WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003

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Members present:

Mr Bruce George, in the Chair
Mr James Cran
Mr David Crausby
Mr Gerald Howarth
Jim Knight
Syd Rapson
Mr Frank Roy
Rachel Squire

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RT HON NICK RAYNSFORD, a Member of the House, Minister of State for Local Government and the Regions, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER DAVID VENESS CBE QPM, Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police; and MR ZYG KOWALCZYK, Director, London Resilience Team, examined.

Chairman

Thank you, Minister, Mr Veness and Mr Kowalczyk, and welcome. As you know, Minister, we have taken an interest in this subject. We produced our report last July and really we wanted to follow up what has been happening and what measures have been taken in London to improve preparedness. We have heard how London is a model, a pilot for other parts of the country and that London's resilience is a model for comparable teams elsewhere, so perhaps we will learn a great deal more. Obviously some of the things that you might want to say you would not wish to say in public, so either perhaps we could go into a private session or you may wish to drop us a note after, and perhaps we could play it by ear if that is the case. Is there anything you would like to say by way of introduction?

(Mr Raynsford) Perhaps I could just briefly introduce the team. I am accompanied by David Veness who is the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police responsible for special operations, and Zyg Kowalczyk who is in charge of the London Resilience Team. I think I should just explain that the London Resilience Team was set up at a very early stage, soon after the events of September 11^th. The Home Secretary asked me to chair a sub-committee of the Civil Contingencies Committee to oversee London's preparedness. We set up the team and they conducted a rapid report, a very detailed report by March 2002. We then implemented that report and we set up the new structure which is based around the London Resilience Forum, which is now in operation, and that has set in place not just new command-and-control arrangements for London, but also a great deal of work being undertaken by a large number of individual bodies, which act as sub-committees or working groups of the Forum. That is the structure. We believe we have covered a lot of ground. There is still an enormous amount of work to do and we are by no means complacent, but we do believe that London is now in a better state of preparedness than it was 18 months ago and it will continue to get in a better state the more the work that is currently ongoing is carried forward.

Thank you, that is very helpful. Minister, you are a Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, you deal with London resilience issues, you deal with local government and of course you are overseeing local government in my own area, and very effectively too, you deal with regional government and the Fire Service. Now, you have a very enlarged portfolio. Could you just give us some indication as to whether you have the time you feel necessary to deal with these very important issues we are discussing here this afternoon. I am not in any way questioning your ability to perform all of these tasks, but maybe you can give us some indication as to how you are able to balance all of these and no doubt other tasks as well.

(Mr Raynsford) Well, if I can say initially that I think the reason I was invited to undertake this work initially was because of my role as Minister for London at the time, which is why the Home Secretary asked me to do it, but there is an obvious logic given the importance of the Fire Service and the lead local authorities towards the coordination of emergency planning for a Minister familiar with those particular territories to have responsibility. I do not find a difficulty in providing the time to cover all the issues that are necessary. I believe that I can keep a useful watch on things and learn and benefit from that wider responsibility that I have referred to.

In a normal week, not that I assume you have very many normal weeks, how many meetings would you have which you could say were specifically London resilience-oriented?

(Mr Raynsford) No week goes by without my having discussions. They do not necessarily involve formal meetings. It could be a phone conversation with the Mayor of London or it could be a phone conversation with Mr Kowalczyk, it could be a meeting or it could be a discussion with colleagues about individual aspects because part of the role is to ensure that a lot of other people are doing things they need to do to ensure that resilience is in place, so over the last few months I have been doing rather more in the way of meetings regarding London Underground probably than other aspects because of the heightened sense of awareness of potential risks on the underground and the need to ensure that everything possible has been done to deal with that. Therefore, I cannot give an average figure because there is not an average week, but I can assure you that resilience is very much a part of my diary.

Chairman: Gerald Howarth, who I believe has an equally broad portfolio of activities

Mr Howarth

Almost as demanding as the Minister's, but we do both share a lot of photography together, so that is what unites us. As the Chairman has just pointed out, Minister, you are in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The Home Secretary has principal responsibility for counter-terrorism and civil contingency issues. Sir David Omand, the Security and Intelligence Coordinator, is in the Cabinet Office as is the CCS. How would you answer the criticism that these arrangements lack transparency and perhaps to the outsider they might indeed defy logic?

