CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 886-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Home Affairs Committee

 

 

Anti-Terrorism Powers

 

 

Thursday 8 July 2004

MR TREVOR PHILIPS, SIR JOHN QUINTON, MR TIM REES, MR SADIQ KHAN

and MR KHALID SOFI

 

LORD NEWTON OF BRAINTREE and MR MICHAEL TODD

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 98

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

 

1. This is a corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.

 

2. The transcript is an approved formal record of these proceedings. It will be printed in due course.

 

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Thursday 8 July 2004

Members present

Mr John Denham, in the Chair

Mrs Janet Dean

Mr Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

David Winnick

________________

Memoranda submitted by Metropolitan Police Authority,

Commission for Racial Equality and Muslim Council of Great Britain

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Trevor Phillips, Chair, Commission for Racial Equality, Sir John Quinton, Member, Mr Tim Rees, Head of Community Engagement, Metropolitan Police Authority, Mr Sadiq Khan, Chair, Legal Affairs Committee, Mr Khalid Sofi, Secretary, Legal Affairs Committee, Muslim Council of Britain, examined.

Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Can I thank all the witnesses for coming this morning to this one-off session about stops and searches and the terrorism powers. I wonder if each of the witnesses - one person on behalf of the MPA and the MCB - could just, for the record, say who you are and what your organisation is and then we will start the questions.

Sir John Quinton: John Quinton; until last week I was an independent member of the Metropolitan Police Authority. I retired then and this is my last action on their behalf.

Q2 Chairman: For the record the Metropolitan Police Authority is?

Sir John Quinton: It covers the responsibilities of the whole of the Metropolitan Police Service, the Metropolitan Police District; the whole of London in fact.

Mr Phillips: I am Trevor Phillips. I am Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality which I hope does not need much introduction here.

Mr Khan: My name is Sadiq Khan. I am Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain. To my right is Khalid Sofi who is the Vice Chair the Legal Affairs Committee. The Muslim Council of Britain may need some introduction, but hopefully not. It is the Muslim umbrella organisation which has over 400 Muslim bodies and associations including mosques as its affiliates.

Q3 Chairman: We are grateful to you all for the evidence that you have submitted. I think it is fair to say that all three of your organisations have expressed some concerns about the power to stop and search under the Terrorism Act, in particular under Section 44. I wonder if I can ask each of you in turn whether the position of your organisation is that you are opposed to the existence of these powers in principle or they way in which you feel they have been used by the police in practice.

Sir John Quinton: We are not opposed in principle; it is a question of whether it has been excessively and properly used, and we will probably come to that. We are certainly in favour of the power because we believe that it probably has made London a safer place for Londoners which, after all, was the objective of the Act.

Mr Phillips: We have some uneasiness about the actual Act but we think this is not the important issue at this point; we think the most important thing is the matter of implementation and within that part of the difficulty is that we do not quite know enough about what the implementation has meant either in terms of who is being dealt with under these provisions or, indeed, how they are being dealt with. I hope that as we discuss this morning we will talk a little bit more about the issue of race impact assessment and also the monitoring of numbers because we think there are some quite substantially misleading ideas about, about what is actually happening.

Q4 Chairman: We will certainly come to both those points in due course. Mr Khan?

Mr Khan: So far as the use of stop and search and fighting ordinary crime is concerned - quote, unquote - we believe stop and search is an invaluable tool for the police if properly used. The use of stop and search in relation to fighting terrorism we believe is not appropriate. We believe there is no evidence - the stats we have seen so far do not prove otherwise - that in fact Section 44 has helped fight terrorism in London or elsewhere. There are serious questions about its use and Trevor has touched on some of them. For example, how many authorisations have been given? What have been the results of those authorisations? What is the analysis of those who have been stopped and searched versus those who are arrested, versus those who are charged, versus those who are convicted; and breaking that down by terrorism related offences and other offences? We believe its use, as perceived in the community, is an extremely negative one and it is doing a disservice to the partnership that we believe there must be in fighting terrorism. Also we believe there are serious issues about the use of the intelligence with regard to Section 44 and query how that intelligence is being analysed. There are one or two explanations: either the intelligence is extremely flawed which begs serious questions or, frankly, the exercise of discretion by the police is seriously flawed which also requires examination.

Q5 Chairman: I am grateful for those three clear and very concise statements because I do think they set the agenda for the issues that we will try to work through in the next hour or so. To follow up one of the points, Mr Phillips, the CRE's written submission points out - as you have just done - the lack of a race impact assessment on the Terrorism Act 2000 and also the 2001 Act. Could you say what actually, in your view, a race impact assessment on those Acts would have looked like and how publishing an assessment might have improved the legislation?

Mr Phillips: First of all, when the Act came into being a race impact assessment was not required statutorily as it would be today. However we still think it would have been - and would now be - worth making such an assessment. There are two major reasons. First of all, we think it improves both the drafting and also the execution of legislation if you have some idea of what effect it is likely to have. There are some simple questions that you can ask yourself: will this impact differently on different kinds of communities? In another sphere I was interested to see in the House of Lords the other day in the debate on smacking a rather interesting point was made that if your criterion is reddening of the skin it might be worth having a little bit of an impact assessment here on the grounds that the reddening of the skin will not mean the same thing for me as it might do for you. A little bit of scrutiny - which is essentially what a race impact assessment is - would not go amiss. Another important aspect of the race impact assessment is, as we recommend it, is consultation with groups or communities that are likely to be affected. A race impact assessment which would have encompassed such a consultation would actually have helped those communities most likely to be affected to accept the impact of the legislation more readily. If you talk to people about what you are going to do they are more likely (a) to understand it and (b) to accept it than if you simply pass the legislation and then visit it on them.

Q6 Chairman: Are you saying that if a race impact assessment had said, "Look, frankly, some of the terrorism we face at the moment claims Islamic roots" - even though that would be disputed by the great majority of Muslims - "therefore the practical effect of this legislation is that a lot more Muslims are going to be stopped and searched than other groups of people" that that would not necessarily have been a reason to oppose the legislation; it might actually have provoked a better debate with the Muslim community about how the legislation will work in practice.

Mr Phillips: Colleagues from the MCB will be more authoritative on that precise legislation but our general feeling is that if you talk to people about your intention and the Government talks to people about their intention, two things happen. Even if they oppose the Government's intention the spirit in which they receive the legislation which has been passed through this House - because Muslims, like everybody else, do believe in democracy - is likely to be more accepted than it would be if it simply arrives without any consideration of their feelings and their ideas. Secondly, in this particular case, the race impact assessment would advise consultation with a series of communities and one of the things that a race impact assessment on this particular piece of legislation might have thrown up is that it would not just be Muslims who would be affected directly because one of the things you do in an impact assessment is you look at parallel pieces of legislation and the way that they have operated, and one of the things it might have shown is that it would not just be Muslims who would be affected because police officers who think they are targeting Muslims might be stopping people whom they think look like Muslims who actually happen to be Hindus or Goan Christians so there would be some collateral impact - if I can put it that way - on other communities. I think that would have been shown up and there might have been some provision in the legislation to try to ameliorate that. One other small thing is that even if the Government had decided they had to do this, they might have inserted in the legislation a more effective way to allow people to seek remedies when they felt that they were being badly treated under this legislation, because that is one of the problems of legislation: there is not really a very effective way to complain if you think you have been maltreated.

Q7 Chairman: Mr Khan, without getting into the question of justification which we will come to in a moment, would a race impact assessment have been useful from your point of view?

Mr Khan: With some value added to it. There are issues about religion and faith that clearly a race impact assessment would not cover. There can be little doubt that if one is to use the definition of indirect discrimination then this clearly has had a disparate effect on certain races. The problem with looking at a race impact assessment in a vacuum is that there are quite a number of white people who have converted to Islam who are being stopped and searched who may not be covered by the race impact assessment. An anecdotal example is that when the ring of steel went round the City of London four or five years ago to do with the threat of Irish terrorism, we found a huge number of young Bengali lads being stopped and searched by the police routinely. I have never come across a Bengali Irish terrorist but you can see the concern we have about how legislation impinges upon people on the ground.

Q8 Chairman: Sir John, the MPA's recent report said "the lack of need for reasonable suspicion" is a concern to the scrutiny panel in which you are involved. Is the MPA saying that the law should have required reasonable suspicion under the Act or are you pointing to a way in which the Act is used in practice by the police?

Sir John Quinton: I think there were different views in the authority on that, Chairman. I think the wording of the Act where it is considered expedient for prevention of acts of terrorism is something which most of us would in fact support. I have to say that we entirely endorse and agree with what Mr Phillips said about involving the community, letting the community know the reasons and letting the individual people who are being searched know why it is happening and explaining to the community that it is absolutely essential. It is also something that I believe the Metropolitan Police Service is trying to avoid, that those who are conducting the stop and search act in any way arrogantly or in a way that is not courteous. That is the essential reason why complaints come up. I have to say that the number of complaints on stop and search across London is only about 250 a year as against 250,000 stops and searches altogether; it is a tiny proportion. That may be - as Mr Phillips has indicated - to an extent that the process for complaining is not as good as it ought to be and that is something that the Metropolitan Police have in hand to improve. I would like to talk about the effect of the Act so far as Asians, blacks and whites are concerned, the statistics.

Q9 Chairman: I think we will come to that. You are saying that your Panel at least as a whole - although there are different views - actually said that you do need Section 44 which does not require reasonable suspicion as well as Section 43 which does require reasonable suspicion.

Sir John Quinton: It has been put to me that if a car is seen with a couple of occupants by a sub-station at two o'clock in the morning or outside a waterworks or outside the Houses of Parliament, then the only Act that allows you to stop and search that is in fact Section 44.

Q10 Chairman: Mr Khan or Mr Sofi, you said at the beginning that in relation to terrorism you felt that stop and search was not a necessary or appropriate power (those are my words, not yours) or something to that effect. How do you respond to the argument that even if there is only a slight chance that a stop and search could deter or detect a terrorist activity that is worth the inconvenience, the intrusion and so on?

Mr Khan: If the police have reasonable suspicion that you are about to commit a criminal act - and terrorism is a criminal act - they can stop and search you and go on to arrest you if there are reasonable grounds. The justification used by the police is that they often receive intelligence and based on that intelligence they then decide to designate an area that Section 44 covers and they then stop and search whoever they like based on the original intelligence. My point is this: there must be serious questions being asked about how good that intelligence is if there had been no arrests to do with terrorism. The concern that we have is that on the ground police officers are using this as a fishing expedition because the requirement under PACE is for reasonable suspicion and we knew when they had discretion there were serious concerns raised by those of Afro-Caribbean descent and Muslims in recent years. The short answer is this, if you are going to fight terrorism you need to have policing by consent, you need to rely upon intelligence from the Muslim community as well; we all need to be in this together and you need the cooperation of all the communities. If today you were alienating a young Muslim man, you have been discourteous and rude, you had stopped and searched him for no reason, then next week you are asking him, his family or his neighbours to report anything suspicious, to report any activities in the community that may raise alarm bells, are you honestly saying hand on heart that that person is going to come forward? Our concern is that the answer is no. For example, the MCB wrote to a thousand organisations around the country - mosques, community groups - reminding everyone of the serious threat terrorism poses, the obligations upon all of us to report anything suspicious and then weeks later stats are published which confirm the actual evidence that we have received that you cannot trust the police, they stop and search you willy-nilly and then that just undermines us.

