Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 55)
TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2003
SIR MICHAEL
JAY KCMG, MR
DICKIE STAGG
CMG, MR ROB
MACAIRE AND
MR EDWARD
CHAPLIN CMG
40. You indicated that in your experience over
the past year or two there has been one incident which you felt
fell into the category I described.
(Sir Michael Jay) I am aware of one.
41. And there was travel advice saying do not
travel, was there?
(Sir Michael Jay) There was travel advice to keep
away from a particular area at a particular time.
42. Were you happy about the waving of the flag
and alerting people both through websites and the press? I realise
it is a sensitive area which you do not want to identify presumably
and I do not want to press you. In the light of that experience,
are you happy about that or do you think more could have been
done?
(Sir Michael Jay) I think every example is going to
be extremely difficult. Rob Macaire probably sees examples of
this sort of thing almost daily; they come up to my level regularly.
Every single one presents a really difficult handling dilemma.
You have to make the best judgment you can on the basis of the
information you have available. You have to judge whether it is
a serious threat. If it is a serious threat where you genuinely
believe citizens are at risk then you have to try to take action.
If you are not certain that it is a threat then you have to make
the best judgments you can because if it is not a serious and
credible threat and you take action then you can cause real economic
damage, you can upset people's plans and you have to make that
judgment. We are making those sorts of judgments every day of
the week; some of them are straightforward, some of them are fiendishly
difficult. Quite often you go to sleep worrying a bit about whether
you have made the right decision.
Andrew Mackinlay: I fully accept that. Chairman,
I think our witnesses have given us a pretty robust defence and
explanation of how difficult it is.
Chairman
43. Of course. Before going back to Mr Illsley
may I just take up the question of referral to ministers. There
is a clear instruction on the occasions on which ministers should
be consulted. It says they should be consulted, "if a proposed
change to travel advice is likely to attract public interest,
impact on a significant number of British citizens, if opinion
is divided on what action to take or if, despite a significant
new risk or development, there is a recommendation for no change
to travel advice[24]."
How frequently are ministers consulted on changes in travel advice?
(Sir Michael Jay) At the moment probably
daily.
(Mr Stagg) It was three yesterday.
(Sir Michael Jay) This is a very serious part of our
work, that is why we are taking it seriously.
44. It obviously has been increasing.
(Sir Michael Jay) It has been increasing, yes.
Mr Illsley
45. I am a little bit surprised at that last
comment. I wanted to ask a few brief questions on the rapid response
capability which the Committee raised in its Annual Report last
year and to which you responded in January to tell us that it
was well advanced in providing a containerised and rapid response
facility for emergencies. The first question is whether we have
learned anything from other foreign ministries or countries in
relation to this, whether there are similar capabilities available
in other countries?
(Sir Michael Jay) Not that I am aware
of.
46. We have done this completely cold ourselves?
(Sir Michael Jay) We have been discussing it. We discuss
what we are doing with others and there is interest in what we
are doing from others. I am told the Americans have an equivalent.
Certainly my colleagues who have been driving this forward I am
sure will have been in touch with them.
47. On the register we now have of retired FCO
officers who are able to deploy at short notice, I understand
that out of a list of some 49 available people we now have 20
people who are ready to deploy at short notice. Does that provide
any resource implications for the FCO in terms of paying for this
facility or keeping these people on retainers or whatever?
(Sir Michael Jay) I gather there is a per diem
for those who are on 24 hour notice. There are resource costs
in all the rapid deployment teams. We will be financing these
from re-prioritisation of our resources because what we are trying
to do at the moment is to shift resources towards those areas
of our business which we believe are going to be a growing priority
in the future and it is clear to us that the ability to respond
rapidly either to consular emergencies or to the need to set up
an embassy somewhere is going to be a pretty constant part of
our life in the future and we need to be able to fund that as
best we can. I say as best you can because with you can never
fund these things the way you would like.
48. Bearing in mind the aspects of change that
are applying to these people, body identification, bereavement
counselling, things such as this, are we learning lessons from
humanitarian organisations, DFID or the Ministry of Defence?
(Sir Michael Jay) Yes, we are in touch with other
government departments here and training is an important part
of it. Many of those who have volunteered to take part in the
rapid deployment teams have already got quite extensive consular
experience. They like consular work, they like the prospect of
forming part of one of these teams and we are reinforcing their
consular experience with training in other specific aspects of
the job they would have to do, in particular such as dealing with
the bereaved or family liaison and even some of the, sadly, necessary
things like body identification and the work of coroners and pathologists
and we are providing training so that the teams are as prepared
as they can be.
(Mr Stagg) I just wanted to clarify one point which
is that the 48 people we are talking about are full-time current
FCO staff. We have also got some further back up from recently
retired officers, but the ones who you are talking about now are
people who are working in various parts of the organisation and
they are on standby to go at 24 hours or more notice.
49. So they are currently employed by the FCO?
(Mr Stagg) Yes.
50. The resource implication would not arise
if they are already members of staff. I think I have misunderstood
the point.
(Sir Michael Jay) They would be a resource in the
sense that they are not doing their ordinary job. These are people
who are doing jobs around the office but who have volunteered
to be on 24 hour standby to go off as part of one of these teams.
Again, this is quite a current part of our job now and as a crisis
emerges you need to staff a team. It could be setting up an emergency
unit after Bali or during the Afghan war and the effect of that
inevitably is you draw people into that unit to do that job for
that time and there are costs elsewhere.
51. Finally, the 24 hour Response Centre, how
well advanced is that?
(Sir Michael Jay) We are making good progress on that.
This is the 24-7 situation room you are talking about, is it?
52. Yes.
(Sir Michael Jay) At the moment we have a very good
and traditional system of resident clerks who operate out of office
hours. We also have a press office which has a duty officer 24
hours a day and a consular office which works 24 hours a day.
The aim here is to try to streamline these various out of office
hours, to bring them together into one situation centre and also
have somebody who would be working there during working hours
as well so you do have continuity particularly in how you would
initially handle a crisis as it arose either out of hours or within
hours and we hope to have the new centre in operation by the summer,
but we need to get it right.
Chairman
53. And this will require what, new building
work?
(Sir Michael Jay) It requires some adaptations
of existing rooms in the office and probably where the Resident
Clerks are now would be restructured to form the situation centre.
It will require some restructuring and we are not quite there
yet.
54. Sir Michael, when that response centre is
in operation in the summer perhaps you would tell us because I
would imagine that a number of my colleagues would like to go
along to see it in operation.
(Sir Michael Jay) Certainly, Mr Chairman.
55. Certainly I have learnt a lot from the discussion
today. I have learned that the office is taking very seriously
its responsibility to British citizens of lessons that are being
learnt post Bali. We did look at comparable web sites, the US
State Department, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the
Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian and generally
my own view was that ours came off fairly well in comparison.
I do hope you can keep in touch with us as it is something which
is of very considerable importance to our citizens and likely
to increase in importance. Thank you and your colleagues very
much.
(Sir Michael Jay) Thank you, Mr Chairman.
24 See Ev 2. Back
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