(Mr Raynsford) I do not think they defy logic at all. I explained why I think the Home Secretary invited me to undertake the responsibility in respect of London. That work has depended on regular liaison with colleagues in a number of different departments. Indeed the cross-governmental working is absolutely vital and it is not just the Home Office and the Cabinet Office, but the Department of Transport, the Department of Health and other government departments crucially involved, so a lot of my time is spent liaising with colleagues across government and that would be the case whichever department I was in, so I do not think there is a problem. I certainly have not found a problem to date because there are good lines of communication with my colleagues and particularly with the Home Secretary who oversees all matters to do with civil contingencies.

I think the feeling that some of us have, and indeed I am sure outside commentators, is that if you take the local government brief, which is yours, you have a vast range of responsibilities and, as far as I can see, a rather impressive detailed understanding of individual local authority issues. You have also been hugely involved in the Fire Brigade's dispute which must have taken up virtually all of your time at that time. Do you not think there is a case for a Minister to be responsible for coordinating these issues and being able to call on your expertise when he needs it, the Home Office expertise when that is needed and Sir David Omand's when that is needed?

(Mr Raynsford) Well, all I can say in reply to that is that I have never felt unable to discharge my responsibilities in respect of London resilience, even despite considerable pressures as you have referred to, particularly in relation to the fire dispute. There was of course a certain correlation between the issues in some respects and, therefore, my understanding of the Fire Service was probably quite helpful. It has not been a problem. I do, without sounding immodest, rather thrive on challenges and hard work and enjoy it, so I have not felt stretched.

It does seem to me though, without repeating what the Americans have done with Tom Ridge, that there certainly could be some benefit in having somebody who is not going to be taken away maybe at a critical moment as you might be on the Fire Brigade's dispute.

(Mr Raynsford) Well, even when I was very intensively involved at the peak of the dispute before Christmas, I still had time for meetings related to London resilience which took place. In fact I think a full meeting of the Forum occurred at that time.

You must tell us how there are 25 hours in the day, though I think you have got less hair than you did have, Minister! Anyway, can you explain where the London Resilience Committee fits into the Cabinet committee structures?

(Mr Raynsford) The framework involves the Civil Contingencies Committee itself, the sub-committee, which is specifically related to London, which I chair, and then the London Resilience Forum, which is the wider operational body, which brings together all the participants who need to be involved in London resilience. It is a fairly y simple and straightforward chain of command. The London sub-committee of the Civil Contingencies Committee does not meet very regularly because the detailed work is done through the Forum and its working parties and sub-committees which meet on a very regular basis.

So the Forum reports to you, does it?

(Mr Raynsford) I chair the Forum and the Forum reports to the sub-committee of CCC which, in turn, reports to CCC.

And how often has the London Resilience Committee met under your chairmanship?

(Mr Raynsford) The London Resilience Forum or the Civil Contingencies Committee's sub-committee for London?

The London Resilience Forum.

(Mr Raynsford) The Forum has probably met four or five times under my chairmanship.

What about the sub-committee?

(Mr Raynsford) The sub-committee will only meet twice a year. That is not an operational committee. That is the connection between the Forum and the Civil Contingencies Committee.

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.

Chairman

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 distinction would be in helping to prepare and also in coordinating the response.

The Committee suspended from 4.22 pm to 4.46 pm for a division in the House.

Chairman

Mr Veness, would you like to add anything to your truncated answer? It was so long ago, you may have forgotten what the question was!

(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

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.

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 COBRA 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

Minister, the Home Secretary's written ministerial statement of 3^rd 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^th 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 coordination 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 COBRA 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.

Clearly one of the crucial players will always be London's local authorities and I note that following the11^th 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 to 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

Minister, you talked about the different scale of threat post-September 11^th 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-September 11^th 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 September 11^th?

(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 September 11^th, 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 September 11^th, 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.

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 9/11, 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 9/11 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 9/11.

Mr Cran

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So you can assure us that good practice is being, as it were, disseminated throughout the United Kingdom?

(Mr Raynsford) Yes.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 181/2 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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 9/11-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.

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 September 11 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.

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.

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 9/11. 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 per cent 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.

Mr Veness, you mentioned the 500 community support officers that have been appointed. Can you give us a little bit more information on what they are doing and how much of their work would include the kind of stuff that we have been talking about this afternoon?

