Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2003
SIR MICHAEL
JAY KCMG, MR
DICKIE STAGG
CMG, MR ROB
MACAIRE AND
MR EDWARD
CHAPLIN CMG
20. One of the reasons I was surprised that
the travel advice in relation to Trinidad and Tobago was detrimental
is that I had two friends who were out there on holiday at the
time and had they been aware of the advice they might have contacted
me to ask for clarification or to talk to me about it. Even I
was not aware of that particular problem. It begs the question:
is the advice getting through to the normal holiday traveller
visiting that country?
(Sir Michael Jay) On the first point, I think I am
right in saying that our advice did not say, "Do not go."
It said, "Take care" which I think was the right thing
to say in the circumstances. On the second question, does our
advice get through and how do we ensure it gets through better,
this is something to which we devote a huge amount of thought.
Our website is very well disseminated. I do not have the exact
figures in front of me but it is 675,000 impressions in an average
month. An awful lot of people are looking at it. Obviously there
is a multiplier through the travel agents and others who will
look at it and pass it on to their clients. For those who have
no access to the website, there is a dedicated telephone line
which you can ring up and get the travel advice for the country
that you want. There will be a voice activated telephone travel
service coming into effect in the summer. We are working all the
time to improve and increase the dissemination of our travel advice.
I think you are raising a very interesting question we were discussing
this morning: what about those who are in the country at the time
when the travel advice changes and how can they become aware of
it? There are a number of answers to that. Firstly, if there is
a crisis brewing in a country, it will be clear from the newspapers
so that would be an indicator. Those who have access to the internet
can always look at the travel advice. Increasingly, people are
using their mobile phones to phone home and their mums will tell
them to watch out. You raise a pretty fundamental question and
we would very much welcome advice from the Committee and from
your own experience of travelling, on this and on other matters.
If you can see ways in which you think we could help to get the
travel advice through more widely, we would very much welcome
that.
21. Is there a case not for compulsion but perhaps
to talk to the travel industry about a code of practice whereby
there is a requirement placed upon a travel operator to provide
the most up to date travel information from the FCO website or
the FCO to the traveller as part of their transaction when buying
a holiday?
(Sir Michael Jay) It is something we should look at
at the same time as looking at Mr Mackinlay's question. Many of
them do because they regard it as something which is absolutely
right and proper to do. Making it an obligation is slightly tricky
because if you were issuing a ticket two or three months in advance
and you got, say, the latest bit of travel advice attached to
the ticket, which would be one way of doing it, that could be
leading somebody down a false path if the travel advice changes
in the meantime. The role of the travel industry and our relationship
with them is something we need to think further about.
22. What sources of information for travel advice
do we have in countries where we have no representation? How do
we glean information in relation to any particular dangers where
we have no representation?
(Sir Michael Jay) Where we do not have any resident
representation, we will have non-accredited representation. In
an African country where there is no British embassy, there will
nonetheless be people who are accredited to that country, who
are in a neighbouring country and there will be probably a consul
who will visit fairly regularly and be able to talk to the authorities
and pick up advice in that way. It will not be as good as if you
have people on the spot the whole time but it ensures that there
is some coverage. Here too, one of the things we are doing more
of now is looking more closely at the travel advice of other countries.
There is now a hyperlink through from our own website to the travel
advice of three or four other of our main partners. If a traveller
is going to a francophone African country where we are not accredited,
and gets through to our advice and thinks, "I would quite
like to know what the French are saying about this because they
know more about the country" they get through automatically
and get further advice that way.
Mr Maples
23. Our interest in this subject is prompted
by what happened in Bali in October. The Intelligence and Security
Committee looked into that and their conclusion is FCO travel
advice "did not accurately reflect the threat or recent developments
. . .". Do you think that was a fair judgment?
(Sir Michael Jay) We are at the moment
in the process of looking hard at the report of the Intelligence
and Security Committee and we will be replying to that in a little
while. I do not think it would be right for me to prejudge the
reply we will be giving to the Intelligence and Security Committee.
