Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2003
SIR MICHAEL
JAY KCMG, MR
DICKIE STAGG
CMG, MR ROB
MACAIRE AND
MR EDWARD
CHAPLIN CMG
Chairman
1. Today we continue with our inquiry into the foreign
policy aspects of the war against terrorism. We are looking particularly
at the travel advice of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and
I welcome Sir Michael Jay, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State
of the FCO, Mr Dickie Stagg, the director of information of the
FCO, Mr Rob Macaire, head of the counter terrorism policy department
and Mr Edward Chaplin, director of the Middle East and North Africa
at the FCO. Sir Michael, on 12 October, 24 Britons were killed
in the outrage in Bali. On 21 October, the Foreign Secretary launched
his review of the travel advice system after the Foreign Office
received quite strong criticism in the press of the advice which
was given at that time to our travellers. The Intelligence and
Security Committee was given the relevant intelligence and reported
on 11 December. There was also an internal review launched by
the Foreign Office. Can you set the ground by at least telling
us with the various reviews where we stand at the moment in terms
of acting on the recommendations of those several reviews?
(Sir Michael Jay) I very much welcome
your inquiry and the interest which the Committee is taking in
our travel advice. It is clear to all of us in the Foreign Office—and
I speak for ministers and officials—that the consular protection
services that we provide are going to become more important over
the next two or three years, higher profile and present us with
new, different and quite difficult challenges. That is the basic
background against which we operate. The British public takes
about 60 million trips overseas every year and about 15 million
British nationals live abroad, in a world which is increasingly,
as we have seen in recent months, complex and dangerous, particularly
perhaps for the foreigners in some of the countries in which people
live and work and travel. There is, as a result of the terrorist
attack in Bali that you mentioned and other terrorist attacks
since then, a clear recognition that travel advice in the context
of our consular work has to have a higher profile than it has
had in the past. That was the context of the reviews which the
Foreign Secretary asked to be carried out after the Bali attacks.
Those reviews have now been carried out and as a result of that
I would highlight two major changes in the ways in which we are
operating. First of all, we are in the process of revising all
our 209 travel advisory notices which are issued on our website.
We have nearly got to the end of that process. I think there are
a few still to go.
2. What are the key revisions?
(Sir Michael Jay) The key revisions are, firstly,
to give a higher profile to the question of terrorism and the
likelihood of terrorist attacks but, more generally, in responding
to some of the comments made by your Committee, by the Intelligence
and Security Committee, by other members of the public, to make
the travel advice more user friendly, more readily understandable,
to try and make certain that it is in better English. We have
worked together with the Plain English Campaign in order to do
that and to ensure also that it is kept up to date, that it does
not get repetitive and basically is more user friendly. That is
the first point I would emphasise in the follow up to these reviews.
The second point is it is clear to me—this is a point I
think I made when I appeared before your Committee in discussing
our departmental report last summer—that we have to think
in terms of a more rapid response more generally to the sorts
of challenges which we as a diplomatic service will face at home
and abroad. It is in that context that we have been doing more
work on how we respond to crises, the instant embassies that we
have talked about in the past, the rapid deployment teams which
we have set up in order to be able to respond more quickly to
consular crises, the 24/7 situation centre which is a streamlining
of some of our existing operations. These are all ways in which
we are trying to enable the Office to respond more flexibly, more
quickly, more relevantly to the sorts of challenges which I fear
over the next few years we are going to have to face.
Sir John Stanley
3. I apologise, Sir Michael, but I have to leave
early. It is to attend the memorial service for the son of constituents
of mine. Their son was amongst those murdered at Bali. Today,
we are covering contingency planning as well as travel advice
and I am aware, as is the rest of the Committee, that you have
made a number of new plans for getting out expert personnel to
deal with consular matters, providing counselling and other support
for next of kin and those who have been seriously hurt. One of
the grave deficiencies that occurred at Bali is as follows: the
widow of my constituents' son was a victim of this; they had been
married for just five weeks and she was desperately badly burnt.
Her case and indeed many others exposed the fact that these atrocities
can occur in locations where there is a complete inadequacy of
medical supplies. The Bali hospital was effectively out of morphine
and had absolutely no knowledge and no capability of dealing with
serious burns. The aspect therefore that I want to raise with
you—and I appreciate the inherent difficulty of this, given
the unpredictability of these atrocities, where they are going
to occur, what medical support is or is not going to be available
at any given place and time—is can you tell us what steps
in the Foreign Office you are taking to look at the whole issue
of the availability of medical support and medical supplies to
deal with these particular situations as best you can?