(Mr Veness) The reinforcement is extremely welcome. The intention is to add community reassurance by increasing the visibility on the street. As you will have seen, they have been focused particularly in the early stages of deployment on the areas where that reassurance might be most acutely perceived and required, for example the Whitehall/Westminster area, Heathrow Airport, the City Airport and Canary Wharf. We are hoping indeed with some degree of confidence that that concept will spread across London boroughs and that the role will rapidly become broader than security as a focus. In terms of providing a degree of continuity that ensures that business can carry on as closely it is a very useful supplement.

I do not wish to be excessively contentious, but in the course of the last few weeks we have heard how much new equipment is available for the Fire Service, the very sophisticated equipment that needs to be deployed and the staff needing to be trained up. What is the current status, Minister, of the negotiations not on salary but on working practices? Is the Fire Brigades Union co-operating in using this new equipment and, if there is no agreement, can you give us some indication as to what progress might be made?

(Mr Raynsford) The new equipment, particularly decontamination equipment, is coming on-stream over the next few months and I would hope that we would be in a position to ensure that that will be fully used and that the fire brigades will be fully trained in its use. You will be well aware that there is a long running and difficult industrial dispute that is still unsettled. The Fire Brigades Union will be holding a conference in just less than two weeks' time where I hope they will conclude that the offer that has been put by the employers is the right way forward and the dispute will be brought to an end. In the meantime we have obviously communicated with the Fire Brigades Union to indicate our concern about any suggestions of non-co-operation, particularly because, of course, the use of this equipment will help to safeguard the health and safety of firefighters themselves and I can assure you we will do everything possible to ensure that arrangements are carried forward to ensure that the fire brigades themselves are properly equipped and trained to use the equipment and the public are protected.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Jim Knight

The armed forces are CBRN trained. With the emergence of the Civil Contingency Reaction Force would you be able to call on the armed forces to use that decontamination equipment if there was an incident now or if you are not able to resolve things with the Fire Services Group?

(Mr Raynsford) I should make it clear that a lot of the equipment is already available to fire brigades in London and elsewhere. The London Fire Brigade already has a good supply of gas-tight suits and other such equipments for which staff are trained and ready to use them. So it is more to do with the new equipment for mass decontamination where there would be training needs. It is not the case, therefore, that there could be a problem about an inability to deploy firefighters with appropriate kit in current circumstances where the presence of firefighters with a gas-tight suit was required.

This question is probably more for David Veness given you chair the subgroup on blue light services. It goes back to something that the Minister mentioned earlier on in terms of reinforcement from outside of London in certain circumstances. What arrangements have you made for that?

(Mr Veness) The traditional arrangements are based upon mutual aid systems that are well defined and well rehearsed across the blue light services. It certainly is most obviously seen in relation to the movement of police officers for responding to particular demands, classically disorder across the country, but similar arrangements apply with our colleagues both in fire and ambulance particularly in the context of the Home Counties in order to achieve the degree of reinforcement we seek. We need to be realistic in this particular context because although should an incident occur within the London area there would be an enormous demand for whatever reinforcements could be made available, there are also going to be implications outwith the M25 and we need to bear in mind the considerations, particularly if I use the example of a plume of a noxious impact which is chem-bio, that would fairly rapidly move across a span of the Home Counties and therefore having moved part of the solution within a particular Home Counties force might not be the best answer. This raises the mutual aid challenge to another level of sophistication and one we are working on very closely with colleagues not only within the South East region but elsewhere to ascertain how that can be most effectively addressed. The answer is to go beyond our original notion of mutual aid within the emergency services to the span of counter-terrorist reinforcement that I was describing earlier on. We need to be radical, more imaginative and to bring different answers to the solution than merely relying upon the answers that have availed us in the past.

Jim Knight: As the Minister knows, I am a big fan and advocate of regional government and the regional structures.

Mr Cran: Oh dear!

Jim Knight

Are you saying that they are sufficiently flexible in this context that you can achieve that co-operation from the various regions around London?

(Mr Raynsford) Yes. The operational decision making which would be applicable in these circumstances would certainly rely upon the established linkages between the emergency services. That is not to say we are disregarding the local government or central government arrangements be they local, regional or central because in this mode we would then be functioning within the strategic political framework classically of COBRA or if we were at the major incident level that was a Gold co-ordination arrangement then there would be the representation of local government in order that there was co-ordination at that level.

