Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
2 MARCH 2004
RT HON
DAVID BLUNKETT
MP, MR ROBERT
WHALLEY, SIR
DAVID OMAND
KCB AND MS
CHERYL PLUMRIDGE
Q60 Mr Prosser: Home Secretary, there
has been quite a lot of controversy lately relating to decisions
to cancel flights on security grounds, albeit based on information
and intelligence coming from the United States. Are you satisfied
yourself that we are setting the criteria level at its correct
position in making these decisions?
Mr Blunkett: Yes, I am. I think
that the operators are where the final decision must lie. The
Secretary of State for Transport and myself have been very clear,
as we have been over a considerable time now, that we should always
exercise caution. It is always right as you, Chair, actually demonstrated
about an hour ago, that we do not want to be blown up halfway
across the Atlantic and, as I am flying with our major carrier
in a day or two's time to Washington, nor do I, but I want us
to be robust and realistic about appraising the evidence and the
credibility of that evidence and that is what we are trying to
do.
Q61 Mr Prosser: At the fear of being
rebuked for asking the question,—
Mr Blunkett: I did not rebuke.
I just stated very strongly the case and understood the nature
of it, so have a go.
Q62 Mr Prosser: In these circumstances
of cancelled flights have you ever taken any action personally
to look individually at the intelligence so that you could make
your own appraisal rather than just taking the recommendations
and advice from your officials?
Mr Blunkett: If the question is
have we as politicians, the Secretary of State for Transport and
I, overridden advice, the answer is no. Do we ask our officials,
including David Omand and Cheryl, to appraise the credibility
of the sources with the Security Service? Yes, we do, and, of
course, we would be remiss if we did not.
Sir David Omand: Indeed, and it
is the function of JTAC, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre,
to produce assessed intelligence for policy makers and decision
makers. The decision that is then taken in the light of that threat
assessment is for ministers but the assessment itself rests on
the professional judgments of those working in the Security Service
and the other agencies. I think I would want to add that in the
end these are risk management judgments. We cannot give absolute
guarantees of security. As officials we have to advise ministers
on risk management and the managing down of the risk from terrorism
but there is no absolute assurance in this world. We have said
we will never hesitate to issue a warning or take action if that
is the best way to protect the community or a group facing a specific
and credible threat, and public safety is our first priority,
but we are going to have to live with a situation in which there
is risk and exercise suitable fortitude.
Q63 Mr Prosser: Lastly from me, have
there been incidences (if you can answer the question) when the
recommendation perhaps, if it does come as a recommendation from
the USA, is that a flight should not take place and that recommendation
has been overturned by officials and the local intelligence?
Sir David Omand: It is not for
the United States to make recommendations about whether flights
should or should not take place. We have a close relationship
with our principal allies overseas, we share intelligence, we
discuss it, and then our own intelligence analysts will produce
an assessment for British ministers who will then, in this case
principally of course the Secretary of State for Transport in
consultation with the carriers take decisions and decisions will
then be taken about whether or not it is safe for a flight to
continue.
Q64 Chairman: Home Secretary, you may
be aware that the Defence Committee flew to Washington on flight
223. Despite many warnings we flew the flag, arrived very safely.
The Transport Committee, that knows far more about these things
than we do, sought to divert and go to Baltimore, and ended up
in Reykjavik and were a day late, so I am afraid I have not had
the courage to talk to my colleague, Mrs Dunwoody, to slightly
admonish her for her profound mistake.
Mr Blunkett: Your fortitude and
foresight I shall follow to the letter in the next few days.
Q65 Chairman: You must not follow me,
Home Secretary, because I actually proposed that we should fly
to Baltimore. My committee were wiser than I was.
Mr Blunkett: Well, Chairman, you
have really disappointed me! Baltimore is a very interesting city,
as I have been there recently.
Q66 Chairman: As, of course, is Reykjavik.
Mr Blunkett: I will take your
word for it!
Q67 Mr Singh: I would like to pursue
this point about the threat to these flights, Home Secretary.
What kind of threat was it—I am puzzled, and I am sure a
lot of people are—that led to these flights being cancelled?
If it was a bomb could we not metal detect all the luggage or
take all the luggage out? If somebody was going to pull a gun
on the plane could not all the passengers be metal detected? If
we had information that somebody was a terrorist could they not
have been arrested and the flight take place? What kind of threat
is it that we cannot take other action in order to let the flight
go ahead but we have to cancel it?
