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TUESDAY 4 FEBRUARY 2003 __________ Members present: Donald Anderson, in the Chair __________ SIR MICHAEL JAY, KCMG, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, MR DICKIE STAGG, CMG, Director, Information, MR ROB MACAIRE, Head, Counter Terrorism Policy Department, MR EDWARD CHAPLIN, CMG, Director, Middle East/North Africa, from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, examined. Chairman
(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. (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 Association 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 (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 Ministry 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. (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. (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. (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 (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. (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. (Sir Michael Jay) Yes. (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 the 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 (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 stepfather 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. 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 (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 (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 (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 (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 (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 department. 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. We are increasing resources and structures are constantly being refined and looked at in ways that 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 being taken on. (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. (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. (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 the 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. (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 pages 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. (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. (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 French African country where we are not accredited, 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 (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. (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. (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. (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, get very quickly, through our travel advisory unit, onto the website and 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. (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. (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. (Sir Michael Jay) Our concern for our own citizens is paramount in this and that is what would influence us more than anything else. (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. (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. (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 (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. (Sir Michael Jay) I am afraid I do not know the answer to that. Andrew Mackinlay (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. (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. (Sir Michael Jay) Yes, it is a very difficult dilemma. (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 will 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 attack. 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. (Sir Michael Jay) If there was a clear indication from intelligence of a serious threat to British interest 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. (Sir Michael Jay) I am aware of one. (Sir Michael Jay) There was travel advice to keep away from a particular area at a particular time. (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 (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. (Sir Michael Jay) It has been increasing, yes. Mr Illsley (Sir Michael Jay) Not that I am aware of. (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. (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. (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. (Mr Stagg) Yes. (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. (Sir Michael Jay) We are making good progress on that. This is the 24-7 situation room you are talking about, is it? (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 (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. (Sir Michael Jay) Certainly, Mr Chairman. (Sir Michael Jay) Thank you, Mr Chairman. |