Are you able to give us any examples of the sorts of circumstances where you need to go outside London for reinforcement?

(Mr Raynsford) It would certainly be the case of a massive detonation that lost a tower block within the central London area or indeed if we move to significant chem-bio or radiological incidents, particularly if it was multi-seated, we need to anticipate those and they are part of the mutual aid discussion and indeed the broader counter-terrorist reinforcement debate.

We have discussed at some length the role of the private sector. Can you just relatively briefly comment on what role you see for the voluntary sector such as St Johns Ambulance and so on?

(Mr Raynsford) They have responded splendidly and included within their arrangements is the National Voluntary Aid Society's Emergency Committee, so they themselves are engaged in configuring to see how a more focused contribution could be made, which is always going to be valued. The method in which that is delivered is classically through the local government arrangements because that has proved to be the most effective linkage with the non-governmental side, particularly the charitable sector. They are certainly closely involved in the work that we are doing around counter-terrorist reinforcement and are key contributors to that debate and we value their contribution enormously.

Rachel Squire

Minister, my question was specifically about how you have involved the private sector in the work of London Resilience and I think you have already given a lot of very useful indications such as the business continuity sub-committee and the Forum, obviously the private sector is involved in some of the other sub-committees within the Forum and you have said the team also includes secondees from all the relevant agencies. Was there anything else that you wished to add to what you have already said about private sector involvement in the London Resilience structures?

(Mr Raynsford) Only to reinforce the point that the London Resilience structure is a partnership and we value very much the input from the private sector in that partnership not just through the business sub-committee which we have talked about but also through the work of the utilities who are obviously private sector and the transport operators who themselves contribute to other sub-committees of the London Resilience Forum. So we have the very active involvement of the private sector as well as all the other agencies and I think this is a very positive side of our work.

Chairman

London could be severely damaged without a bomb being dropped or any chemical weapon deployed simply by a state or a sub-state unit or an individual with a grievance undermining a knowledge-based economy through the penetration of computers, taking over control of a company's computers. Is there anything going on within London Resilience that offers advice to companies on how they can minimise the risk to their business as a result of this evolving threat?

(Mr Raynsford) This was an issue which was addressed quite early on in our existence and for obvious reasons we also took a wider national view of this. This is not a unique challenge to London. A computer virus would have catastrophic consequences for businesses in many other parts of the country and indeed internationally. The way we approached this was both to try and ensure that there were appropriate answers to any potential identifiable threat but also to ensure that there was growing awareness on the part of the business community about the need to plan against certain eventualities, and the whole business continuity planning process has very much focused on ensuring that contingency arrangements are in place to cope with that kind of threat. I do not know whether you would like to add anything, Zyg?

(Mr Kowalczyk) This is mainly being taken forward by the Cabinet Office, the Office of the Envoy and the CCS, so we very much defer to them on taking this forward on a national basis.

Mr Roy

Minister, in relation to private sector support in London's resilience, do you think there is a need for additional statutory powers and, if so, will they be included in the upcoming Civil Contingencies Bill?

(Mr Raynsford) We do believe there is a need for an updating and clarification of statutory powers and it is our intention to bring forward legislation at an appropriate date. It would not be my responsibility, that would be the responsibility of colleagues in the Home Office, but there is clearly a need to update arrangements that were conceived in an era when the scale of today's threats were not envisaged and where the kind of interdependence between organisations was perhaps not fully understood. I can say that this is something which is being considered very actively and my colleagues in the Home Office will no doubt be making an appropriate announcement in due course.

Surely you would be able to have some input into that.

(Mr Raynsford) We are indeed having an input into it, most certainly.

Chairman

Are you as frustrated as we are, Minister, that there is no legislation? You were very diplomatic in your comments and I will not even ask you whether it will be in the next Queen's Speech. We were hoping it would be in the last Queen's Speech. We keep hearing from you and others about how there is a need for urgency and yet we see the glacial speed with which this legislation is wending its way through the system of government. Secondly, almost everyone has been consulted apparently except this Committee, but that is a personal whinge that I have. You must feel a bit frustrated it has taken so long.