Mr Blunkett: Let me just reassure
you that if there was any evidence of a specific individual being
suspected of terrorism, they would, of course, be dealt with accordingly.
It is totally impracticable to go through the process that would
be necessary in terms of the disruption of that flight in a way
that would be acceptable in a free society, and the judgment has
been taken, and I have talked at some length with Alistair Darling
about this because we were dealing with it all the way over Christmas
and New Year, with the carrier's common sense that it was better
that the carrier had that flight cancelled and was able to operate
other flights rather than the nature of the surveillance of the
individuals required, and of their luggage and of the flight itself,
which would immediately cause even more worry and deterioration
in confidence, and we hold to that judgment.
Q68 Mr Singh: Can I just pursue that:
by cancelling, are we not encouraging the terrorists?
Sir David Omand: I think that
comes back to the point, if I may, about risk management. When
there is specific information relating to a flight then clearly
the first thing we do is to review the nature of that intelligence
and what it might say about a possible threat to see what counter-measures
and additional security measures can be taken. Such measures are
regularly taken on the basis of intelligence but there can be
occasions on which prudence dictates that it is safer for the
flight not to proceed at all. These are rare but when it happens
it happens for good reason. I am afraid I really do not think
we can go into the sort of cases that would give rise to this.
Q69 Mr Blunt: Recently flights have been
cancelled to Riyadh and warnings given about the situation surrounding
those in Saudi Arabia which have caused considerable offence in
Saudi Arabia and have been strongly rejected, I think, by the
Saudi Arabian Government as damaging to Saudi Arabia given what
the United Kingdom is saying. Who does, in the end, make these
judgments taking into account advice presumably received from
the Foreign Office post in Riyadh and advisors on the Middle East
desks in London?
Mr Blunkett: It would not be solely
a Foreign Office decision, it would be one relating to security
and those charged with security here would have to meet—as
they did on each occasion when there was a concern—to go
through that assessment and analysis process and then to advise
both the Government and the operator of the best approach. I do
not want to comment about the reaction of the Saudi Government,
except to say we have had to cancel a number of flights over the
last three months to Washington. Flights have been cancelled to
Nairobi and elsewhere. We honestly do not believe that there is
any reason why any government should take offence at taking sensible
security measures which are in the best interests of passengers
but also, I would have thought, of the destination country.
Sir David Omand: We do take care,
of course, to discuss the position with the foreign government
concerned, in the case you cite with Saudi Arabia. You will be
aware that the Saudi authorities themselves have very recently
been issuing warnings about the danger of specific forms of terrorism
within Saudi Arabia. I do not think I would want to place too
much emphasis on there being a problem between the United Kingdom
Government and the Saudi Government because I think there is a
great deal of understanding about the need for public safety on
the part of both governments.
Q70 David Winnick: Surely, as far as
passengers are concerned, mindful of the acute terrorist threat,
they are not likely, Home Secretary, are they, to start complaining
because their flights are cancelled? Presumably they put their
lives before any inconvenience.
Mr Blunkett: People have been
remarkably sensible and understanding.
David Winnick: I would hope so.
Q71 Mr Taylor: Home Secretary, this question
is perhaps an extension of the same line of questioning, though
it is perhaps a doom watch variant. May I ask you in general terms
how do you balance security considerations against the public
right to know that they are at risk? For instance, if there is
a credible threat to a particular building you might tell the
occupants to evacuate but what if the threat is equally credible
but to a whole city or town?
Mr Blunkett: If there was a threat
to a town or city that we were unable, through the use of the
security and intelligence services' counter-terrorism branch to
be able to thwart, which is obviously the whole objective of being
able to intervene at a point where you can disrupt or deter—and
I used a public example earlier like Heathrow deliberately because
it is a known example—then you avoid having to cause the
enormous massive disruption and dislocation which in itself would
be an advantage to the terrorists. It is not simply taking life;
it is the disruption of and dislocation of the economy and of
our way of life and of commerce that people seek. At all costs
you try and avoid that taking place. As you are aware, evacuation
plans are part of preparing under the resilience programme and
we would have those plans in place but they have to be balanced
in relation to what would happen if panic ensued and the way in
which you would then be faced with a very different and more impossible
problem. Cheryl, seeing that the Chairman is desperate you should
say something, do you want to comment?