I think I am right in saying that there was a qualification to
that but I do not have the exact words in my mind.
24. To be fair, they said it was proportional
to the then security service assessment.
(Sir Michael Jay) From the Foreign Office point of
view, we would want to put the emphasis on the second part of
the quotation as well as the first.
25. 24 British citizens got killed. Whether
any of them would have read that I do not know. I have never logged
on to the Foreign Office website to look at travel advice before
travelling and I suspect a great many people do not. Nevertheless,
if it is going to be there, one wants to make sure that it is
doing as much good as it can. What interests us is that there
had on 23 September been an explosion in Jakarta. As a result
of that, the United States changed their travel advice and said,
"Westerners, especially US citizens, should exercise extreme
caution and be extra vigilant regarding their security awareness.
Americans and westerners should avoid large gatherings and locations
known to cater largely for a western clientele such as certain
bars, restaurants and tourist areas." That is getting pretty
specific. That was after 23 September and before 12 October. I
wonder whether you would have picked that up in the Foreign Office
and somebody would have said, "I wonder why the Americans
are altering that and maybe we ought to alter ours or at least
think about it".
(Sir Michael Jay) As I said at the beginning, we are
learning the lessons of the Bali terrorist attack in a number
of ways. One of the lessons that we are learning is the need for
closer coordination with our major partners. Another lesson that
we are learning is the need to ensure that the advice given on
the spot is entirely consistent with the advice given in London
so that there is no inconsistency between the two. There will
always be occasions on which the travel advice which is given
by one country will differ from that given by another because
the threat to its own citizens will be different. I do not think
we can ever expect there to be identical travel advice. That is
one of the reasons why we are trying to ensure that our citizens
do have access to other people's advice through the website but
I think the answer to your question is that we would hope that,
as a result of the changes we are making because of the Foreign
Secretary's review and the changes in practice we have put into
effect since then, that we would avoid any sense of confusion
that there may have been before Bali. On the question of who reads
it, that goes back to the answer I gave to Mr Illsley. It is a
very real question. How do we ensure that the maximum number of
people read our website? Huge numbers do. Huge numbers, since
there are 60 million travellers a year, clearly do not. We cannot
assume that everybody does. We can do the best we can do and we
want the best advice we can get from others as to how we can improve
matters.
26. You have dealt in generalities there and
what I was trying to focus on were three or four specific things.
One was the attack on Jakarta on 23 September which gave rise
to the change in the United States travel advice but not a change
in ours. On 3 October, before the Bali bomb attack, you did not
change the travel advice but you did change the advice to subscribers
of the Indonesia Travel Service in which you said pretty much
the same thing: " . . . activists are more likely to show
their disapproval of many of the bars and night clubs which are
popular with Indonesians and foreigners, especially on Friday
nights. British citizens should avoid these establishments."
It seems that the Foreign Office did pick up the same point as
the Americans but did not put it on its general Indonesia website
but only made it available to people who subscribed by e-mail.
You have undertaken a review but, with great respect, that is
being wise after the event. What one is interested in is: here
are a series of two very specific events as a result of which
one country reacted in one way; we reacted in another but we did
not ignore it. We made the advice half available.
(Sir Michael Jay) You are right on the facts. One
of the lessons we have learned is that it is crucially important
that there is complete consistency so that we do not have partial
advice; we have the whole advice. If the Post decides it wants
to change that advice, that will now, through the mechanism we
have set up, come straight back through the geographical department
in London, be considered in London and get very quickly, through
our travel advisory unit, onto the website. There will therefore
be complete consistency between what is on the travel advice on
our website and the travel advice being issued by the embassy
in the country concerned.