(Mr Raynsford) If it was the case that I felt that the absence of appropriate legislation was a serious inhibitor to effective contingency planning at the present time then I would be very frustrated. As it is, I think, as I said in answer to the earlier question, it is necessary to clarify and update statutory arrangements that were conceived in a different era, but in practice good working relations between the various agencies involved in my view have overcome a number of the potential deficiencies that might otherwise have flowed from the absence of modern legislation. So I do think that the kind of approach we have adopted in London with the London Resilience Forum and the partnership has ensured that a number of potential weaknesses have been guarded against. I am not saying that legislation will not help matters.

Chairman: I bet that was number one in your briefing book. You probably anticipated an irate question like that.

Mr Howarth

Minister, you have called it a business sub-committee, but I notice in the London Resilience Team there is nobody from, for example, the London Chamber of Commerce. Is it the case that you are relying on the Corporation of the City of London to be represented? Why is the business community not more directly represented at the top level?

(Mr Raynsford) The business sub-committee is chaired by Gerry Asher who has been a very prominent figure in London First and he is widely respected throughout the business community in London. Yes, you are right, the City Corporation have also contributed and they have helped with secondees, but it goes much wider than that and Gerry has my full confidence as a representative of the London business community to represent that community effectively.

I am sorry, that is not my point. My point is that you have on the London Resilience Team the Metropolitan Police, the British Transport Police, the Mayor and the Greater London Authority and the Corporation and City of London, London Underground, Thames Water, why have you not got the London business community represented at that level given all the various points that have been made by members of this Committee about the risk to business and the need to keep business completely up to speed with what is going on?

(Mr Raynsford) I think business is kept fully up to speed and informed through the work of that sub-committee. As I have already said, we have representatives of business who are seconded to us by the private sector as well as by the City Corporation. I would not say for a moment we would not welcome further secondees and if the London Chamber of Commerce wanted to second someone to our team I am sure that Zyg would be only too pleased to make use of such a person.

Does that sub-committee report to you?

(Mr Raynsford) All the sub-committees report to the London Resilience Forum which I chair and certainly do report to me, yes.

If you take the issue of key targets, Mr Veness talked about the impact of a fall of a tower block, but obviously in the public mind key targets are this estate here, the Palace of Westminster, Whitehall buildings, Royal Palaces. How are they represented in the discussions for emergency procedures? Who here sits on any of your committees?

(Mr Raynsford) If I can just give you one illustration. This time a year ago we were obviously anticipating potential risks at the time of the celebration of the Queen's Jubilee and there was very close consultation with almost all the bodies that you have mentioned, particularly the Royal Parks where a number of events would be staged and also other central London locations to ensure that risks that might occur were guarded against to the best of our ability. As on an at-needs basis, we will certainly communicate and contact the relevant bodies.

I am not talking about on an at-needs basis, I am talking about the fact that given that there is a potential for an attack on prominent buildings of which this clearly is one, how are you seeking through the various mechanisms you have got to report that? How do the authorities of this estate and the others I have mentioned dovetail into all of these extensive plans which have you have got?

(Mr Raynsford) Can I ask David to answer.

(Mr Veness) I think one way of approaching that is to view this as an issue of security protection and defence in the counter-terrorist context. For example, the entire estate of vulnerable locations in London is reviewed at least weekly in the counter-terrorist context by a security review committee which I chair, which embraces all of the interests that you have identified and others as well. In terms of how that counter-terrorist machinery fits into the accountability of both Houses here, that is by way of report to the informal joint committee and indeed, on a more daily basis, through the office of Black Rod and the Sergeant at Arms. In terms of the counter-terrorist defence those mechanisms are well rehearsed and extremely regularly and it is through that representation that those interests are represented through the London Resilience Forum.

Can I then move on to talk about the military. Mr Knight mentioned the Civil Contingencies Reaction Force. It is quite significant that the armed forces are not represented at all on your Forum. What role do you envisage for them and how are you involving them in your planning processes at the moment?

(Mr Raynsford) The armed forces are now represented on the Forum.

Since when?

(Mr Raynsford) And will be present at the next meeting.

Since when?

(Mr Kowalczyk) It was agreed at the last meeting on 27 February that the armed forces London district should be invited and they have agreed. At the same time it was agreed at the last meeting of the blue light sub-committee that the London district armed forces should be represented there as well.

Mr Howarth: That is very good news.

Chairman: That has snookered you, absolutely.

Mr Howarth

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.

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

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

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.

Did you say December?

(Mr Raynsford) Yes.

October was the last date we were given.

(Mr Raynsford) 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.

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.

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

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.

