scotland is vibrant in ensuring that we are
cross-fertilising the lessons on counter-terrorism.
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