(Mr Stagg) On the advice about avoiding bars and clubs,
particularly on Fridays, this was very much put in the context
of the run up to Ramadan. While the drafting may not have been
perfect because of its limitation on the scope of the advice,
the advice was directed very much at those living in the Muslim
parts of Indonesia where there was a concern about people in the
run up to Ramadan feeling strong emotions about westerners behaving
in a very western way. It was not at all designed to aim at Bali
which, as you know, is non-Muslim and a long way away. In the
case of the American advice about clubs and bars and whatever,
as far as we are concerned, it did not appear to be very strong
advice against going to Bali. There were members of the American
embassy on holiday in Bali the weekend of the bomb. The sense
that the Americans were in a very jittery state about Bali and
avoiding it would not be a fair characterisation. There were no
doubt concerns but certainly members of the American embassy felt
sufficiently confident about the situation to go there over that
weekend of the 12th.
27. Maybe they were heeding their own advice.
The travel advice did not say, "Do not go"; it said
to avoid, " . . . locations known to cater largely for a
western clientele such as certain bars, restaurants and tourist
areas." You now monitor the travel advice of other countries
and I wonder whether you would pick that up from the American
travel advice and that was why the e-mail advisory service was
changed.
(Mr Stagg) There were separate issues. The advice
that we issued from our post about concern over foreigners being
attacked in bars and clubs was very specific and I think it was
shared amongst the embassies of foreign countries in Jakarta.
In the run up to Ramadan, there was quite a lot of strong emotion
about differences of behaviour between westerners and Muslims.
As a result of this, the embassy thought they should warn those
particular residents of Jakarta that they should be a bit cautious
and not behave in a way which might be provocative.
28. There is a bit of a difference between getting
jeered at by a few Muslim activists and getting blown up though.
Eric Illsley referred to the Trinidad and Tobago case. I wonder
whether you come under any pressure from particular countries
on these issues. I realise one has to be very sensible and sensitive
and we do not want to destroy countries' tourist industries. We
have all been sent a copy of the letter from the Foreign Minister
of Mauritius to the Foreign Secretary[22]
complaining. "I was taken aback by the country advice issued
by the Foreign Office in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks
in Bali mentioning that British nationals could be targets in
tourist destinations such as Mauritius." Do you get a lot
of that? How do you try to strike a balance between warning people
and not needlessly damaging other people's tourist industries?
(Sir Michael Jay) We get a certain amount
of comments, complaints and letters. So do our embassies, but
we explain to them why the advice is as it is. We have to be very
confident ourselves that the advice we are issuing is proper,
reasoned and based on information coming from the post or from
intelligence sources so that we can justify it. That has to be
our main concern, our main criterion by which we judge it, but
if a foreign minister said, "Look, you have got this wrong",
we would want to say, "Tell us how we have got this wrong."
If something is factually inaccurate and we have made a mistake,
we would want to reflect that. If it was saying, "This advice
that you have given is going to harm the tourist industry",
we would say, "We recognise that and we have to advise our
citizens on the basis of the threat as we judge it." Then
we get into the sort of conversation we were talking about earlier
on with Mr Illsley. Okay; what could be done by means, say, of
greater protection in a particular tourist area to reduce the
threat and enable us to change the travel advice? I am being hypothetical
here because I have not been involved in any such conversations,
but that is how I would see such a conversation going and that
is how I think we would try to reconcile the two.
29. You would not change the travel advice as
a result of a letter like this but in anticipation that you might
get a letter like this, you would use rather diplomatic, less
precise language than someone else would.
(Sir Michael Jay) Our concern for our own citizens
is paramount in this and that is what would influence us more
than anything else.