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 per cent 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.

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

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

Good idea. And we will get this out of the note that you are going to send us?

(Mr Kowalczyk) Yes.

Chairman

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 the point I was making to Mr Cran about people talking to other people.

Jim Knight

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 COBRA 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.

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 COBRA 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.

What are you hoping to learn out of that exercise when you run it?

(Mr Raynsford) OSIRIS II?

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.

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.

Mr Roy

In this two-way process of information do you listen to the Scottish Executive because obviously they have got law and order issues?

(Mr Raynsford) 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.

Jim Knight

I assume that works in reverse, that the outcome of the various capital exercises goes out to others?

(Mr Raynsford) Yes.

I just want to touch on international arrangements. Yesterday we had the UK/US Tim Ridge, David Blunkett press conference and meeting to tell the world about the extent of co-operation between those two nations and allies. What does that bilateral agreement mean in practice for us and what strengths have we got that the Americans are looking to learn from and vice versa?

(Mr Veness) I have not as yet the seen the detail of that document so it would be inappropriate to comment precisely. In terms of the generality, I think one of the key lessons of the last 18 and a half months has been the necessity for us to drill deep in terms of international co-operation. It has always been desirable and it has always been the most effective means of operation but there is not a single counter-terrorist line of enquiry relevant to the threat of international terrorism in the United Kingdom that does not have a dimension outwith the United Kingdom, and therefore the need for us to be working in a much more detailed way, particularly with European neighbours, is absolutely critical. It is in a way and requiring a degree of disclosure and candour that is of a different scale than has existed before. In relation to our American linkages on counter-terrorism, they are amongst the closest and there is a very significant degree to which the British experience of counter-terrorist development, not all of which translates into the post 9/11 era, is of value for our colleagues in the United States. We have got a great deal to learn from them because their endeavours and investment in home land security, particularly the scale of resource they have devoted to that, has some obvious benefits for the United Kingdom.

Do you think, Mr Veness, it is appropriate for us to focus on a bilateral partnership (as was done yesterday) as opposed to a multi-lateral one with Europe? You have just mentioned the importance of arrangements with Europe.

(Mr Veness) We have got to do both. If you want the benefits on a case-by-case basis of the real detail of knowing what you are discovering in a flat in Paris or Madrid, in reality you will only achieve that through effective bilateral development. That is absolutely critical. However, there are broad areas of development where the multi-lateral arena is an effective way ahead. You have got to be multi- faceted in the advance you are making on this.

I appreciate that I bounced you into this because it is current but one of the things which was talked about yesterday was joint exercising. Can you enlighten us any further on that and then in general terms on any joint exercises that you may have done internationally?

(Mr Veness) By definition there are issues relating to the United Kingdom where there are very obvious vulnerabilities which would involve us in an international dimension. The Channel Tunnel is the classic example where it would have been foolhardy for us not to have addressed those issues. There are a variety of others - aircraft hijack, maritime hijack, indeed international terrorist financing where there have been endeavours and indeed continuing mutual exercise possibilities. If one of the products - and as I say I am not aware of the details of this agreement - is the opportunity to do that on a more sophisticated level that would be much welcomed.

So sophisticated international exercising has yet to take place?

(Mr Veness) I think that is an accurate statement. It has been focused on particular challenges and dealt with particular themes but bringing that together across international borders is a real opportunity.

Syd Rapson

Could I ask about the stocks of personal protective equipment, how much of it you have and in which emergency service would it be housed?

(Mr Raynsford) All the emergency services have stocks of protective equipment. I mentioned earlier the Fire Service have a substantial amount of gas-tight suits but we are augmenting those and a further 4,000 are being procured nationally, a substantial proportion of which will be available in London. The Health Service have also procured protective equipment and the Police Service have operational equipment for personal protection in similar circumstances, so all the emergency services have PPE. The review which we conducted a while ago indicated the need for a substantial increase in the number of kits available particularly for the Fire Service and those are being procured and we will go on reviewing the appropriateness of that kit to ensure that the emergency services have got the means to do their job and be protected against the kind of eventualities that might arise.

You use the word "substantial". It is always a bit of loose word to say you have got substantial stocks, but have you got enough now? Clearly if you are increasing the numbers coming on-stream you have not got enough and you need more. Is there a great difference between what you have got and what you really need?