Q11 Chairman: If I give you a hypothetical situation, suppose there was what appeared to be reasonably good intelligence of a planned attacked somewhere like Canary Wharf - a very prominent building - and the police decided to use Section 44 to stop and search people in the neighbouring vicinity which would inevitably include a very large Muslim population who live quite close to Canary Wharf, your view would be that any possible benefits from a widespread stop and search exercise would be outweighed by the damage that would be done?

Mr Khan: My answer is different today than it would have been three or four years ago. Three or four years ago I would have said that the risks of a terrorism threat probably outweigh some of these indications. The problem is the way it has been exercised over the last two or three years, if we look at the stats from the MPA the number of Asians stopped today compared to three years ago is 184 times; the number of Afro-Caribbean descent is about 80 times and the number of whites is about 20 times. I will say that the proof is in the pudding; nothing so far has demonstrated that it is an effective tool. In fact, all you have done is alienate hundreds and thousands of young lads and your benefit is lost by the way it has been implemented over the last two to three years.

Q12 David Winnick: Can we establish common ground? Mr Sofi and Mr Khan from your answers I assume you accept that there is an acute threat of terrorism. There is no dispute about that.

Mr Khan: No, none at all.

Q13 David Winnick: Therefore you broadly accept what the outgoing Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said more than once: "It is not a question of if, but when".

Mr Khan: Unfortunately, yes.

Q14 David Winnick: Obviously you accept that if there is a terrorist attack Muslims would be in the firing line like everyone else. There is no distinction made when such bombings occur any more than when the IRA was bombing London and people of Irish origin were murdered as well.

Mr Khan: In fact in the last major incident at Canary Wharf the victim was a Muslim so we understand we are more likely to be victims as well.

Q15 David Winnick: If not more, then as likely to be.

Mr Khan: Canary Wharf is in Tower Hamlets with a 35% Muslim population so that is at the fore of our mind.

Q16 David Winnick: Yes, if it happens in Canary Wharf. In Madrid of course Muslims were murdered.

Mr Khan: Absolutely. And in New York and Istanbul as well.

Q17 David Winnick: Sir John, can I turn to you. We all accept that the Section 44 powers are very wide ranging indeed and we have heard from Mr Khan's and Mr Sofi's arguments about the manner in which it is being used, arguments which to some extent I certainly share. Do you feel that there should be greater restrictions on Section 44 powers, the blanket authorisation for Section 44 powers while rules in effect that anyone can be stopped unconnected with anything other than terrorism?

Sir John Quinton: It is an interesting argument. The fact of the matter is that Section 44 is applied London-wide all the time. It is an authority which is renewed every fortnight or so and endorsed by the Commissioner at that time and endorsed at Home Secretary level right across the whole of London, the point being that terrorists do not just live in central London; they may want to operate in central London but the evidence is that they can just as easily live and set off bombs in Ealing or Enfield or wherever so it is applied across the whole of London which at first seems a rather wide blanket authority but is justified on the grounds that they could live anywhere in London and in fact have to move up to central London to spy out where they are going to put their bombs. It could be anywhere in London, anywhere on the tube service or anywhere that cars and taxis could go. That blanket authority is regarded as essential by the Metropolitan Police and I think would be endorsed as such by the Authority.

Mr Khan: On the example the Chairman gave earlier, this is why the communities lack confidence. We are sure that the intention of Parliament at the time of drafting Section 44 could not have been that the whole of London be subject to a Section 44 area because that means, query, where is the intelligence? You are saying that the whole of London - including greater London - is covered by this whim which means that an officer on the beat in Brixton can use Section 44 powers to stop and search without reasonable suspicion. That concerns us.

Q18 David Winnick: Sir John, what do you say to the arguments we have heard today from Mr Sofi and Mr Khan, namely that the manner in which these stops and searches are being carried out, far from helping are in fact antagonising law-abiding Muslim people who feel that they are being penalised and discriminated against who have as much connection with terrorism as ourselves. Is there not a danger as there was with black people with stop and search - and we all know about that - that it is simply counter-productive?

Sir John Quinton: We accept that there is this alienation factor but we have to say also that it appears to us that there is a deterrent effect of Section 44 which has meant that there has not actually been a terrorist incident over the last two or three years. It is difficult to justify that but the question is whether somebody who is a potential suicide bomber wanting to set off a bomb in Westminster tube station is deterred from doing so by the fact that when he comes up to spy out the land several times he is stopped or his friends are stopped or he knows he is likely to be stopped. It is a difficult one; you have to have your own personal opinion on this. It certainly is to some extent a deterrent but it also has that effect of alienation. It is a very difficult balance.

Q19 David Winnick: Mr Sofi and Mr Khan, would you accept that just as when the IRA were waging a murderous attack on Britain for 30 years it was coming from Irish people or British people in sympathy with the IRA cause, basically the people living outside Britain and it was not coming from Americans or Muslims or Hindus or Sikhs; it was coming from the Irish. Would you therefore accept that the danger we now face is coming from those who so distort the Islam religion claiming they are acting in the name of Islam and both of you would argue rightly that that has nothing to do with Islam as such. Nevertheless they are Islamic militants whatever you want to call them. They are not Hindus or Irish or Jewish or anyone else; they are Islamic militants clearly distorting a very sacred and widely-respected religion. Would you accept nevertheless that the police, in trying to protect all of us, have a pretty good idea like the rest of us who they are looking for?

Mr Khan: That is the logical inference to draw; nobody could disagree with that. The two caveats to make are firstly never join the course of the 30 years of Irish terrorism. There actually were bombs going off in London and all round the country and in shopping precincts et cetera. The second point to make is that the statistics are broken down by ethnicity and not by religion. As to the 300% increase in Asians, Richard Reed - the shoe bomb person - was not Asian. Those alleged to be involved in 9/11, Madrid and Istanbul are of Middle-Eastern appearance, not Asian. Let us be careful about prejudice and stereotype. I am not suggesting that the police should stop and search those willy-nilly either; the point I am making is of course one can make generalisations and that is often useful when it comes to intelligence but Section 44, if used correctly, is about intelligence that leads to an area being designated, that leads to the police having this unique power to stop and search without reasonable suspicion. We believe it has been abused; we do not believe that was the intention of Parliament; we believe that police officers by their nature like more and more power and that is the concern that we have, how it is being used.

Q20 David Winnick: Mr Phillips, the criticism that the CRE has made over the years - if not so much now, certainly in the past - over the counter-productive effect and the antagonism caused to the black community by stop and search, do you see a direct parallel now as regards the Muslim community being targeted?

Mr Phillips: Not only is there a parallel but a direct connection. First point, the real issue here is, is this effective? I do not suppose the Muslim community, any more than the black community, would oppose the use of these powers if they were thought to be effective in dealing with the actual threat: previously street crime now terrorism. The experience we had in relation to street crime was that one in nine stops led to any further action. When I say any further action, I mean further search, taking back to the police station and so forth never mind any further investigation and then arrest and then conviction. The actual impact in terms of dealing with crime was tiny, but the impact of this particular weapon on community relations was huge. Second point, in relation to the anti-terrorism laws, the figures we are all talking about come from the Home Office 95 report. Sadiq is quite right, there is a problem about the fact that we record only 20 police forces, not the whole lot; secondly, we record by race rather than religion in a situation where half of all Asians are not Muslims and a third of Muslims are not Asians. The connection of the two leads you into some serious problems. In direct response to your other point, what the Section 95 report shows is that the real target group who are not actually Asians but are called white other are eight times as likely to be stopped and searched as are whites, but Asians who are not - unless you think most terrorism resides in Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities - are five times as likely as whites to be searched and oddly blacks like myself who I do not think figure very much in the target group are equally likely to be stopped and searched under Section 44 as are Asians. So there is something very peculiar going on here, that the actual target group - Middle Eastern, white other and so on - are being searched eight times more, Asians are being searched five times more than whites for reasons which are not entirely clear. If it is because they look like people from the Middle East, why are blacks also being searched at the same rate?

Q21 David Winnick: I would like to know what your response would be - I can just imagine - if you were stopped and searched yourself, Mr Phillips.

Mr Phillips: I would be extremely courteous.

Q22 David Winnick: Perhaps more than some of us would be in such circumstances. Can I put to you, Mr Sofi and Mr Khan, the points that the police and the Home Office make that some 2989 Asians were stopped last year. While this figure is large increase on the previous year, is it really evidence of indiscriminate policing because this works out at their statistics at about eight stops a day. Most take place at Heathrow Airport and the figure compares to a British Muslim population of 1.6 million. Basically they are asking what all the fuss is about, eight stops a day, mainly at the airport, so why so many complaints?

Mr Khan: One of the criticisms we have had about the port searches is that once again there is no ethnicity recording for those searches. I am surprised you are able to tell us that figure because we have asked questions of the Home Office and that figure has not been ascertainable. The fact that the starting point is even lower and it has now gone to 3000 should raise serious alarm bells as to why it is there has been this increase. It is not simply a question of eight a day; the question is, this is just the stops and searches under this provision. You have to realise that when the police stop you they can stop you under the PACE provisions of reasonable suspicion or these provisions so it is a bit disingenuous to look at the stops and searches under this provision in a vacuum because the reality is that that 3000 is just to do with those recorded under this Section. We must remember two things, one is that once the police stop you under this Section they may well decide the justification was a PACE one and record it under that. Secondly, one of the concerns of the community have raised - and this is about confidence in the system - is that they are concerned whether stops and searches are in fact being recorded.

Mr Sofi: Can I just add one thing? I had the opportunity to go and see at Heathrow how they do the stops and searches. What happens is the officers sit behind and if anybody walks in they just ask some questions and then they decide and they are left. That is not recorded really but they are stopping and asking questions to a large number of people who come in and that does not fit into any record, that is not recorded anywhere. The purpose is to establish who they are and where they come from. I had the opportunity to see how they do it and precisely what they do I can describe only as profiling. What we were explained is we look at it, ask questions, decide to find out. That is the key; questioning is lot linked with good intelligence, they are just trying to see what they can find.