30. I wonder whether it is possible to square
this circle, not picking on countries and at the same time upsetting
them but flagging up this particular issue. Obviously, there are
risks wherever you go. You are just as likely to get murdered
in Paris as you are in Jakarta but there is a specific thing here
and that is Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. That is the context
of Bali and Mombasa, what happened on 11 September and what will
probably continue to happen. Would it be sensible, instead of
dealing with this on a per country basis, to have some more general
advice at the start for some countries which have very high crime
levels or very strong local customs? There are some countries
where there is a terrorist threat. There is in London and Paris
but in some of these countries like Indonesia and Kenya it has
been demonstrated there is a higher level of threat. Would it
be sensible to take those together and say, "This is how
we see the nature of the threat in these places." Then you
would be able to give very precise advice in an area in which
people would want it without singling out particular countries,
upsetting them and ruining their tourist industry.
(Sir Michael Jay) One of the changes we have made
to the travel advice as part of the follow up to the Foreign Secretary's
review is to have one of the early pages, which you are aware
of.
31. You are way ahead of me.
(Sir Michael Jay) There are lots of icons there and
one that you can click on to is the risk of terrorism when travelling
abroad, which is new. It has been there for a few days and it
does very much what you have described. It does talk about the
risk of terrorism generally and the sort of terrorist groups that
are at work. It does not say, "These are the dangerous countries"
but it does say, "These are the countries in which there
have been terrorist attacks over the last nine to twelve months
or so", therefore pointing people towards the countries which
are more dangerous than others. I am sure we will want to keep
this up to date and adjusted as we go along. It is an attempt
to do the sort of thing which you are suggesting.
32. What would you say about Pakistan, for instance?
(Sir Michael Jay) It lists terrorist attacks which
have taken place. It says, for example, "Terrorist attacks
during 2002 included a suicide car bomb against a synagogue in
Israel in April which killed 18 European tourists and local Tunisians."
"Suicide attack against a bus in Karachi carrying French
engineers in May." It is not trying to rank countries in
order of danger, but it is saying there is a generic problem here.
There are certain groups of terrorists who are active in a number
of different countries and here are some specific things that
have happened which should cause you, the traveller, to look pretty
carefully. If they were worried about that, what we would hope
they would do would be to go to the travel advice of the country
concerned. The combination of the general piece on the risk of
terrorism plus the travel advice of the country concerned ought
to give them a fairly reasoned picture of the risks of the country
to which they are going, or enable them to say, "We had better
not go to that country. I want to go abroad. That one looks a
bit too dangerous now. Let me try somewhere else."
Chairman
33. May I pick up what Mr Illsley said about
Trinidad and Tobago and Mr Maples on Mauritius? You are absolutely
right. The paramount consideration is the safety of British subjects.
In Trinidad and Tobago the Foreign Secretary told Mr Illsley and
myself that two cruise liners were diverted as a result of this
advice, the advice being that there is an increased terrorist
threat. They were concerned that there was an unfortunate juxtaposition
on that page of a marginal note saying, "Worldwide warning"
which people would read into Trinidad and Tobago. In the case
of Mauritius a letter from the Foreign Secretary said he was taken
aback. This presumably came out of the blue, so here we have two
friendly Commonwealth countries both saying that they have suffered
damage. Is there any way, consistent with our obligations to British
subjects, that we could have prepared them better for this or
could have in some way communed with them beforehand?
(Sir Michael Jay) I think it would be
unwise to get ourselves into the frame of mind in which we felt
we needed to clear our travel advice in advance but we can forewarn
so that there are no surprises. Also, if there are unfortunate
juxtapositions or facts which are wrong, we would certainly want
those pointed out to us. In both these cases, this was the old
form of travel advice. I think I am right in saying that the Mauritius
travel advice is now in its new form and the Trinidad and Tobago
one is about to be brought up into the new format. I hope that
the greater clarity which will come from the new format of travel
advice may avoid some of the difficulties that we have had with
people in the past.
34. Mr Gayan, the Foreign Minister of Mauritius
was writing on 19 November and he said to the Foreign Secretary,
"I would appreciate if you could on an appropriate occasion
dispel the impression it has created." Have you done so?
(Sir Michael Jay) I am afraid I do not know the answer
to that[23].