(Sir Michael Jay) Sir John, could I first
of all ask you on my behalf and on behalf of the Foreign Office
to pass on our condolences once again to the family of the victim
of the Bali bombing at the memorial service you will be attending
this afternoon? On the point of substance you made, this is something
which concerns us a lot and I cannot pretend at the moment that
we have a clear answer to it. We have put in place the rapid deployment
teams which will be able to go at very short notice, consisting
of consular officials, welfare officials, press officers, to the
location of a terrorist incident and provide immediate help to
British citizens who are hurt. At the moment, we are not planning
that those rapid deployment teams should include doctors or nurses.
The reason for that is that our own FCO doctors and nurses are
not authorised to treat, I think I am right in saying, other than
our own Foreign Office personnel. This raises therefore questions
of their status, liability and so on, were they to look after
others. The same problems might arise were we to think of including
non-FCO doctors in the rapid deployment teams. We are in touch
with the Department of Health, with the chief medical adviser,
to see whether there is some way in which we could add a medical
component to the rapid deployment teams that we are putting together.
Another aspect—again it is not something to which at the
moment we have a clear answer—is the question: should we
have stocks of medicines available at different posts around the
world? That is a possible solution but it raises very obvious
difficulties of cost and appropriateness; to have stocks at all
the places around the world in posts where we might need them
would risk that, when they were needed, they were not either the
right sort or they were out of date. The best solution, where
it is possible, is for our rapid deployment teams to take people
who are hurt to the nearest high quality facilities to ensure
they get the best treatment, but that will not always be the best
treatment that they can expect. All I can say at the moment is
that we are aware of this particular issue and we are considering
it with those concerned in London. I hope we will be able to find
a solution to it but for the moment we have not a clear answer
to your question.
4. Perhaps you could give the Committee a further
memorandum on this point in the course of our inquiry[17].
It would be very helpful to know what further progress you are
able to make. I understand from the meeting I had with the Foreign
Secretary that he reached an agreement with the Australian Foreign
Minister that the Australian aircraft that was acting as a casevac
aircraft would take not only Australians but also British people
as well. Though that agreement was reached, I can certainly tell
you from my own personal knowledge that my constituent's widow
would never have got on that aircraft had it not been for a particular
Australian who could see it was a life and death matter for her
and basically pretty well forced his way onto the aircraft with
her. There does need therefore to be really close attention paid
so that, where we are dependent on other countries for casevac—the
Australians were magnificent in this—we have absolute clarity
with that other country that they will take British people on
the same basis as their own nationals. Could you respond on that
point too?[18]
(Sir Michael Jay) I agree with you that
there should be clarity. I am not aware of the precise nature
of the arrangement we have with the Australians. Also, it may
well be that in circumstances like this we would want our own
aircraft able to evacuate people. The decision on whether to do
that would be for the crisis management teams in London but I
am sure that they would, if and as necessary, authorise the local
posts to charter planes in order to provide the sort of evacuation
that victims needed.
5. I am very glad to hear you say that you are
looking at authorising local posts to charter. That is an absolute
necessity because, in these circumstances, these are totally time
critical decisions and there is no doubt that if some people had
got out of Bali earlier more lives would have been saved. I believe
it is the case that all those who did get out to Brisbane on the
Australian aircraft had their lives saved, bar one. It is a time
critical requirement and I welcome the fact that you are looking
into the requirement to give local posts the ability and the authorisation
to charter.
(Sir Michael Jay) It would be case by case rather
than a blanket authorisation. One of the lessons we have learned
from the Bali disaster is the need for an immediate response to
crises of this sort and, if anything, to over-respond rather than
to under-respond. In that context, I hope that we would be able
to provide if, alas, as may be the case, a similar incident occurred
in the future, a quicker response than we did on this occasion.
6. You are, I am sure, also aware that the FCO
helpline numbers were completely overloaded and were not able
to give anything like adequate responses in the immediate aftermath
of Bali. No doubt you will tell the Committee if you can what
steps you are taking to increase the speed of telephone response
to parents and next of kin who are ringing in.