Mr Khan: Trevor has reminded me that another reason why we cannot see the 3000 stops and searches in a vacuum and it is not us moaning for the sake of 3000 stops and searches, in fact there are 11 million stops and searches under the PACE provisions, so you are distinguishing the feelings of a British Muslim being stopped and searched under this provision and as Khalid said there is stop which leads to recording of that stop and search then there is stop short of stop where it is not actually a formal stop in the sense of the legislation where people are understandably unhappy about this. People frankly are not going to complain. Frankly life is too short; people move on, there are issues about access to lawyers and access to make any complaints and all the rest of it. We have to realise that the fact there have been so few complaints does not mean that we are all super happy with the system; it may raises questions about our confidence in the complaints system.

Q23 Chairman: If I could just pursue that point briefly though, the press release you put out last week when the Terrorism Act stop and search figures came out basically said something like the young Muslim men are experiencing being stopped every week. It is very difficult to square that claim in your press release with a total number of searches per year of 3000 and eight a day. It sounds as though your real problem in terms of young Asians and young Muslims being stopped is in relation to the existing stop and search powers far more than to anything that has been introduced by the Terrorism Act. Would that be right?

Mr Khan: I think it is right to say that it is difficult to distinguish the two. What is clear, though, is that the snowballing effect of the impact of legislation on Muslim communities leads the unhappiness I was talking about. We have had examples of young Asian lads who are Muslim being stopped and searched up to 20 occasions in a six month period.

Q24 Chairman: Is that under the terrorism legislation where there is a total of only 3000 a year or is that under the existing stop and search legislation?

Mr Khan: It is under both. It is a combination of both, that is the point. The port example is a good example about those stopped short of a stop which are not recorded, but the reality is that many people who are stopped and searched you are right to say do not distinguish between they have been stopped under the terrorism legislation or under the PACE legislation and that is one of the problems about what happens on the ground. There is this excellent code of practice to do with PACE which applies to this with regard to what a police officer is supposed to do on the ground. That is not the experience of many people and I appreciate that this comes across as a generalisation on my part but that is the real life experience of young Muslim men in particular up and down the country.

Mr Phillips: If you look at the Section 95 report, let us take just the 11 million PACE stops and searches. If you are stopped and searched you are not making a distinction between whether it is Section 44 or it is a PACE stop. You are just being stopped and searched by the police. 9% of those 11 million - a million of them - are on Asians. 14% - a million and a half of them - are on blacks. By my reckoning in the black community that means virtually one for everybody in the black community. The truth is - and this is the experience of the black community - though, as you put it, it might only be eight a day, it is cumulative and you get very quickly to a point where every family has had been stopped and searched a couple of times. So everybody in the community has this experience really very close to them and that is why it is seriously damaging to community relations.

Q25 Mr Prosser: I would like to ask some questions about the powers of arrest and powers of detention to Mr Phillips and to Mr Khan. Are your objections to this section with regards to the principles of it or with regard to the manner in which it has been enforced and used? The powers to arrest and detain under the Terrorism Act, Section 41.

Mr Khan: The arrests only happen if there is reasonable suspicion. Section 41-1 states, "A constable may arrest without a warrant a person whom he reasonably suspects to be a terrorist". The advantage of that is that there is some analysis of the basis on which somebody is arrested. I think many of us would not question with as much apprehension that Section because there is a way of testing that because obviously if one is arrested one is sometimes charged and sometimes released without charge. I think there are no concerns about the power. The concern is this, if you are arrested under terrorism legislation you can be detained for much longer than if you were arrested under ordinary criminal law. These powers mean that we have often had examples of our young Muslim men who are arrested, kept for seven days, released two or three hours before the seven days expires without charge. There is a huge hoo-ha when they are arrested, the local press are there, TV cameras outside their homes, communities up in arms, huge publicity. But there is no hoo-ha when they are released without a charge after seven days. The concern is this, are the powers of arrest under the terrorism legislation being used for the police to exercise greater power than they otherwise would do? Sometimes - and let us be honest about this - some people are subsequently charged with matters not do to with terrorism.

Q26 Mr Prosser: Is that a problem?

Mr Khan: It is a problem if this is a fishing expedition, a tool used disproportionately against certain groups when there is no evidence it is serving the purpose it is designed for. The intention of Parliament when it passed this Section was to fight terrorism. It is easy to say that it must be working if there are no terrorist attacks in London. Well, there could be a variety of reasons why we have had no terrorist attacks in London. I do not see the proof that links this Section with that conclusion.

Mr Phillips: I pretty much endorse that. I think the basic point here is, do we need to go to Section 44 of the Terrorism Act to investigate what somebody may or may not have done? Would the normal procedures be enough because with Section 44 goes all the paraphernalia - you cannot see a lawyer without a police officer present and all that kind of thing - and that places that individual in a different position to somebody, you know, nobody is particular enamoured of the normal rules but these are even more stigmatising. If I could just return briefly to the point we were discussing a moment ago about the scale of this, I think it is very important for people to grasp that within minority communities this disproportion creates a completely different cultural position. If we look at the white community overall there is a large number of stops and searches but because that community is so big it happens to a relatively small proportion of, let us call it, the majority community. However, when you look at the number to which it is happening among the minority communities it means that virtually everybody is getting this treatment. That means that the impact is completely different and that is what happens when people talk to the black community about criminalising young people, what we were talking about there was a situation in which the experience of being stopped and searched for young black people becomes - I do not know what the equivalent would be amongst white people and I do not want to trivialise it, but like going to a concert or going to the pub or whatever it is - a thing that everybody shares. Everybody has had it in the black or now increasingly the Asian community. That means that the feeling about it is completely different for the minority communities than it would be for the white communities.

Q27 Mr Prosser: I think that point is well taken by the members of the Committee. With regard to the powers to detain for longer periods - to detain for 14 days under the Terrorism Act - the Government argue that that was necessary because of the complexities of the investigations and the difficulties in getting evidence. Would you agree with that or would you speak against that?

Mr Phillips: No, not in principle, but I think the question is - and this is one of the problems we have about the lack of data - is it always necessary? Do we have to rely on the police's judgment of each individual case on this issue? Should there not be at the very least enough data to show us what the trends are here. It is very difficult to answer the question about whether it is necessary or not if you do not know what the picture is overall because then you are reduced to arguing about: is this case justified or is it not? I do not know because I do not have the intelligence, and so on. If I knew something about the overall pattern then I might be able to say that this looks so wildly disproportionate that there must be something wrong here.

Mr Khan: My short answer is that no, it is not justified. It would be nice if we had some statistics, for example. What should happen is that the police should charge as soon as they have enough evidence to charge and there is no problem with charging somebody sooner rather than later. My concern is, how many people are released without charge after seven days? How many people are released without charge after 13 days? That is the concern of the community. You are arrested, you are kept in detention for a number of days and then released without charge. There is no problem with somebody being charged - and you can be charged sooner rather than later - and the stop clock stops then. If the police have enough evidence, that is when they arrest and they often charge. What further investigations take place during that 14 days could have taken place previously. The usual answer is interviewing the detained person. That should not take 14 days. There are other enquiries that could take place earlier as well. What often happens in sophisticated cases - not just terrorism cases - is that the police carry on their investigations after somebody has been charged, analysing software on computers, analysing hardware on computers and all that kind of stuff . Another real concern the community have is the length of time it takes the police to return property. The number of people who have had their homes searched, computers taken away, passports taken away, property taken away and literally months or years later they still have not had it returned even though the person has been released without charge. This is a real source of grievance in the community. That is why I am saying that you cannot look at Section 44 in isolation with the best will in the world. I have given evidence to the privy counsel who said the same thing. Anti-terrorism legislation needs to be looked at holistically. The impact on the community is not discrete; they do not distinguish Section 44 from Section 41, from property being seized, from warrants being obtained for house arrests and that sort of thing. That is why I think it has a snowball effect.

Q28 Mr Prosser: Given that we now have in place these powers for longer detention - 14 days - what safeguards would you want to see incorporated, for instance with regard to protection during that period and with regards to preventing a corruption of the system? Can you suggest any particular safeguards? What should be in place, bearing in mind they will be held up to 14 days?

Mr Khan: I am not convinced what mischief the police are concerned about which justifies extending the seven days to 14 days. That is my first point.

Q29 Mr Prosser: Except the complexity issue, of course. The argument from the Government is that these issues of terrorism and investigation are highly complex and take longer to investigate.

Mr Khan: With the resources at the disposal of the authorities and with the initial powers, I query whether that is in fact justified. Until we have analysed the figures with regard to those who are arrested after 14 days and those who are released without charge, I do not see how anybody can give an honest answer to the question whether it is justified. Common sense safeguards: no justification why lawyers are not given access straight away; no justification why there cannot be independent reviews on an open basis rather than ex parte sooner rather than later; no reason at all why there cannot be better use of independent reviews in police stations. There is a system where people review the conditions in the police station. Very often there is a lack of confidence by those detained; they do not want to speak to somebody who is a lay person coming in to review their conditions so there could be more sensitivities around involving people in whom those who are detained have confidence. Greater use of translators who have the confidence of those detained; another issue that we come across quite often is detainees who do not have confidence in the translator because they wonder if it is a government agent and all the rest of it. Greater reporting; it is not the control of the police it depends on the media. There is huge publicity when somebody is arrested under a raid and almost none when that person is released without charge. There are questions about that and whether there is a responsibility on the police to do more in terms of publicity when somebody is released without charge than they did when somebody is originally arrested.

Q30 Chairman: Just to pursue the point about Section 41 - and any of the witnesses might want to respond to this - Section 41 and the powers we have been talking about were introduced on the basis of fighting terrorism. In response to criticism of a recent anti-terrorist operation using Section 41, Hazel Blears (the Minister of State at the Home Office) wrote to the Independent and I will quote what she wrote: "The fact that the individuals arrested were not subsequently charged under anti-terror legislation does not make the operation irrelevant. Six of those released were subsequently re-arrested for other matters and are currently on police bail pending the outcomes of these investigations. One of the remaining men has been removed under immigration legislation." What view should we take of that argument from the Minister? Should it be the view, fair enough, they were terrorists but they had done other things wrong so justice will be done if they are arrested and charged? Or should the view be that Parliament wanted this legislation used only for terrorism and it is a matter of concern that a minister justifies the operation by non-terrorist follow-ups? Perhaps I could ask each of the groups of witnesses to respond to that.

Sir John Quinton: I would say that if somebody is arrested or is detained under Section 44 and then it is discovered that he is a criminal and he has a gun on him or he has drugs on him, it seems somewhat paradoxical to release him rather than arrest him under another section. What I would like to come to is to clarify the whole point of statistics here. I can only speak for London but I have to say that in the most recent statistics it is only about one stop in about 15 to 16 which is done under Section 44. The last figures that I have here show that there were 10,300 ...