(Mr Raynsford) At the moment every single of London's 170 fire engines carries two gas-tight suits. There is an additional stock of 260 gas-tight suits held centrally. Mr Kowalczyk can confirm that is right. We are procuring at least another 400 in the immediate future. That is the scale so it is a significant addition but it is not from a low base, there is already a good supply.

If there is an incident there is a zone around the incident called the hot zone and then there is a warm area around that and a cold area further on. At the moment it is only the Fire Service that is allowed to operate in the hot zone. Have you planned for other emergency services to be able to do that, the Police and Ambulance, for example, to work in the hot zone?

(Mr Raynsford) The operational protocol between the emergency services is designed to ensure that there is the best possible working relationship between them and one of the things that we have been particularly keen to do is to ensure that the Fire Service have got the means to operate more effectively in the hot zone. There are certain restrictions on the use of personal protective kit. It is heavy, the breathing apparatus does not allow very long periods of operation and we are looking closely at ways in which that can be enhanced and improved and the approach will continue to be one that is designed to use the particular expertise of the particular emergency services within the right context. So the answer to your question is if there were a need for other emergency services to be trained to operate within the hot zone and to be equipped to operate within the hot zone then that would be done, but for the moment we believe the right arrangement is in place to ensure the balance between the work of the respective services. David Veness might wish to add.

(Mr Veness) There are certain experts who are necessary, for example bomb disposal officers, who require that same facility to enter the hot zone. We are certainly reviewing critically because the critical distinction is between the contained extended breathing apparatus as worn by Fire Service colleagues and effectively what is battle field protection kit that will be worn by a police officer or a colleague from the Ambulance Service. There may well be, and we are looking at those eventualities, occasions where the skills of other parts of the emergency services may be necessary in the hot zone and we are reviewing that critically.

It is being reviewed in the future. Could I talk about the decontamination units you have. How many have you got as opposed to PPE?

(Mr Raynsford) There is a facility for decontamination both within the National Health Service and using existing fire equipment but there are serious deficiencies in that. In the first place in the case of fire equipment it would use cold water and that could be particularly problematic at a very cold time of the year, so we are seeking in the short-term to remedy that by the procurement of water heaters that can be used, but the longer-term solution is the procurement which is very much in train at the moment and will come on stream over the next few months of much more sophisticated equipment which will allow people to be decontaminated in a discrete way within an environment which is much more satisfactory than the ad hoc arrangement to which I was referring.

Can I go on to biological attacks. There is a real problem of identifying the pattern of disease which might be the result of a biological attack. You have got to read into what has happened to find out what particular disease it could be. We have recently been given an information sheet from the Public Health Laboratory about the latest disease - Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - which is not a biological attack but it is something which is in the minds of people. The information sheet from the government is clearly wrong. It has been changed dramatically in recent days. The spread of the disease is jumping from floor to floor in buildings as opposed to close personal contact. One wonders how you can prevent or be prepared for a biological attack based upon the pattern of movement it has to identify it when the information we are getting from the main source is incorrect to start with?

(Mr Raynsford) I am a lay person and I am obviously not qualified to comment on some of those technical issues. What I can say is that the key challenges in the case of a biological attack would be, firstly, identification and, secondly, ensuring an appropriate response. We are doing a lot of work to ensure that we are better prepared to identify as quickly as possible items that might pose a threat. This will usually depend on specialist advice, whether from Porton Down or elsewhere, and will also require a medical response through the National Health Service to enable people to be treated in the most appropriate way. That is the basic principle on which our arrangements depend but obviously the response in a particular incident depends entirely on the type of threat that might be posed.

I know it is frightening and we do not want to scare the public as such but the spread in the phenomenon before you can identify what it is, how do you try and contain the spread of a disease without knowing what the pattern is? It is a reactive thing. Can you prevent the spread of the disease or only react after it has spread?

(Mr Raynsford) I think the key challenge, as I have already mentioned, is to ensure the earliest possible identification so that appropriate responses can be put in place. As I said, we have been doing a lot of work to try and ensure that we are able to get the quickest possible analysis of any substances found that might constitute a particular biological threat.

What agents have you taken particular steps to identify to tackle in London? What particular agents have you looked at?

(Mr Raynsford) I do not think it would be appropriate to give that sort of detail.

That is okay.

(Mr Raynsford) I am happy to write privately to the Committee.

Chairman: We understand fully.