(Mr Stagg) In the case of the Bali bombing in October
last year, what happened was that when the calls reached a certain
level we transferred them to the Metropolitan Police with whom
we had an agreement for doing this. While we had a number of people
who did have difficulty getting through, my impression was that
there was not a large or generic problem. However, we are anyway
planning to alter our system to use a commercial call provider
to be the first line of inquiry in a serious incident. We have
a system at the moment in London whereby we have ten phone lines
for dealing with crises of a management proportion for us, but
where there is a crisis which gets beyond that and where we need
to deal with a far larger weight of calls from that side, we will
be transferring these to a commercial call minder, who will have
a first line of answers, but who will refer any families or next
of kin or whatever through to dedicated consular offices.
Chairman
7. Given the internal review and the recommendations
made, in what way would the British citizen see a difference if
a tragedy like Bali were now to recur?
(Sir Michael Jay) I hope that the first
difference he or she would have seen would have been on the travel
advice before going. I hope that would have given a clearer indication
than has been the case in the past of the situation in the country
and the likelihood or possibility of a terrorist attack. I hope
that the "Know Before You Go" campaign that we run also
would have been of use. If there were a terrorist attack of this
sort, I hope that what the victims would see would be a quicker
response than was the case in Bali. The nature of the response
will vary very much from place to place. If there is a disaster,
as there was in New York, in a city where there is a British embassy
or a large British consulate, the consular operation, as it did
in New York, would leap into operation straight away and there
would be an instantaneous response. Bali was an example where
there was an honorary consul who did , with the help of some 60
or so volunteers, a fantastically good job but needed to have
been reinforced more quickly by people from London. In the equivalent
of a Bali operation, I hope that what would happen would be the
arrival of a rapid deployment team in the immediate aftermath
of a crisis to back up whoever was on the spot and to back up
the consul and probably the ambassador or high commissioner who
will have got there even earlier than the rapid deployment team.
There would be an immediate and larger presence than was the case
in Bali and also, because the rapid deployment team would be equipped
with the sorts of people who are needed in an emergency, the right
kind of people would be there. The most difficult situation of
all is going to be a terrorist attack in a rather remote tourist
area, let us say, where there is no post and no honorary consul
and where getting people there quickly is inevitably going to
take time. In those circumstances, again, we would send the rapid
deployment team as quickly as we could to the nearest place.
8. Clearly there are many countries where we
have no resident ambassador. At least in respect of Bali there
was Jakarta with all the contacts with central government. If
there were to be such a disaster in an African country where we
did not have an ambassador, are there any suggestions at an EU
level to coordinate EU assistance?
(Sir Michael Jay) Yes. There have been in the last
few weeks and months a great deal of contacts with our EU colleagues
and with our other contacts in order to discuss travel advice
and the response to crises. In fact, a lot of other countries
are very interested in our concept that we are developing of the
rapid deployment teams. If there were a crisis in a country where,
let us say, the French had an embassy and we did not then I am
quite certain that we would want to work closely with them and
they would want to work closely with us. I think the same would
be the case if a disaster took place in a country where we had
an embassy or a high commission but the French did not and French
nationals were affected.
9. That is a bilateral arrangement between ourselves
and the French.
(Sir Michael Jay) Yes.
10. Is there any suggestion that there should
be an EU rapid reaction team?
(Sir Michael Jay) I do not think so at the moment.
If anything, we are a little ahead of others in the rapid deployment
teams but there is a great deal of interest on the part of others
in what we are doing. Given that we are all thinking in very much
these terms, that is the direction in which we will move. I was
at a meeting just before Christmas with my EU counterparts. We
meet twice a year. The entire meeting was taken up with questions
of travel advice, how we ensure that the travel advice amongst
the EU countries is consistent, how we make sure that information
is shared very quickly among us so that people are not surprised
by changes in other people's travel advice. We need to move further
down that route.
Andrew Mackinlay
11. There are various grades of concern. There
are some areas where you would say, "Definitely do not go.
If you go, you are foolhardy in the extreme." There are other
areas where concern is expressed. What collaboration do you get
with the travel industry? I can understand how this is commercially
sensitive. We have obligations to them. We do not want to blight
their business but equally is there a way whereby the industry
is formally cautioned, more or less saying to them, "We would
consider you are under some obligation to counsel your prospective
clients about a particular matter"? Is there a mechanism
like this?