Q31 Chairman: Sir John, I think you might be able to amplify that before your session ends, but I would like to keep strictly on this Section 41 point and whether or not it is of a concern, if it is justified by the other crimes which have been found out.

Sir John Quinton: I think I have answered that.

Q32 Chairman: Yes, you have. Mr Phillips?

Mr Phillips: It cannot be right, can it? It cannot be right. It is not for me to speak for Parliament, but as a citizen I understand Parliament passes anti-terrorism legislation for very specific reasons and anti-terrorism legislation is a pretty serious business which deprives citizens of particular rights in a way that other legislation designed to tackle crime does not. So justifying the deprivation of citizens' rights on the grounds that stolen property was found on him because he turned out to be a burglar rather than an Al-Qaeda operative does not seem to me to reflect either the seriousness with which Parliament took anti-terrorism legislation or the significance of that piece of legislation. It also, by the way, says something about the effectiveness of other legislation. If you need to use this legislation in order - to use the current jargon - to nail people for relatively speaking minor malfeasances and felonies then there must be something wrong with that legislation and that is what needs to be looked at. I think justifying the use of this legislation on the grounds that you found somebody had stolen a piece of property from next door, I cannot see how that could be right.

Mr Khan: To endorse what Trevor has said I would like to add just two things. Firstly, if you have a swamping of the police and over-policing anywhere and a fishing net is big enough you will always catch some sort of criminal act going on. If, for example, the Government thought that paedophilia was a problem and brought in an act that would allow them to designate areas where they could authorise powers more than in other legislation and they decided that Surrey or Southampton was covered by the section and they arrested people using their concerns about paedophilia and then found people who had evidence of stolen property or tax evading or shop lifting, you could see how ludicrous it would be because the purpose behind the legislation was paedophilia. The same goes with this. You cannot use this as a fishing expedition to try to catch people who are only doing low-level crime. It is relative, I appreciate. We all accept that crime is crime but I think the problem is that it leads to lazy policing. You have police officers who are using the huge powers at their disposal under the anti-terrorism legislation to have catch-all exercises and stuff. We do not want lazy policing; we want intelligence led policing that is targeted against would-be criminals.

Q33 Bob Russell: Clearly we are all agreed that those who promote terrorism or speak on behalf of terrorists are to be deplored. Indeed, no lesser person than the former home secretary raised that very point at Prime Ministers Questions yesterday. Just for the record, Chairman, I am going to point out that not a single conservative member of the Committee is here today to discuss police powers under terrorism legislation. I take the absence of members seriously. It is a serious issue and members should be here to address a serious issue. If I could put the point to the witnesses here, it has already been argued that the British Muslim Community in particular feel they are being targeted. That has come across loud and clear. What threshold of suspicion do you think is appropriate before an arrest is made?

Mr Khan: The PACE legislation talks about reasonable grounds. You need reasonable suspicion to stop and search, reasonable grounds to arrest. I do not see the problem with that applying to anti-terrorism provisions. Crime is crime.

Q34 Bob Russell: Do you think the police should stick to that practice?

Sir John Quinton: Section 44 - as I have quoted already - says that if it is considered expedient for the prevention of acts of terrorism. I gave the example earlier about a car parked in the middle of the night outside a sub-station or something like that. It might just be a couple doing what they ought to do in the back of the car; it might, on the other hand, just possibly be there for spying out whether it is an area that could be bombed in the future. Frankly I think you need the legislation you have there of Section 44. I have to keep stressing that Section 44 is hardly being used as a fishing expedition when so few stops and searches are actually covered by Section 44.

Q35 Chairman: What about Section 41, Sir John, the arrest powers, just to follow up Mr Russell's point which was also about Section 41 and whether the threshold for police arrests is appropriate?

Sir John Quinton: I think it is but then I would say that, would I not?

Q36 Bob Russell: Mr Khan, in response to questions by Mr Prosser you mentioned how you felt that the police were perhaps using one act in order to catch others. I wonder if I could just press that a little further. Would you accept that when the police carry out raids and make arrests they are often responding to specific intelligence? I am sure you agree that the potentially horrendous nature of terrorist attacks is such that is it really realistic to expect them to ignore what intelligence they have in the hope that stronger evidence may emerge because that stronger evidence may come after the event rather than before?

Mr Khan: In a recent meeting with the Home Office I asked a number of questions. I asked: Can you tell me the figures for how many warrants you obtained to search premises and the success rates of those warrants? How many people are arrested other than those for whom the warrants had been obtained, family members who may have had other documentation? How do different forces operate up and down the country and are some forces better than others? For example, if we discover Liverpool constabulary only had a total of three intelligence led operations a year but they led to three arrests and three charges with, say, one conviction, and then you could contrast that to say, Manchester who had 300 intelligence led operations - I beg your pardon, there is the Manchester Chief Constable in the room; I will use a different constabulary - Thames Valley, for example, undertook 300 intelligence led operations a year which led to six arrests, zero charges and therefore zero convictions, who is analysing to see which police forces are using intelligence correctly and which are not? The answer is nobody. That concerns us and there are serious questions to be asked. We cannot honestly answer that question that you have asked without having those sorts of figures and nobody is looking at that holistically. That is the concern. The concern is that you have a postcode lottery with regard to how the police are using intelligence and that is why we question how good intelligence is.

Q37 Bob Russell: Mr Phillips?

Mr Phillips: I just wanted to make a point about your question about the threshold. It is pretty difficult for anybody who is not in policing to say anything about a threshold that can be applied in an individual case. However, where you have people from a particular group being stopped and searched on such a scale when all they have in common is what they look like or what their religion might be, you need to start asking some questions. Back in the 1970's and 1980's in my community we were familiar with an offence which we called "driving while black". There is a danger here that all these people have in common is that they are Asian or Muslim; "cruising while Asian" or "driving under the influence of the Koran" is what seems to be happening here.

Q38 Bob Russell: Is there not a case here that the police are looking for needles in haystacks and it is worth it if they find a few needles?

Mr Phillips: There are smart ways of looking for a needle and there are not smart ways of looking for a needle.

Q39 Mrs Dean: Going back to the issue of searches, are you concerned about the way in which searches are conducted? Are they regarded as degrading? Should they be done differently?

Mr Khan: The actual codes of practice that accompany stop and search are actually quite good; there are safeguards there. I think most people understand the use of stop and search with regard to ordinary crime, forgetting for a moment terrorist crime. I think the letter of the law is fine. The experience that we have and from speaking to large numbers of people is that it is simple things like discourtesy, aggressiveness, rudeness, not explaining procedure, asking for Christian names and emphasising "What is your Christian name?". It is those sorts of issues which are of concern. I am not saying that in stops and searches you have Muslims routinely being beaten up by the police, but I think there are issues about sensitivity and I have heard senior police officers saying that there are issues about straightforward customer relations training - there are issues there - and being sensitive around female members of certain faiths and those sort of issues. I think there are issues about sensitivities even where stops and searches are justified. If, for example - to use the Chair's example - there was serious intelligence that there was an issue around Canary Wharf we all understand that we may be stopped and searched and there may be proper intelligence and it is about how you exercise the stop and search that is a concern as well.

Q40 Mrs Dean: Sir John, in your report you mention the quality of the encounter as a crucial issue and point to the limited level of training given to police officers. What constitutes a good encounter in your view and what changes in police training do you think there should be?

Sir John Quinton: A good encounter is one that is courteously handled and, as you probably know, in the Metropolitan Police we have piloted and are now introducing Met-wide the business of giving the person who is stopped a written record of that. A good search is one where the person goes away understanding why it is that he or she has been searched and accepting that that was done for a legitimate purpose.

Q41 Mrs Dean: Turning to how relationships between religious and ethnic minority communities and the police can be improved, how could the police ensure that arrest and detention or stop and search powers do not worsen the relationship?

Mr Phillips: We know from surveys that have been done in the past that the experience of being stopped and searched is very different for a white middle-aged man than it is for a young black man. That is to say that the police behave differently and therefore most white middle-aged men actually do not, as far as we understand, mind it too much. There is an issue of scale but there is always an issue of the manner in which it is done. Frankly, if they could apply the manners they apply to the bank manager who is stopped to the young group of Asians who are cruising in whatever it is they are driving, then that might help a bit. Secondly, it would be a very good idea if police officers could be a little more careful about who; we still have people in turbans being stopped and treated and talked to as though they are Muslims although they are Sikhs. You could say that that is a perfectly understandable thing and you should not need to have the full blown race and religion training, but being stopped itself is a moderately traumatic experience and then being treated as if you are something which you are manifestly not, makes the whole experience much, much worse. The third thing I would say - and I know I have sung this tune already - we need to know numbers, particularly from different forces. One reason why we need to know numbers is not just to beat people with a big stick but also to identify where there is good practice. We knew that under PACE there are some forces which have a ratio black to white of, say eight to one, but there are other forces which have a ratio of four to one. There are some forces where, when you do the surveys, people's reaction to stop and search is hugely hostile; in other forces it is not so hostile. We could learn from the experience of where it is successful or less unsuccessful to be more precise.

Q42 Mrs Dean: Mr Khan, the Muslim Council has met several times with the Home Secretary to discuss your concerns. What has been the outcome of those meetings? Have you met with other groups, such as police force representatives?

Mr Khan: Yes, we have met with the Home Secretary with civil servants present, including the head of the counter intelligence unit. We have also met with Home Office officials with intelligence units there and separately. As Mr Kofi said, we have been invited to visits to see how it works in practice. We also last week met with the Director of Public Prosecution, Ken McDonald QC. The impression that we have is one of frustration, being moved from pillar to post: this is not the CPS responsibility, it is the police force responsibility; we go to the police force and it is not their responsibility but a Home Office responsibility; we go to the Home Office and they say it is really an operational matter. That is why we go straight to the home secretary because he can cut through all that. He has been a useful tool for us in cutting through some of that. We are hoping that a robust report from you chaps will also be an aid with regard to the concerns that we have, tongue firmly in cheek. Mr Sofi has also had experience of the frustration in the community because we are caught between two stools. One is that the community is very angry and asking what we are doing on their behalf. On the other hand, there is pressure from certain quarters for us to be - quote, unquote - sensible, moderate and all the rest of it so it is quite difficult to please both of those audiences at the same time.

Mr Sofi: The community feels that they are being unfairly targeted here. That has led to disillusionment. The net effect is that our affiliates who work around the country, do the charity work, do the community work, they have felt these things. The community members are not now giving donations. They feel they may be arrested, it may be something associated with terrorism; they do not know. The evidence is not there. They are not participating in legitimate demonstrations on the issues they have which they might like to raise. There is disillusionment and that is not going to have any effect on how we resolve this issue of terrorism. We need the cooperation of the community and the community can only participate better if that fear is gone and the whole process of how we engage with the community is better managed. One of the things is to do proper intelligence in a way that it does not alienate the community and the way they manage publicity and the way they talk to them. There are a whole lot of issues which are coming out from the community which would need much bigger discussion.