Syd Rapson: That is fine.

Chairman: Just a few more questions now. David Crausby?

Mr Crausby

Some specific questions on the radiological threat and perhaps you might wish to write to us on that. First of all, a dirty bomb, I guess, could be initially seen as a conventional terrorist attack, so how quickly would you determine whether an explosion in London contained radiological material?

(Mr Raynsford) This again is the same principle as I was describing in response to Mr Rapson's question, the key is early identification. There are various steps in train to ensure that we do improve the existing arrangements for testing both air quality and the nature of the environment in particular cases. That will help us to identify at an early stage the nature of the threat that is posed, then clearly there are a range of possible responses. In the event of a serious radiological or nuclear threat then the issues of mass evacuation become very relevant indeed and I have described what steps we have put in place to ensure that we are able, if necessary, to do that. It is a very extreme response and there are some very unhappy consequences obviously, but all of those need to be considered.

We heard in Portsmouth last week that the Navy carry out checks on submarines for leaks. The officer made it clear to us that whilst the risk might be very low the consequences were very high and for that reason they kept a full stock of antidotes. I guess that is not possible for a city the size of London so what stocks of antidote are held in London? Again, you may wish to write to us.

(Mr Raynsford) Could I write to you on that.

Just finally, Chairman, and I am sure you will want to write to us on this one, what classes of potential radiological sources are there in London? What precautions have been taken to prevent them falling into the wrong hands?

(Mr Raynsford) Again, if you do not mind, I would prefer to write.

Mr Howarth

Can I just ask you, Minister, to sum up and tell us where you think we are at now. You have talked a lot about the committees, sub-committees, working groups and seminars and all the rest of it. Given that our report last year suggested that really there was a long way to go before we were in a position to deal with the threat of an attack on London, if there were such an attack today how would you sum up your ability on the basis of the progress made so far to meet that threat?

(Mr Raynsford) A great deal obviously would depend on the nature of the threat itself but what I can say as a general comment is that London is certainly significantly better prepared than it was 18 months ago to cope with a very wide range of incidents, including catastrophic incidents, on a scale far greater than we were previously equipped to respond. The involvement of a very wide range of agencies, which we have talked about in the course of this afternoon's discussion, has in my view greatly reinforced London's resilience and will make it possible to cope with a much more serious range of possibilities than we would have been able to cope with 18 months ago. Obviously I cannot give you a guarantee that London will cope in any situation, that would be very foolish indeed. All I can say is that we have made significant progress and we will go on doing so because this structure, although it may sound complex, has got a strong focus on results. This is not a bureaucratic structure, this is a structure designed to bring together all the people who need to be involved with a strong focus on getting action and putting in place preventative arrangements that hopefully will cope with the kind of situation with which we might have to deal. I think we are better equipped to do that than we were but we will need to go on very, very carefully checking, double checking, taking remedial action, involving all those who need to be involved, and that is on-going work.

In terms of the gaps, and I pick up specifically on the decontamination unit which you mentioned which is a rather Heath Robinson arrangement available at the moment, when we were in New York outside the United Nations we saw the sophisticated facilities they had there. You are suggesting that will be put right within a matter of months. In terms of the gaps like that would you say that it is a matter of months away for securing most of them?

(Mr Raynsford) For most of them. There will be some that will inevitably take longer. We have talked about the communications issue and we will need to go on working on that to get nearer to the 100 per cent coverage that we want to achieve. What we have done so far has ensured that there is a range of different media in play which will ensure much more effective communication than the era of the air-raid warning siren which was the response of our grandparents to a similar threat 60 or 70 years ago. We are fine-tuning our responses, we are trying to make them more thorough, but we are going to have to go on doing this and in some cases it will go far beyond the next few months.

Chairman: Thank you. Gerald's question to you reminded me, having been to a dinner last night and seen a portrait of Lord St Vincent, Staffordshire's most famous sailor, when asked in the House of Lords: "Can the French invade?" he replied, "My Lords, I do not say they cannot come; I only say they cannot come by sea." That was quite an open answer, shrewdly expressed. We fully appreciate that you cannot give a definitive response that would give absolute assurance to London's citizens or the country's citizens, but I think you have done a great deal this afternoon to give an assurance that we are better placed that we were and we hope we never find out how much better placed we are now than we were. Thank you very much to you all. You have spent a lot of time with us and we appreciate it.