(Sir Michael Jay) There are regular meetings
with the Association of British Travel Agents, ABTA, to discuss
all aspects of our travel advice. Perhaps I could go through the
various phases that we would go through as we move through from
relative security to serious crisis. We identified four phases
which, for our own purposes, we describe as, first of all, phase
1A, where we would advise against non-essential travel, including
all tourism and increased vigilance on the part of British residents
and British travellers. The second, one further up from that,
1B, we would advise all UK nationals in the country to consider
seriously whether they should leave. Phase 2: we would advise
against all travel to a country and advise the British community,
even those who regard their business as essential, to leave while
there are still commercial flights. Phase 3: we would urge all
remaining British citizens to get out of the country by any available
route or, if they think it is the safest thing to do, to hunker
down. If it comes to our own staff, we would instruct our own
staff to leave in certain circumstances. With British citizens,
we can give them very strong advice but it can only be advice.
The ultimate, final decision has to be their own. I would like,
if I may, to ask Dickie Stagg to talk about how we would relate
to the travel industry at those various stages.
(Mr Stagg) We try to work as partners with the travel
industry because we feel that we cannot succeed in disseminating
our message to the public except through them. For the most part,
they see us as being a helpful partner, though obviously on occasions
it is a slightly complicated relationship because we want to advise
people against travelling which is not what the travel industry
is in the business of doing in principle. We have regular meetings
with them every six months to talk over the big, recurrent issues
which exist in terms of our travel advice and how we operate.
We have an understanding with them that they will inform their
clients of the existence of our travel advice, how to access it,
and they will include information in their packs given to their
travellers on this. In the case of countries which we are advising
in one of the four categories Sir Michael has just mentioned,
we would expect them to tell their clients that this a country
which the Foreign Office is advising people not to go to. I know
from my own experience, because my stepbrother is in the business,
that he does exactly that. He tells people what the advice is.
They either take the advice or they do not, depending on their
circumstances. When you get to the higher levels of advice in
terms of saying, "Do not go in any circumstances", that
is normally something which we would also disseminate through
the media because you want people to hear it very rapidly. Obviously,
the people most affected tend to be out there in the region. People
back here would expect to get that message through public means
and they would probably not rely on their travel agent. They would
expect a travel agent selling a ticket to a country like Iraq
at the moment or another country which we advise against all travel
for to make it very clear to the client that they have sold the
ticket that they are taking a very severe risk in going.
Andrew Mackinlay: As you go down the list of
gravity, it gets easier. It is that category 1A where basically
you are counselling no tourism. I have not tested it. You have
given some personal experience but, as an industry, there may
well be diligent operators and there might be diligent, alert
and communicated retail agents, because at that level people buy.
Brochures would not have this. I want to bounce this off you:
whether or not there is, in terms of fair competition across the
industry, and perhaps there should be some statutory base whereby,
if a 1A warning was issued, there is an obligation in contract
anyway that the person selling the product, the holiday or the
travel should at least formally counsel the client. After all,
in so many other industries, there are obligations placed upon
the trade to advise, a health warning, if you like. It seemed
to me that it might be fairer all round. The words could be carefully
crafted to gauge the gravity. Things are pretty serious by 1A,
are they not? It seems to me that the customer is entitled to
be informed formally and in fairness it should be done consistently
across the trade. It would be fairer to you and your colleagues
as well. What do you think about that? Do you want to think about
it? It seems to me it is a new world and we ought to have some
statutory base[19].
Chairman: Presumably, if a retail operator failed
to pass on the sort of information Mr Mackinlay has mentioned,
there could be a legal liability anyway.
Andrew Mackinlay
12. Mr Stagg, could you take me through what
I would call the hot line situation whereby you said you had this
arrangement with the Metropolitan Police but you are now going
to out-source that? At what stage do I go there? Do I phone the
Metropolitan Police? This is where I hear of a disaster somewhere
and my loved one might be involved?
(Mr Stagg) You phone the same number
so from the outside there is no change, as far as I am aware in
the system. We do not have a large, in-house call reception facility.
For example, I think at the time of Bali we took something like
800 calls in the first 24 hours after the bomb went off, but it
became clear that we were not able to absorb the number of calls
coming in. We had an arrangement, which was longstanding, in situations
where there has been a crime—which there had been in this
case, as with 11 September and so on—for the Metropolitan
Police to allow us to transfer calls to their call handling facility,
which was much larger. As part of a much wider change to the way
we do consular business, we have now tried to develop a more strong,
self-standing, efficient way of doing it and one part of that
is to get arrangements with a commercial call handler which will
allow us much more rapidly to upgrade the level of calls coming
in than has been possible for our existing system. In so far as
there were problems at the time with Bali and people could not
get through because the phones were blocked, which I know was
a desperately frustrating situation, we believe that these new
arrangements, which we hope will come into effect this summer
will be a much more reliable, robust way of doing it than those
we have now.