Q43 David Winnick: Mr Sofi and Mr Khan, know that all groups - Christian, Jew, Hindus and Sikhs - have their extremists just like the Muslim community. You could monitor various statements around the world, certain religious extremists of various kinds. The question I want to put to you, if I may, since you are before us and this seems an appropriate occasion, do you feel the visit of this particular cleric serves any useful purpose, certainly when it comes to community relations? He believes, for example, that Jews should be murdered, homosexuals should be murdered and wives should be beaten. What purpose is served by such a person being in the United Kingdom?

Mr Khan: We are not in a position to answer that. What I can say with regard to personal views is that I would not believe all the hype, Mr Winnick. Quotes attributed to this man may or may not be true.

Q44 David Winnick: It is being monitored by the BBC monitoring unit. Could I just read you what he said, if I may?

Mr Khan: Could I just finish? If it was the case that these quotes were accurate the home secretary has power to exclude people. He can put an exclusion order on them which prevents non-EEC citizens from coming to the UK. Unfortunately he cannot stop the likes of Monsieur le Penne coming to the UK.

Q45 David Winnick: He should do.

Mr Khan: Quite. He has those powers at his disposal. The question I ask is, if there was concern that the comments of this gentleman could lead to incitement of racial hatred, could lead to a break up of the cohesion in our society and could lead to public order offences, I am sure he would have exercised his discretion - as he has in the past - to exclude this man. The fact that he has not gives me confidence that some of the hype we are reading may or may not be true.

Q46 David Winnick: Could I just, with the permission of the Chairman, very briefly quote what this person has said according to the BBC monitoring unit. He said, "Oh God, destroy the usurper Jews, the vile crusaders and infidels" and that could include virtually anyone including Muslims who do not accept his particular version of Islam. Then he goes on to justify the killing of the American television engineer Nick Berg who had his head cut off. Of course Mr Sofi and Mr Khan I know that your dislike and distaste - if these remarks are accurate - are no less than ourselves. They are disliked by the overwhelming majority of Muslims, of that I do not have the slightest hesitation in my mind. It just seems to me rather odd that the Home Secretary should have allowed this person in when he has powers, as you have correctly pointed out, to stop him. Many MPs - certainly labour MPs - are very amazed that he was allowed in and I wonder, Mr Phillips, if you have any views on the subject.

Mr Phillips: My views about this kind of thing are pretty well known and pretty robust. I think I am probably still the only public official who has said that the Home Secretary should remove Mr Abu Hamsa and his friend Mr Omar Bakri. I am not shy about this at all. I think the issue of keeping people out of the country is a little bit more complicated and difficult. I do not know enough about Mr al-Qaradawi to say anything authoritatively about whether he should be kept out or not, but I would endorse Sadiq's point. If we cannot keep Monsieur le Penne out I think there would have to be a pretty specific test to keep this gentleman out as well. One of our difficulties I think is that the law in relation to incitement - which is what this would really revolve around - as we have seen in the last week is probably not as we would like it. If you cannot prosecute people for burning an effigy of gypsies on a bonfire with gypsy children and that cannot be said to be incitement against a particular community that is right in your midst, I do not really know if this law is actually going to be much use and I wonder if the problem for the Home Secretary is not about his distaste for this gentleman or whether the law would actually allow him to do what you or I would like to happen.

Chairman: Thank you for responding so fully to Mr Winnick who reasonably asked a question slightly outside the brief, but a very topical point. Could I thank all the witnesses from all three organisations for their contribution this morning? I think it has been an extremely useful session and although this is not, as such, part of a wider inquiry, it has been a session of putting on the record concerns that have been expressed outside Parliament and members of the Committee felt very strongly that Parliament should have the opportunity to make sure these issues were aired here. Thank you very much indeed. We will break briefly and invite the next two witnesses to join us.

Witnesses: Lord Newton of Braintree, a Member of the House of Lords, Chair, Privy Counsellors Review Committee of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 and Mr Michael Todd, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, examined.

Q47 Chairman: Good morning Lord Newton and Mr Todd. Thank you very much for joining us. I know that both of you have been able to hear at least half of the preceding session. Again could I ask each of you very briefly to introduce yourselves for the record? Lord Newton?

Lord Newton of Braintree: I am here because I was Chair of the Privy Counsellor Review Committee on the 2001 Act. The full biography might take a little while - most of you do know it - but I was a minister for the whole of the period from 1979 to 1997 mostly in Health and Social Security. I live quite close to Mr Russell's patch so if he does get himself in the newspapers my eye might even fall on it.

Mr Todd: Michael Todd, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, formerly Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police, so some of the discussion I have just witnessed I am glad I did see because I found it very interesting and very relevant.

Q48 Chairman: Let us pick up a few of the issues that came out of the earlier session. Let us look at arrests to start with - Section 41 powers - rather than stop and search. The record seems to show that 562 people have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000. Of those, 97 were charged with offences under that Act; 14 convictions so far; a total of 152 other people were either released into custody of immigration or charged under other legislation. Can I ask what each of you what you think we should make of what seem to be a low number of prosecutions in relation to the number of arrests, prosecution under terrorism offences as opposed to other offences.

Mr Todd: I think one of the problems of this - and I think this was starting to come out very much in the last session - is that you arrest people on suspicion of an offence because you have intelligence, you have information which comes to the police to say there are reasons to arrest this individual. You then have to go through an investigative process with that individual; you have to interview him about it. Not all arrests result in the person being charged. We all know that the terrorism legislation and the investigation of terrorism is even more difficult to investigate than normal criminal offences. One of the things which I think is the great problem in terms of the public debate - and I think this came out in the session earlier - is almost a misunderstanding about the difference between intelligence and evidence. We tend almost to stereotype the whole thing by saying that if these people are released - because not everyone is charged - then that is a failure totally. Actually I do not necessarily regard that as a failure. Often it is a disruption, a deterrent. If I can you an example, let us say that a mythical person is a drug dealer and discovers ...

Q49 Chairman: I do not want to stop you, but if you are going to give examples could you give examples in relation to terrorism, the type of intelligence that you would regard as adequate to launch an action under Section 41. I think that would be more useful to the Committee.

Mr Todd: I was just trying to provide a parallel. Let us just say, then, that an informant comes to the police and says, "I have information that this particular terrorist is going to assassinate somebody. Fred Smith is going to be assassinated on a particular date as I understand it but I am not going to give evidence to you, I am not going to give you any more confirming information whatsoever." We do not actually have evidence at that stage; we have information and intelligence. Let us just say that then we go to the Home Secretary and apply for a warrant for interception of communications and we hear over a telephone intercept evidence which says, "I am going ..." - and you actually hear this person, the suspect, talking to someone else - "... next Thursday and I know where this woman that I want to assassinate is going to be. They are going to be walking down this particular street." Let us just say that they are silly enough to say, "I am going to take a yellow-handled knife and I am going to stab them through the heart and I am going to do it outside that telephone box." That is fairly specific intelligence for the police to actually act. Let us just say that now, as a police service, we then put surveillance on a telephone box, we follow the person; again this is intelligence, it is not evidence. Let us say that we see the suspect who starts walking down the street, stops right next to the telephone box - just as is suggested on the telephone intercept - and we see the woman who is going to be subject to this assassination walking down the road. She walks down the road and just beforehand we decide that we cannot wait any longer, we have to pounce. We arrest this individual by the telephone box and in their hand they have a yellow-handled knife - just small enough not to breach the offensive weapons legislation - and we arrest him. Would any normal member of the public actually say that we had not saved that individual's life? I do not think they would; I think they would say yes, we have saved that person's life. We have got it on intelligence; we have got it on the telephone intercept. We would have enough intelligence and information to justify that person's arrest. Could we convict that person without an admission? Not a hope in hell because they have not actually done anything wrong. I think that is one of the crucial things. A lot of this is about us gaining intelligence from all sorts of sources and we have to act on that intelligence and that has been proven, but it does not always result in a prosecution.

Q50 Chairman: I think we can all understand that there will be cases where the intelligence may have been good and you may still be convinced that it was correct, but you are not able to prosecute and that is why there is the debate about the use of intercept evidence in court and all those kinds of issues. However, 562 people have been arrested under Section 41 powers and there have only been 14 convictions. Obviously you are not familiar with all of those arrests, but it is a little hard to believe that all of those arrests were based on intelligence as good as you have given us in this hypothetical example and you have simply not been able to prosecute. Surely it must be the case - and it would be useful to have some sense of how many - that a substantial number of those arrests were carried out on intelligence of a great deal lower quality than the example you gave us.

Mr Todd: Yes, it would. Without going into complete details, within my own experience where you have very, very good intelligence about some people, in developing that intelligence you then say that there are other associates with this person which draw them into this web: are they connected with a particular plot to commit some sort of terrorist outrage or are they involved in financially providing support for terrorists? You develop a pattern and eventually you have to make a decision: are we going to arrest these people or are we not? The point of arrest is to see if you can substantiate that and actually gain evidence through the investigation process, through forensics, through looking at computers, through interviewing the suspects and to see if you can get any further, but frequently you cannot get any further.

Q51 Chairman: Lord Newton, we have seen that a substantial number of prosecutions that do take place after arrest under the Terrorism Act are for offences that are not to do with terrorism. The majority of the members of this Committee voted for this legislation on the basis that it was necessary to deal with terrorism. How concerned should we, as members of Parliament, be that more people get charged with offences that are not to do with terrorism as a result of the legislation than get charged with terrorism?

Lord Newton of Braintree: Can I preface anything I say with just one remark? It appeared to me from the earlier part of your session this morning and, indeed, from a conversation I had with the Committee secretariat, that quite a lot of your questions are directed at the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000, not the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001. My Privy Counsellor Committee had quite enough to do looking at the 2001 Act and we did not spend a great deal of time looking at the 2000 Act. Indeed, when I went to look up Section 41, to which there had been much reference, I discovered it was to do with biological toxins in the Act with which I was concerned. I hope you will understand if some of my remarks are more cautious than you might wish. That will also reflect the fact that it is six or seven months since I was intensively looking at this material. With that preamble, coming to your question, it was a point that came up quite a lot in the course of our studies and one of the strong thrusts of our report was that the Act, although it had been perceived as largely directed at terrorism - of course its long title goes wider than that so there is a legalistic argument to be pursued - the psychology was that this was all required by the events of 9/11 and it became increasingly clear to us that there were a lot of powers in the 2001 Act that were not really specifically directed at terrorism, nevertheless, they were reasonably sensible on their own. Let us take the classic case of extending the powers of the British Transport Police and the MOD police to operate outside the boundaries of their particular territorial jurisdictions. It appeared to us to be entirely sensible, but the notion that it was primarily directed at terrorism melted away when it was discovered that the British Transport Policing powers had almost entirely been used against football hooligans who are not normally within the definition of terrorism in the sense that we are talking about. We did have some concerns about that against the psychological background of the way in which the legislation had been passed and the speed with which it had been passed, and therefore what we recommended - and I do not think it has been terribly warmly greeted by Her Majesty's Government - was that when opportunities arose some parts of this legislation should be placed into their more normal mainstream context. For example, the powers of the MOD police and the British Transport Police really belong in defence legislation and in transport legislation and when an opportunity arises that is where they should go.