Andrew Mackinlay
35. Before coming here, I got my researcher to look
at the websites of Germany, the United States, France and the
United Kingdom to make some comparisons. They are all very good.
I probed him to test what he thought. We come off rather well
in the United Kingdom. You have more countries listed than the
United States of America and from his detective work you update
yours every two weeks. That is what he seemed to ascertain as
distinct from the United States where there are some entries in
2001. Following Mr Maples's question, in the United States website
where you have a real danger it flags it up. If I was going to
your website as it is from your improvements two days ago, if
I go down to a country which is in what we call category 1A—that
is, they are recommending no tourism—does it flag it up,
perhaps not literally with flashing lights but we mentioned Pakistan.
It gives instances of what terrorist attacks there have been.
You were quite unequivocal about this. Does it hit me in the face?
(Sir Michael Jay) It may, because on
the front page I have here, "Country Advice", there
is an exclamation mark. "The FCO advises against all travel
to the following ..." and it lists the countries where they
are advising against all travel.
36. That is good enough for me. I almost feel
we are asking about things where, if there have been deficiencies,
they seem to have been remedied. Can I ask about one other sensitive
matter? From time to time the Foreign Office will get some intelligence
which shows that there is going to be an attempt at a terrorist
attack. By way of historic example, I think it is well trod ground
that the security and intelligence services followed and tracked
the IRA people as they moved on their way to Gibraltar with the
intention to commit a terrorist outrage at the time of the changing
of the guard at the governor's palace in Gibraltar. It is a matter
of history that the SAS took them out half a mile from there.
In such a scenario today where security and intelligence services
know that there are some operatives who are about to commit an
outrage, you probably know where they are heading to and you have
information as to the anticipated time and location, what do you
do then as regards travel advice?
(Sir Michael Jay) Rob Macaire might want to comment
on that. I do not want to go into specific details, but I am aware
of one occasion in the course of the last six to nine months when
we did receive such specific intelligence and we did then issue
travel advice that it would be prudent to avoid a particular part
of a country at a particular time.
37. It is a difficult dilemma, is it not?
(Sir Michael Jay) Yes, it is a very difficult dilemma.
38. Would it go up to ministerial level? I can
see this scenario occurring again, I do not think it is going
to be a one-off, but unfortunately as your intelligence improves
we are going to be faced with this dilemma more often.
(Sir Michael Jay) I think the answer to your second
question is that circumstances like that would certainly be considered
by ministers.
(Mr Macaire) Certainly any decision like that would
go to ministers, that would be part of the standard procedure
that we have. It goes back to the question we were discussing
earlier of how you respond to a potential threat, and the fact
that travel advice is only one way and very often it might not
be the most appropriate or the best way to respond to a threat.
Obviously if there is action that can be taken to disrupt a potential
attack then that is infinitely preferable and if the information
we have is such that we can do that with the authorities in the
country concerned then that would be the first line of action.
Travel advice is a poor substitute for that for all the reasons
we are saying, but when there is specific and credible intelligence
of a particular threat then, absolutely, that would be included
in the travel advice.
39. Are there specific rules of engagement in
a scenario like that? It could be you know within a certain time-frame
there is going to be an attack on an air liner. There is evidence
to suggest that a certain United States authority may have known
in the period of Pan Am that there was a threat to aviation. Is
there strict guidance as to how to handle this? You have indicated
it would be at ministerial level. Is there a crisis management
team? If this suddenly hits your desk this afternoon is there
a set pattern as to how you would deal with this?
(Sir Michael Jay) If there was a clear indication
from intelligence of a serious threat to British interests then
the Cabinet Office briefing room mechanism would come into action
and we would work closely with the agencies and others in Whitehall
to decide how we would respond to it and, as Rob Macaire said,
there are all sorts of different ways in which we could respond,
but certainly, in something as serious as that, ministers would
be involved from the very beginning.
22 See Ev 137. Back
23
See Ev 27. Back
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