Andrew Mackinlay: I have a feeling about this
which I am not entirely comfortable with. It is not a doctrinaire
reason about my position of out-sourcing. It is the fact that
the police are trained and disciplined in both reassuring, counselling
and, if need be, giving bad news. What I do not understand is—it
does not matter how professional they are—how an out-source
can suddenly inflate their staff, because it has to be done pretty
damned quick, and also can be fully briefed. Why would a burden
on the Metropolitan Police now—with communication skills,
presumably you can have an arrangement with all the constabularies
of the United Kingdom. You send them immediate, consistent advice
and people would be able to phone their appropriate constabulary,
or any constabulary which they can hit the button on. It seemed
to me, why not keep with the police? Why not spread the load rather
than burden the Metropolitan Police with all the communications
we have today? Can you beef up either now or drop us a note how
this other system would work bearing in mind that private company
needs to get suitable people in situ immediately. They need to
be able to have constant updates from you. I am surprised that
you think this can be an improvement. I have an open mind on it
but that is my reserve.
Chairman
13. Would you give a reply now and expand later?[20]
(Mr Stagg) On the question of the Metropolitan
Police, we have rather been in their hands as to how far they
can adapt their systems. It is probably more a question for them
than for us. In terms of the role of front line call services,
there has to be a filter so that we get people talking to experienced
consular officers who are directly affected by the tragedy rather
than people ringing in to get an update, which happens.
(Sir Michael Jay) Inevitably, our own
consular resources are going to be finite. What we want to try
to do is to find a system whereby the initial contact is made
by people who do not need to have all the consular information
available to them but do need to know who to put the phone call
through to quickly so that people can get the person who can help
them on the end of the phone and also so that our properly trained
consular people are not dealing with all the first line of questions
which do not require that level of understanding.
Andrew Mackinlay: I have an open mind. We need
to know there is consistency of training if these people are going
to be brought in at short notice by private firms. If you can
amplify on that, that would be helpful. In my limited experience,
we have some extraordinarily good people as honorary consuls around
the world, who do it as a public service. They are only issued
with one flag, which is slightly digressing, but it is a hobby
horse of mine. I think they get £500. In fairness to them,
what real training or briefing are they invited to have? Some
of us have felt that the network of honorary consuls is stretching
a bit. There could be different categories of honorary or part
time consuls, perhaps like a retainer slightly. From my limited
knowledge of them, it seemed to me they are extremely diligent,
often professional, common sense people but they would not have,
would they, any training how to deal with this?
Chairman
14. What can we legitimately expect?
(Sir Michael Jay) They would not necessarily
have had any training. Honorary consuls vary, as you know, by
profession, experience and training. Many of them would be British
citizens who have been long time resident in the country and know
that country extremely well, know the local authorities. They
are exceptionally well able then to help people get out of difficulties
they get into. They will often be a local businessman. They will
have had briefing. I would expect them to have had a proper briefing
about the job that it would be hoped they would do. From my own
experience in Paris, the honorary consuls would fairly regularly
come to Paris and talk through the sorts of obligations they were
likely to be under, the kinds of issues they would expect to have
to face in helping British citizens, but formal training? Quite
probably not. I have huge admiration for our honorary consuls.
For the most part they do a fantastic job for us at often very
great cost to themselves and with very little pecuniary reward
from us.
Andrew Mackinlay
15. I fully accept everything you say. Whilst
many of them have to deal over a year with tragedies like a road
traffic accident and do it very confidently and so on, none of
them would have been briefed on widespread crisis, would they?
Would there be a manual so that they can see what to do next or
something like that?
(Sir Michael Jay) There is information
which should be available to them. Also, they should have access
to our own website which gives quite a lot of information. The
question you raise, which is an extremely good one, is how far
they have, how far they should have and how far it is possible
given their circumstances to provide them with training in these
sorts of incidents. That is something we should look at. I suspect
that the role of the honorary consul is going to become more important
in the years ahead, as the number of British tourists rises, as
they get more adventurous and as the world gets more dangerous.
Mr Illsley
16. You mentioned resources and my first question
relates to them. Given that since 11 September the number of intelligence
reports coming into the Foreign Office has increased dramatically,
the question was whether the counter terrorism policy department
has sufficient capacity to review intelligence reports from all
FCO posts and to give proper consideration to this? Since that
question was drafted, I think the Committee have received a further
memorandum which states that the consular division are now to
have two extra staff appointed and the counter terrorism policy
department will also need an additional two staff members[21].