Q72 Chairman: Please do, otherwise Sir
David will dock you half a day's salary if you do not give a long
answer.
Ms Plumridge: Thank you, Chairman.
I think the only thing I can add to what the Home Secretary has
said is really that mass evacuation is one of the things that
we plan for but is not a panacea in itself. We have to aim, also,
for the circumstances in which mass evacuation may not be recommended
but perhaps people start to self-evacuate. It is something we
are very aware of and do plan for but it is fraught with difficulties.
Sir David Omand: Could I just
add too that the only absolute that I can see here is that public
safety should be our priority. The responsibility that any government
is going to have to carry is what is the best way to protect the
community or a particular area or venue when there is a specific
and credible threat. You cannot say in advance what the answer
to that will be.
Q73 Mr Taylor: Could I just develop that
very slightly, Chairman. If I might ask the Home Secretary whether
he thought there might be a case for a kind of hierarchy of alerts,
frequently colours are used, so that the public could evaluate
their own vigilance?
Mr Blunkett: I think earlier we
acknowledged the different forms of alert and that we would use
them only to describe an alert where people were in a position
to aid their own protection and assist in their own security so
that people did not make individual entrepreneurial decisions
which led to panic. Without being facetious some of us remember
Orson Welles—
Q74 Mr Taylor: Yes.
Mr Blunkett: Yes, and you just
have to be very careful that you do not trigger anything like
that.
Q75 Mr Taylor: Yes.
Sir David Omand: Perhaps I might
also put on record for the Committee distinctions that I have
found helpful in working practically in this area and that is
between public information provided so that we have an informed
and supportive public, alerting information which is aimed at
specific sectors and at those who carry responsibilities for public
safety and public warnings which we should only give when we are
clear what advice we accompany a warning with so that the public
can help put themselves out of the way of danger. Clearly the
more public information we can provide the better; the Home Office
website is a good example. Alerting information should be given
to those who really understand what it is they have to do when
they receive it, and public warnings, as I say, should be given
when we are clear what the best way to protect the community is
and provide the appropriate advice.
Q76 Mr Cameron: Home Secretary, you have
mentioned Heathrow a couple of times, I wonder whether you could
just tell us a little bit more about how the decision making takes
place when you have a Heathrow situation, the respective roles
of Sir David and yourself and how decisions are made in that sort
of situation?
Mr Blunkett: The official group
would meet and the analysis would be done. The Prime Minister
would call senior ministers together and a decision, as I described
earlier, would be taken. The operational activity would then click
into play and it would be entirely, therefore, in the hands primarily
of the police, in conjunction with and advised by the security
service on an on-going basis to decide whether they needed to
call, for instance, as they did on that occasion, for the defence
forces to be involved. They would then repeat the exercise in
terms of stepping down once the deterrent effect in this case
had been successful.
Q77 Mr Cameron: The planning for all
eventualities along a sort of Heathrow scale or maybe a little
bit less or maybe a little bit more always involves the Prime
Minister making the political decision?
Mr Blunkett: No, that would be
where the police believed that it would be necessary to call on
the wider defence forces. It is that decision which is the political
one, not the decision to mobilise. Obviously operational decision
to mobilise would be taken immediately by the police.
Sir David Omand: What we have
24 hours a day, seven days a week is the capacity to bring together
the key officials in Government departments together with the
police and other emergency services and the intelligence and security
services to assess very quickly a situation should it develop
and provide advice for ministers. We would expect the Home Secretary
to take the chair unless, as the Home Secretary has indicated,
the scale of the event was such that it was appropriate for the
Prime Minister himself.
Q78 Mr Cameron: Those sound slightly
different answers.
Mr Blunkett: No, they are not.
Let us not mince words because the press speculate on it. The
gathering of those people is these days usually shorthanded to
COBRA, actually it is the room people meet in but it is associated
with that. The security advice will have been provided. If it
is an on-going operational activity the counter-terrorism branch
will get on with it. If it requires political clearance and pulling
in the defence forces, authorising them it is not calling them
in, it is authorising the counter-terrorism branch to draw down
on them, to call on them, it is authorised by us as politicians.
Q79 Mr Cameron: Yes, but there was a
slight suggestion from Sir David that the Home Secretary would
be expected to take the chair, those were his words, and I thought
in your first answer to me you said this would be a matter for
the Prime Minister.
Sir David Omand: The Home Secretary
is the chair.
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