Q52 Chairman: I accept the role that your Committee played, but on the issue of principle would you have a view on my question as to whether members of Parliament should be concerned about an Act which certainly was brought in for terrorism purposes is now leading to a lot of convictions for other matters. Should that be a matter of concern for us?

Lord Newton of Braintree: I listened with great interest to what Mr Todd was saying. Some of these distinctions are very difficult to draw. We all know that. I thought that Mr Todd gave a very balanced reply. I find it quite difficult to say how far I think you should be concerned without delving into what is actually happening rather more than I have had the opportunity to do. I think it is legitimate for you to raise the question; I think it would be simplistic for me to give you an off-the-cuff black and white answer.

Mr Todd: I do not think you should be concerned. You might say that I would say that, would I not, but I think with reason. As I said at the beginning, it is incredibly difficult to actually gain the evidence to prosecute someone for terrorist offences. With some of the operations that we have run nationally over the last twelve months some have been successful and we have been able to charge people over them. However, the way in which terrorism is always evolving, what has frequently happened with some of these cases is that we have arrested people under the terrorism legislation but the evidence that we have actually gained during the course of that investigation has allowed us to charge people with fraud offences or theft offences for example. You might say that you did not give us the anti-terrorist legislation to arrest people for fraud. We are not arresting people for fraud; that is the outcome because if you find people are engaging in identity theft or identity theft to finance terrorism or finance a particular terrorist group, you may end up prosecuting them under fraud, theft, counterfeiting or a whole variety of legislation, but actually we know that the intention of that operation was an anti-terrorist operation. It is just the most appropriate legislation that fits the evidence that we gain as a result of that investigation and frankly it is a lot easier sometimes to prosecute someone for counterfeiting, fraud or theft.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Could I just add one further word? I think the area that you should be most concerned about in general terms is an area where additional powers which would probably have been felt to erode civil liberties too far if they had been directed at what I will call normal or general offences were justified and accepted on the basis that this was a necessary evil to deal with the evil of terrorism and where it is clear from subsequent experience that in practice those powers were being fairly systematically used - if that is the case, I am not in a position to give you any figures - for non-terrorist offences. Is that a balanced way of putting, as it were, the identifiable area of potential problem.

Q53 Bob Russell: Mr Todd, who, if anyone, reviews the quality of intelligence leading to an arrest?

Mr Todd: On some occasions I do, even. I have to talk about Greater Manchester Police and because of the size of our particular organisation I have an assistant chief constable in charge of crime who has a direct line of responsibility for special branch and if they are going to run a counter-terrorism operation where we are going to arrest someone that individual now - at assistant chief constable level - will be crucially involved in it. He will be crucially involved in the planning. We want our fingerprints all over it, so to speak, in terms of accountability. They will come to me and I will actually delve into the quality of the intelligence. On one or two of the high profile cases in particular they have come to me and I have said that I really want to understand exactly what the evidence is in this case.

Q54 Bob Russell: Would you say that that is typical of all 43 police authorities?

Mr Todd: I think it is very difficult to say. When I was working within the Metropolitan Police - the biggest volume contributor to this - David Veness took a very, very deep personal interest in this when he was at the same level of myself and so did John Stevens. I actually saw that on a daily basis working with the Met.

Q55 Bob Russell: I wonder if you could take that away so the chief constables might want to consider the best practice that you have just referred to. Do you think the police authorities have a role at all in this?

Mr Todd: Speaking for the Greater Manchester Police Authority, I have made it a practice - albeit in closed session - to include the Police Authority sometimes in advance of operations that have taken place because they understand the community impact that some of these operations can have. Sometimes they are actually drawn into the confidence and certainly afterwards we have always given an account of the operations that we have run, sometimes in public and sometimes in private.

Q56 Bob Russell: Lord Carlile has suggested that new offences might be created (such as being involved in the preparation of an act of terrorism, as I understand it) and Lord Newton, your Committee suggested defining a set of offences characteristic of terrorism. Do you think that would reverse the low number of prosecutions if your Committee's recommendation was implemented?

Lord Newton of Braintree: I think that is very difficult to judge. Our concern was to increase the number of prosecutions as distinct from indefinite detentions under Part 4 of the 2001 Act. We come back to this issue that we were coming at this from a different angle. I think the answer to your question is that it might, but our primary aim was to find possible ways, and I emphasise that what we presented was a menu of possibilities that we thought needed further consideration and not - to use the phrase I used earlier - a black and white, crisp, one-off answer. Our concern was to increase the number of prosecutions as distinct from detentions.

Q57 Bob Russell: If your Committee's recommendations were taken forward and these new offences created, do you feel then that Section 41 which, as we heard earlier, is causing grave concern could be abolished because then all arrests, as I understand it, could then be based on reasonable suspicion of actual offences as under ordinary criminal law?

Lord Newton of Braintree: I am sorry, Mr Russell, and you will no doubt think it a deficiency in me, but without more of an opportunity to look at the terms of Section 41 and look at it in the context of what we proposed, I think it would be silly of me to try to answer that.

Q58 Bob Russell: I have to say that deficiency is never a word I associate with you, Lord Newton. Perhaps that can lie on the table and can be looked at subsequently.

Lord Newton of Braintree: I am prepared to give some thought to it, but the combination of factors to which I referred does leave me in some difficulty at this moment.

Q59 Bob Russell: I appreciate that. Mr Todd, can you give practical examples of what evidence would be considered sufficient to justify an arrest under Section 41? You heard the previous witnesses, so how do you determine the appropriate threshold?

Mr Todd: It has to be on a case by case basis. I am the sort of person who will always say that if we have time, develop the intelligence further. I have to say it was slightly frustrating sitting here earlier because I would not want a fishing expedition, but let us do all we can. One of the problems that we frequently have is if we have a particular time which is suggested when a particular act is likely to be carried out, unless we are going to place ourselves in a September 11 type situation where afterwards you say, why on earth did you not act? - and I have said that to some of our own people - we have to develop the intelligence as soon as we can, but eventually someone has to make a decision and we do have to act. If you have information from an informer, if you have technical surveillance evidence, if you have intercept evidence, there is a whole series of things which actually says, "This group of people or this individual are involved in the preparation for some form of act of terrorism", then we will arrest.

Q60 Chairman: Mr Todd, Lord Newton has made it quite clear that we must not take his work out of one context and put it in another, but if there were a set of offences characteristic of terrorism and that enabled you more clearly - for example if you charged somebody with fraud rather than terrorism - to charge them with a terrorist related fraud offence would you welcome that change or would it make no practical difference?

Mr Todd: In terms of community confidence the Muslim Council of Great Britain, their confidence in us, I think it would make a tremendous difference. If you think what we have done when we have race or hate crime we have labelled it; this is an offence which is actually related to race hate crime so we should be taking it more seriously and it may be criminal damage. I think it would have a similar effect if we were to give communities confidence that it may be fraud but this is fraud in relation to terrorism and that is really important.

Q61 Chairman: One of the areas where the Muslim Council of Great Britain does not have confidence at the moment is in the assurances that you and other officers are giving us about the quality of the intelligence. Is there a case for bringing somebody in from outside the police service - obviously in confidence - to review the quality of the intelligence that the police are using to justify Section 41 operations in order to see whether it is being done consistently and to a high quality? Could that be something that Lord Carlile might do as part of his review of that Act, for example?

Mr Todd: Personally I think that would be incredibly difficult, I really do. We do not take any of these decisions lightly and in almost all cases - in fact I think you could say in a 100% of cases - it is not just the police acting on their own. We work together with the security services; we work together with the anti-terrorist squad from New Scotland Yard. This is not just the case of a particular police force which has gone out and arrested some people under the Terrorism Act; it just does not work that way. Counter-terrorism plc for the UK works very, very closely together; we run case conferences, we run advisory groups where you have a whole group of people there from different parts of the security operations of the country coming together to say, "What is the right way forward in this?" It is very, very seriously considered; it is not just, "Here is a scrap of intelligence, let's go out and act on it." I really do think the set up we have here is far better than anywhere else I have ever experienced in the world - and I have spoken to colleagues in the States - the openness between the police, the security services, the anti-terrorist squad in sharing intelligence and openly sharing and challenging each other over that is just so great I do not know how you would get that if you were trying to introduce an independent element into it. I think we could potentially go back to people saying, "I will only share so much in this environment". We have learned some painful lessons over the years in this but we have learned that you really do need everyone involved in the fight against terrorism sharing absolutely everything and you cannot go there if you are thinking that the security services are not telling the whole truth. I really do believe in everything that I have seen over the last few years that we have got to a very good state of affairs, far better than anywhere else.

Q62 David Winnick: Would you consider, Chief Constable, that the recent arrest of ten Kurds in Manchester was one of your more brilliant operations?

Mr Todd: I think it is difficult when you are talking about individuals. It really is difficult. I think it was a totally and utterly unavoidable operation.

Q63 David Winnick: You are justifying it, are you?

Mr Todd: I would justify it, yes. And, to be honest, if we were in a more closed session I could justify it in a lot more detail because I think it is unfair when you are talking about individuals who are known and who are known in their communities. I would be quite happy to justify that particular operation; there was no alternative whatsoever.

Q64 David Winnick: If they are in the news it is presumably because of their arrest and later release but what was the basis of the arrest? You talk about information being collected and acting on it but are you really telling us now that you are satisfied that the evidence to arrest the people I have just mentioned was justified?

Mr Todd: Yes, 100%.

Q65 David Winnick: So what happened as a result of those arrests?

Mr Todd: All of the people were subsequently released. Two of the individuals were subject potentially to prosecution for some other minor offences but it was decided by the Crown Prosecution Service that it was not in the public interest to prosecute. Some of the individuals would have been deported but because of the state of things back home for them we were not in a position to do that. One individual was deported back to Libya.

Q66 David Winnick: Out of the ten, how many charges were actually made?

Mr Todd: There were no charges.

Q67 David Winnick: And yet you say it was justified. They were arrested. No charges were made, they were released and one person has been deported. You tell us it was all perfectly justified.