Is that likely to be sufficient, given the increase in the level
of activity in this area?
(Sir Michael Jay) We are increasing the
staffing available all the way down the chain here in the Counter
Terrorism Policy department and in the Consular Division. The
Foreign Office Board had a long discussion on Friday about how
we are going to increase the strength of the Consular Division,
given the new funding arrangements we have agreed with the Treasury,
in order to ensure that it does have available enough staff to
cope with what is going to be inevitably an inexorable growth
of cases. This whole aspect of Foreign Office work, whether it
is in Mr Macaire's department or in our Consular Division, is
going to grow in importance and is going to need more resources.
(Mr Macaire) Can I draw a distinction
between what happens inside the Foreign Office and what happens
outside? Part of the answer to your question is that the assessment
of the very large volume of intelligence which now comes in is
not done primarily in the Foreign Office; it is done by the Security
Service. That is where there are much larger resources. They are
increasing resources and the structures are constantly being refined
and looked at to see ways that they can be improved. They are
the people who bear the brunt of professionally assessing the
intelligence. That comes through to us and we need enough staff
to be able to process that. That is where the two extra staff
are being taken on.
17. Is that in a distilled form? Do you insist
or are you provided with a summary of all the reports or is a
report rounding up all the information that comes into the other
agencies given to you?
(Mr Macaire) The Foreign Office is a customer of the
intelligence agencies as a consumer of intelligence and we have
a customer relationship with the people producing it to make sure
that what we get is in the right format. We are looking at increased
volumes of intelligence and we talk to them all the time about
the best way to get that information.
18. I would like to talk about the contradictions
of a post abroad where, on the one hand, we have to avoid antagonising
other countries in which we are based; we have to promote British
commercial activities and commercial interests there and, at the
same time, where there appears to be some form of threat, there
has to be relevant advice perhaps to a country where people should
not travel to. How do you reconcile these competing interests
within the posts, promoting British interests whilst at the same
time having to give a warning that this country is not as safe
as it should be in terms of travel?
(Sir Michael Jay) Our paramount concern will be for
the safety of British citizens. That is what will influence us
above other concerns. Our travel advice will be based on the best
judgment we can make of the threat in the country. That will be
the basis on which we will make our judgment. Of course, we will
be conscious of the other British interests in the country, but
our main concern will be to ensure that we are advising tourists
to that country or businessmen visiting that country or citizens
resident there of the nature of the threat that there may be.
19. Is there any argument or any instance where
it might be better to work with the country involved to try and
reduce the threat or preempt the situation arising, rather than
changing the travel advice which will have a detrimental effect
on that country? I and the Chairman had a meeting a week last
Monday with the Foreign Minister of Trinidad and Tobago who had
specifically come to this country to meet with the Foreign Secretary
to discuss the travel advice issued by the Foreign Office in relation
to that country, which they felt was detrimental to the tourist
industry and which had prompted not only a visit to this country
by the Foreign Ministry but a visit to the United States and mainland
Europe to try and counteract the effects of the travel advice
which had been issued. I was somewhat surprised because I had
not regarded Trinidad and Tobago as being a country where detrimental
travel advice had been issued.
(Sir Michael Jay) In the case of Trinidad and Tobago
there were some specific threats against British interests there
which were received by our High Commissioner. The first thing
he did was to talk to the government about them so that the government
was aware of the threats but, as a result of those threats, we
judged that it was right to change the travel advice. We think
that the travel advice was appropriate to the threat. There are
occasions—Trinidad and Tobago is one of them—when
there are contacts between us and the government as to the nature
of the travel advice and the drafting of the travel advice. We
will always start from the position that our main concern has
to be that the travel advice is based on the best judgment we
can make of the threat that exists to British citizens there.
It may be in some cases that there could be a dialogue with the
country in which you would say, "Look, if you were to strengthen
the policing in a certain area, that could reduce the threat to
British citizens." If that did then prove to be the case,
it would be right to change the travel advice but I do think the
travel advice has to be based on our best judgment of the threat
as we see it on the intelligence that comes to us.
17 See Ev 26. Back
18
See Ev 26. Back
19
See Ev 26. Back
20
See Ev 26. Back
21
See Ev 11. Back
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