Mr Todd: If you think about the example I tried to provide as an illustration, it may be difficult when you are talking about individuals. I am not saying those individuals are guilty; I am saying that I am convinced, the security services are convinced, the anti-terrorist squad are convinced that there was no alternative whatsoever but to arrest those individuals.

Q68 David Winnick: There was no alternative to arrest them. Having been arrested they are released and if they were any sort of danger to the public in Manchester or elsewhere, they are free. I just do not get the logic, Chief Constable. If they are people who are dangerous and you believe there is evidence to arrest them, one would assume that you would have sufficient evidence that charges would follow. Having been charged a court may decide - since we live under the rule of law - to find them not guilty, but they did not even appear before any court, they were just released by the police and yet you tell us it was perfectly justified.

Mr Todd: There is a difference between arrest on intelligence and arrest on evidence. In this country we have reasonable suspicion that somebody has committed an offence and you can apply that to almost any other offence where frequently someone is arrested and you could challenge: "Why did you have reasonable suspicion to arrest that person at two o'clock in the morning when you saw them running down the street with a video recorder?" Would that be reasonable suspicion of them just having committed a burglary? Yes, it may well be and that would be an entirely legitimate arrest. If you then found out afterwards that they had just had a domestic dispute, they had decided to leave home upset and are running down the road, then you can say that is a quite legitimate purpose why that person had that video recorder running down the street. You can entirely justify that particular arrest but you are not talking about the outcome. That is the difference also between arresting on intelligence - very, very, good intelligence - and arresting purely on evidence. If we take that example - although I do not really want to delve into it too much - if there been a terrorist outrage on that particular date at that particular location and the Prime Minister and Home Secretary were called to the House and somebody said, "We deplore the fact that we have just had a terrorist outrage in this country, but is it true that the police had some intelligence that this was going to take place? How did they act on it? Why did we not arrest people? Why did we not do something?" The controversy that is still going on in the States at the moment about scraps of intelligence in relation to 9/11 would be out of all proportion to what would be said to me about not acting on this intelligence. I do not think I would have to wait for the Home Secretary to ask me to resign; I think I would be resigning.

Q69 David Winnick: Are you satisfied that the people concerned - not all, one has been deported - are not in any way related to terrorism? It is a yes or no answer really, Chief Constable, is it not?

Mr Todd: I do not think I can answer that question. I do not think that would be fair on the individuals because I think it would be labelling individuals.

Q70 David Winnick: Do you accept in any way whatsoever that it has caused antagonism in the Muslim community? It has caused a feeling that the police are misusing their powers and frankly that the whole operation - to put it mildly - has simply been counter-productive?

Mr Todd: I can understand people thinking that and a large chunk of that I am afraid is because of the publicity that that particular operation was given which, I have to say, was not our making and we tried as much as we could to minimise it.

Q71 David Winnick: So the police are not at fault, it is all the media, is it?

Mr Todd: No, I did not say that.

Q72 David Winnick: You implied it.

Mr Todd: We had to carry out an operation to try to make sure we kept Greater Manchester and the UK as safe as possible from terrorism.

Q73 David Winnick: That is not in dispute, is it?

Mr Todd: The way in which that is sometimes transmitted and is blown up and labelled and targeted at a particular community, and that is the only reason why this particular operation is actually taking place, does lead to those fears. I regret those fears. That is counter-productive and we do not want to see that. That is why the use of any of this legislation has to be very sensitively applied.

Q74 David Winnick: You say that in a closed session you could give us more detail, but I must confess - I cannot speak for my colleagues round the table - that I have not seen any reason that you have put forward today to justify what occurred. Has the police force generally in Greater Manchester under your leadership learned any lessons from what has happened in this particular case?

Mr Todd: Yes, we have. In particular it was in relation to the Kurdish community. We actually have very good links with a very diverse group of communities across the Greater Manchester area. We did not have particularly good links with the Kurdish community. We also learned lessons in that one weekend while we were still running the operation we met with some of the leaders of the Kurdish community which was extremely useful and I met some of those leaders as well about a week later. We always carry out community impact assessments on any of these types of operation. We run a consequence management cell with all sorts of people asking how it is going to impact on our communities, what do we need to do to try to minimise that impact as much as is possible? One of the things that we did not realise - and did learn - was actually the impact that that can have by some of that information and some of the labelling being misused by people even outside the country. In my conversations with some of the Kurdish leaders they said that what was happening is that back home in Iraq the arrests and the fact that the individuals have been identified by the media and confirmed as being members of the Kurdish community, this proved that the Kurds are involved in terrorism. That was misused back home in a tremendously bad way. That was not something that we had thought about. We did not realise the implication that information just coming in - confirmed information as we have an open relationship with the media and we normally do confirm it - would have.

Q75 David Winnick: Has the matter been discussed at all with the Manchester Police Authority?

Mr Todd: Yes it has, and it continues to be discussed.

Q76 David Winnick: Is there any criticism of the police operation?

Mr Todd: No, there has not been any great criticism. There have been a lot of searching questions about it and also questions similar to the ones that you have asked yourselves.

Q77 David Winnick: So "searching questions" does not come under the category of criticism?

Mr Todd: No. I actually welcome searching questions. I think that is only right; that is how we are actually held to account.

Q78 David Winnick: Yes, but those searching questions were presumably not meant to praise what happened; searching questions, as you put it, were to try to find out why these people were arrested in the first place and what mistakes were made by the police.

Mr Todd: That is making the assumption that there were mistakes made by the police.

Q79 David Winnick: Which you deny.

Mr Todd: One can always learn from any operation. I still maintain that this was an intelligence led operation and there was no alternative but to act on that intelligence.

Q80 David Winnick: No-one disputes that in all parts of the country there is an acute danger of terrorism. I have already quoted what the out-going Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has said, which you are familiar with: it is not "if" it is "when" and that applies as much to Manchester as to London. I am just wondering if what has happened has made if far more difficult for you to have that sort of relationship with the Muslim community in general in order to get the necessary information and intelligence in order to defend the people of Greater Manchester.

Mr Todd: I genuinely do not believe it has. I accept that the whole labelling of the five hundred arrests nationally, how many arrests resulted in prosecution is not helpful to that at all. What I would say so far as Greater Manchester is concerned, is that we have maintained the links that we have had with our communities and actually the links with the Kurdish community have improved quite drastically as a result because we have said that we need to get closer to them, we have asked them to join our Independent Advisory Group in the area they are mainly represented around south Manchester. Our involvement with the Kurdish community has increased and improved as a result of the operation.

Q81 Chairman: Can I just clarify one point, Mr Todd - and I may have misunderstood this from the Press - that it does appear that a particular claim that there were tickets to an upcoming football match was not true and they were stub tickets for previous matches that we have enjoyed. The police seem to have criticised the media in particular for sensationalising that aspect of the operation or the claims, but any information of that sort must have come from police sources.

Mr Todd: I am afraid it must have done. Are you going to go any further into the media because there are a couple of crucial points about this?

Q82 Chairman: The particular thing I want to pursue with you, Mr Todd - because it is in your area of responsibility - is that if that reporting was erroneous (and it appears it probably was) it was one of the things that was very damaging to community relations. These were sensational allegations not then pursued. If the source of wrong or misleading information to the Press was police officers, the two questions for you are: do your officers actually understand the sensitivity of the issues they are dealing with when they get involved in operations under these powers and have you taken any action to identify who might have been the source of that information and taken appropriate action?

Mr Todd: There were erroneous facts. Some of what you saw reported in the initial reports was just wrong. Some of it which said that the police had found two tickets was entirely wrong. We had intelligence that the tickets had been gained for that particular match; that was true. We never found any tickets and the only tickets that were found in the searches were some old ones. There obviously was some talk at some stage by somebody who did speak to the media about that who said there was something about Manchester United tickets, but I think that shows it was not someone crucially involved in the operation. It did involve hundreds and hundreds of police officers.

Q83 Chairman: But it is hugely damaging, is it not?

Mr Todd: It was.

Q84 Chairman: If stories like that - which was very sensational - are then not followed through, the question is, in a future operation which, as you say involved hundreds of your officers, how can you ensure that your officers understand that talking to the media is not about talking about a spate of burglaries, it is incredibly sensitive and can do huge damage to community relationships if it turns out not to be justified.

Mr Todd: If I could contrast it, a few weeks ago we ran a similar type of operation against another particular group where we conducted 19 searches of houses, we got back some firearms and there was no press coverage whatsoever. No-one knew anything about it; it was an intelligence led operation where we had again to brief a lot of officers. We do make that point. Incandescent with rage I think describes how I was when I found out what had got out because it was an operation where secrecy was crucial. We did not want the publicity at all.

Q85 Chairman: Moving on, have you used the extended 14 days detention power in Manchester?

Mr Todd: We did use it in that case. We had to use it because of the amount of time it was taking to get suitable translators, to get some cooperation, to get solicitors. I have to say that we found it an immensely frustrating process. To give an example, I think earlier there was an impression given that we can just keep people for 14 days. We did not. We had to take the suspects before a judge to justify and to explain just how we used that power. I had to write-off a detective superintendent and four or five members to staff to produce time lines of the intelligence and the information that we had to justify to the judge why we had made the arrests and why we needed to keep these people in detention at various stages. To show you the in-depth nature of this, one of the decisions that was made by the judge in respect of two individuals was that he did not think the intelligence was as strong as others and if we could not justify charging within a certain time they would be released. It was a very rigourous examination of the evidence and the intelligence on which we were making those arrests by someone who is very, very skilled in doing so.

Q86 Chairman: Have you used any of the other serious detention powers like the power to restrict a suspect's access to a solicitor to within sight and hearing of a senior officer?

Mr Todd: No.

Q87 Chairman: Lord Newton, taking on board again your earlier comments about the coverage of your brief, you have said that more information should be available about detentions under the terrorism legislation and their outcomes. What sort of information do you think the Government should be publishing and - to pick up an earlier point - do you think we should have religious as well as ethnic monitoring under the terrorist legislation?

Lord Newton of Braintree: I think the question of religious monitoring would raise a large number of sensitivities. I should perhaps say that one of the areas which the Privy Counsellor Review Committee had the most difficulty in achieving a consensus among its members was in relation to the race hate issues in Part Five of the Act and I think I would want to be cautious before going down that particular path. Sorry, what did the first part of your question concern?

Q88 Chairman: Generally you said there should be more information published.

Lord Newton of Braintree: If I were to go through this fairly voluminous report again I could no doubt remind myself of the various areas, but in general where powers had been the subject of Parliamentary concern when they were passed and may be the subject of additional Parliamentary concern in the light of such indications as we have had as to how and for what purposes they have been used, it appears to me that in as many cases as possible information about the use of the powers and the outcome should be placed in the public domain so that one can make a judgment of a better informed kind about whether to renew or continue the powers, which is an issue that Parliament is going to have to address.

Q89 Mrs Dean: Lord Newton, in your report you said that representations had been received suggesting that Section 44 had caused problems. Can you give us any more details on that?

Lord Newton of Braintree: Are you referring to a part of our report?

Q90 Mrs Dean: Yes, where you said that representations had been received suggesting that Section 44 had caused problems.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Can you direct me to the relevant part of my report? This was a fairly substantial report that we published.

Q91 Mrs Dean: I will come back to that point in a moment.

Lord Newton of Braintree: My apologies but I think again Section 44 of the Act that we were looking at is concerned with weapons of mass destruction.

Q92 Mrs Dean: We have located it now. It is on page 24, paragraph 85.

Lord Newton of Braintree: I do remember this bit because this incident - in case you are not aware of it, Chief Constable, because they might ask you questions about it - was the use of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 to search protestors outside the Arms Fair at the Excel Centre in Docklands in October 2003. Personally I did have some concerns about this because if I remember rightly - and if I were to refresh my memory on this paragraph it might tell me - there was no clear public knowledge that the set of powers under which this was done had simply been more or less routinely renewed at intervals since the Act was passed. I am stretching my memory here but I think that was the point of issue and it did lead to some kind of legal challenge if I remember rightly. Do you remember it, Chief Constable?

Mr Todd: It is after I left the Metropolitan Police. It slightly surprised me this morning hearing what Sir John said that the Met was using it on a rolling process because that is not the way in which we use Section 44.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Now that I have been helpfully directed to the relevant paragraph of the report, it may be sensible if I just place on record that, for example, it only emerged during the court hearing on the application of Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2002 Docklands Arms Fair protestors that the powers had been renewed every 28 days since the Act came into force in February 2001 and are still in force across London. Then I skip a sentence and quote, "Had Parliament envisaged such extensive and routine use of these powers it might well have provided for different safeguards over their use". We went on to say that we were drawing this to the attention of Alex Carlile whose remit is the review of the 2000 Act which was not, as I said earlier, our remit.

Q93 Mrs Dean: Turning to Mr Todd, you have just mentioned the rolling authorisation used by the Met, could you say how many authorisations you have given under Section 44 and did the Home Secretary confirm all of them?

Mr Todd: I could not tell you exactly how many because the way I have prepared for this is actually to say when we have used it. I have examples of the authorisations we have actually given. We have not done rolling authorisations for the whole of the Greater Manchester area. The way in which we have used the powers has been on an intelligence led basis. There is the example of the Commonwealth Games. The risk assessment for the Commonwealth Games was that this is a huge potential terrorist threat so a defined area was decided on so for the duration of the Commonwealth Games there was an authority in place and again it would have been confirmed after 28 days by a Home Office minister. These are the only times that we have used it. The Labour Party Conference recently was another occasion because of the threat from international terrorism but again not the whole of the Greater Manchester area; a pre-defined area around the city centre in Manchester we defined for Section 44 purposes. Not this Christmas just gone but the previous Christmas there was another huge threat: post-Commonwealth Games, high profile in relation to Manchester, so again we used Section 44 powers then for a period on the lead-up to when we had a heightened period of tension. We have used it in Bolton but again for a specific issue. You may or may not be aware that we have C Company of the UDA that were expelled. Their colleagues from Northern Ireland decided to set up home in Bolton. We had a car bomb which attempted to murder some of the families there and because of that increased tension and that increased threat again, on an intelligence led basis, we set up an area around Bolton where we said we would use Section 44 powers. The only other time we have used it is in relation to the airport and I have to say that 95% of our searches have actually been in relation to Manchester Airport where we have tended to keep in for some time a rolling authority, but it is still reviewed every 28 days by the Assistant Chief Constable for Crime personally, authorised and then it will go to the Home Office. We do use it, but we use it on an intelligence led basis for a specified period for a specified objective and there is laid out - certainly within the forms that we use within GMP - the rationale for using this power, the limitations of it and we gain assurances that all the people involved in this particular operation are trained to use it, told about using it sensitively, understand the target and intelligence profile that we have in relation to this particular operation and what is the community impact assessment. We go into all of those things to say that we are using the power but I believe we are using the power responsibly.

Lord Newton of Braintree: I must say that I find that very interesting because it clearly does indicate that a different policy has been pursued in Manchester than that pursued in the Metropolitan area. In the report we did make the point that it had not been made public whether they had been continuously renewed outside the capital. When we wrote there was a deficiency of information about this variation in application, but I think the Chief Constable has underlined the point that I drew from the report that Parliament might well have wished to have safeguards of the kind that are being applied in Manchester formally applied via the legislation in some way had they realised what was going to happen.

Q94 Chairman: I think it should go on the record at least that I was the minister for a considerable period of time who, on behalf of the Home Secretary, signed Section 44 orders including the rolling authorisation in London, so I find these exchanges of great interest.

Lord Newton of Braintree: I do not know whether to apologise to you or not.

Q95 Chairman: Mr Todd, the argument was although Manchester has some identifiable things like Labour Party Conferences or the Commonwealth Games, London has something like that every day of the week. All the people who would be at a Labour Party Conference and you might wish to assassinate are in London during the week and therefore that is the basis for the rolling authorisation. It is fairly clear that from the court proceedings that in the case of the Arms Fair the Metropolitan Police did not use the power they had been given appropriately. In a complex city like London it seems to me that you either have the choice of a blanket rolling authorisation or an operation by operation approach which you find suitable in Manchester. Would there be a different way of dealing with Section 44 which would enable the Metropolitan Police to have the flexibility to continuously use terrorism powers without requiring such a broad brush approval as, to be honest, I gave the Metropolitan Police when I was a minister?

Mr Todd: I would not want to criticise my ex-colleagues within the Met but I have to say that I was surprised this morning when I heard it was a rolling authority. If you are going to put in the safeguards which we certainly think are important - because it is a power which does not require reasonable suspicion, it is actually an invasion of people's liberty - I think you need some constraints to ensure that it is being used properly and I think within the way in which we have done it you are saying that you are going to use this power today for these purposes and people get specific intelligence. I think one of the problems comes when it is so global, almost. How you actually provide any restrictions, guidance, intelligence profile for the day I personally think it is probably healthier to have it on an operation basis, but the Met need to speak for themselves.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Can I just something here because I had not registered that you would have been the minister who signed these rules. I would not wish my remarks to be thought to be a deliberate attack on the Chairman. Many of the obvious high profile targets are here in London - people and installations and the like - and you could well be right in your defensive line. However, you yourself said that it emerged that inappropriate use had been made of the powers which does take us straight back into the point that I did make from our report which is that if these powers are going to be there and had Parliament known they were going to be used in this relatively blanket way, they would have wanted safeguards built in. I think it is in that safeguards area that you could sensibly direct the Committee's attention.

Q96 Mrs Dean: Given that the figures released by the Home Office last week indicated that out of 21,577 searches carried out last year under Section 44, there were only 18 terrorism related arrests, with 359 arrests for other reasons. Does that suggest that Section 44 is ineffective, increasing community tensions without combating terrorism?

Lord Newton of Braintree: I personally do not think that you could use those statistics to prove that proposition; I think it would be much more a matter of judgment. The Chief Constable probably knows the figures, but I do not have the faintest notion what the ratio between arrests and prosecutions is but an awful lot of people will be, if not arrested, at least stopped and questioned by the police for perfectly reasonably reasons but nothing then emerges from it. Equally, there must be quite a lot of people who have been stopped, shall we say, for a motoring offence and the policeman opens the boot and some other offence emerges. You would need to look very carefully at the details of this before drawing that conclusion. However, there is - as has been acknowledged both in the previous session this morning and to some extent in what the Chief Constable is saying now - inescapably a risk that the use of these powers on whatever scale is perceived - and may be perceived - by a particular community in Britain as primarily directed at them. That is one of the problems that we face bearing in mind that the nature of the threat and the specific provisions of Part 4 of the 2001 Act are directed at Al-Qaeda terrorism.

Mr Todd: I have said that 95% of the use of these Section 44 powers has been at Manchester Airport. That is part of a whole package of measures to increase security and make it a more hostile environment to terrorism. I think it works out that 20 million people visit the Airport during the course of the year and we stopped 828 people of that 20 million who go through the Airport at some stage and they have not all been Asian; 20% of people we have stopped have been of Asian origin. I would say that in the same way as with the airport scanners how many bombs have we actually detected through the use of these scanners? I cannot recall any, but it is part of making it a more hostile environment to terrorism. We have been incredibly overt about using the powers; we have actually put up signs together with the Airport to say that we are currently using Section 44, you can be stopped and searched as a result. What we are saying is that it is not just about catching people; it is about making it a hostile environment and actually saying that if you are thinking of bringing some sort of device into Manchester Airport, think again because you stand the chance of getting stopped and searched and you stand a chance of getting caught. In the way we have used the power we have been very, very careful targeting and briefing the officers at the Airport who are - even more so than the others - specifically trained in their use and are constantly being given intelligence briefs on how to use it. It is all about people acting suspiciously, taking photographs, standing in the sites where you think a mortar could be set up, taking a particular interest in the security. Overtly people see people being stopped and searched in relation to that and it is made very clear and I hope also it is done sensitively and it is done openly so that people know they are not being pre-judged and this is a preventative power.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Going back to the original question, the 21,000 and then the 18 arrests - whatever the exact details of the figures were - was the 21,000 broken down by ethnic categorisation? That would also seem to me to be relevant to the inference that you invited us to draw from it.

Q97 Mrs Dean: Yes, there are figures available. They are broken down: whites in 2002 are 14,000 so there is a much greater number of whites.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Yes, it is proportionately greater but what I was really following up was the Chief Constable's point that of 800 or so people - the figure at Manchester Airport - 80% were not of Asian origin. I am seeking to reveal that this is a much more complicated question than it looks. Politicians - even reformed politicians like me - do sometimes like to draw quick inferences from statistics but I think we have had an interesting illustration there of some of the difficulties.

Mr Todd: I think also that one of the problems that we have is that we are talking - as we have done very publicly in the last week where there has been a 500% increase in this - at pretty small numbers. We actually worked out that we had a 1,200% increase in the stop checking under Section 44 of white people. When you are talking about very small numbers for a piece of legislation which has, relatively speaking, only recently been introduced, you are bound to see a change.

Q98 Chairman: I think that really covers all the issues we wanted to raise. You have anticipated some of our questions, so thank you very much. Can I thank both Lord Newton and Mr Todd for your evidence this afternoon? The whole session has been very useful in airing some important issues.

Lord Newton of Braintree: Thank you very much, Chairman. I have to say for my part I have learned rather more than I have contributed but I have been very pleased to be here.