Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
WEDNESDAY 26 JANUARY 2005
DR OWEN
GREENE, CHIEF
CONSTABLE PAUL
KERNAGHAN, MR
STEPHEN PATTISON
AND MR
STEPHEN RIMMER
Q280 Mr Havard: I am critical of
the fact that we have military personnel in various countries
around the world in jobs they should not do with resources they
do not have because other people are not stepping up and doing
what they should be doing and therefore, if you look at somewhere
like Kosovo, to me Kosovo is a policing operation with the British
military contributing to it. Why are the British military doing
policing? Because it is of strategic significance and importance
and nobody else is doing it. So, we make a contribution anyway.
It may be that the shape and form of the contribution ought to
be changed and I can understand the different ways of viewing
it, but it is really about the quality and the contribution, it
would seem to me, but I am making a speech now rather than asking
a question. What I really want to know is where is that debate
within the less than joined up, joined up or however, perfectly
seamless institutions of the British State to actually decide
what should be the appropriate contribution in the appropriate
theatre.
Mr Pattison: I think this is a
debate we will have in the new Strategic Taskforce and we will
need to have it.
Mr Havard: You are investing a hell of
a lot in this taskforce. They are going to be busy boys, are they
not?
Chairman: And girls!
Q281 Mr Havard: I am looking forward
to reading their report in July.
Mr Pattison: Yes, we are investing
a lot in them. Yes, it is a big idea and I think it is time that
the idea should come to improve the way in which we approach all
of these things. The short answer is, yes, we are investing a
lot in them. Equally, I think, as I say, the time has come, the
lessons have been identified, there is a move in the international
community that we need to do more policing and I think we can
look quite carefully at how we can do it better.
Q282 Mr Havard: That is going to
be about capacity as well as simply people going in and helping
to train.
Mr Pattison: We are going to look
at force generation, how we get the police to go on missions and
how many would be a reasonable target to aim at.
Q283 Mr Havard: I went back to see
Captain Ahab again at a police station in Basra and what he said
was, "I have policemen now, you helped me to train policemen,
they know which way is up and they don't shoot one another but
I have no forensics, I have no CID and I have no way of making
that link between somebody coming in to report a crime and actually
getting it into the criminal justice system."
Mr Rimmer: I have to say that
part of that discussion within the taskforce is clearly going
to be around the Home Office and ultimately Home Office Ministers'
judgments about what level of capacity they believe in the context
of policing certainly in England and Wales for which they are
responsible that they can provide. I have to say, at this stage
in terms of overall capacity, they do not see that as the primary
issue, they see it more in terms of your point about what is the
capability being delivered and that is partly a reflection of
how there are huge pressures on policing domestically in the context
of what they are required to do under the national policing planning
by their police authorities. So, it is going to be a genuine analysis
and a genuine debate that ministers will look at, but certainly
the Home Secretary's starting point is to strongly endorse what
you have said, which is where are we going to add most value and
not just sign up to a figure.
Dr Greene: In relation to the
capacity that the UK delivers, obviously we are internationally
perceived as punching below our weight in terms of our delivery
capacity even though the quality is very high even though the
UK is punching well in terms of policy development and international
cooperation, and countries with very similar nominal policing
philosophies and core structures do manage to deploy more. My
own view as an outsider, for what it is worth, is that without
strong political impetus such as impetus that might come from
committees like this, the decision to resource this appropriately
will not come out of the Whitehall system. I welcome the taskforce
and I think there is a tremendous amount that can be done but,
in the end, it is going to be obviously decided at a higher level
and exactly as the Home Office representative said here, there
is a big step for the Home Office to decide to resource this at
the stage where the UK—
Q284 Mr Havard: For UK plc, if you
do not pay one way, you might end up paying another.
Dr Greene: Yes, absolutely.
Q285 Chairman: Is there any international
police mission, to the best of your knowledge, actually led by
a British police officer?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: No
but I can give you the history because there have been so few
of them. I think a gentleman to whom you referred in passing,
Richard Monk was a UK Commissioner of the International Police
Taskforce in Bosnia and Chris Albiston was the Commissioner of
the United Nation's mission in Kosovo police element based in
Pristina and they have been, to my knowledge, the only two UK
officers who have held international commissionerships.
Q286 Chairman: As I have said, I
think it is so important for UK Limited at a relatively low cost,
one of the best I have ever seen and the biggest in fact was a
senior police officer in Sierra Leone who turned around a totally
demoralised police force that had been almost decimated by the
insurgents and what was left was fairly corrupt and it was truly
amazing what he did. One of the problems—and, as we have
alluded to it on several occasions, you can see that we are rather
fired up about it—is the number and quality of personnel
who are potentially able to go out to do an immensely significant
job. You explained to us how responsibility for international
policing is shared by so many government departments and ultimately
it will be a chief constable who will decide on whether to deploy
a PC, a sergeant or an assistant chief constable and the chief
constable will have a lot of pressures, especially amongst his
senior officers. It seems to us that there is very little incentive
other than what one of my colleagues referred to as a personal
sense of adventure for police officers going on international
missions whereas, if you are in the Armed Forces, it is a bonus.
If you are a copper, it is not. Our hands are clean on this because
we trawled the world and found a wonderful guy here who was working,
albeit for a former Liberal Democrat Leader, which shows how tolerant
we are, Lord Ashdown, but, if you are not in the defence side,
it seems to be not only that it is not helpful but it could be
a hindrance because, if you are a senior officer, it might, in
order to preserve your dignity, bump you up a rank or two to Assistant
Chief Constable whereas maybe you are not and, when you start
applying for that job, you find that nobody pays any attention
or quite the reverse, "Oh, you have been off to X country
not doing real policing just proselytising the locals." So,
what we are very concerned about is that the system will bring
up to the fore people of the highest competence—and I am
not in any way suggesting that those who are there now are not
of the highest competence—but we want them to say, when
they apply for jobs, "Hey, this is a skill that I have acquired
and I have done a great deal for my country in putting my life
in danger as well as transmitting the values of a democratic policing
culture to a country that has singly lacked it." So, with
that background—and I am sorry that I went into great length
because I want the people who read about it to know where we come
from on this—the question is, normal progression through
police ranks depends on reports and other assessments by superiors
in the force. In this process, promotion requirement seem to underline
local service delivery over international experience. How will
you ensure that an officer seconded to work overseas will not
be handicapped? What inducements are you considering to ensure
that good officers will volunteer for such appointments in sufficient
numbers?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Chairman,
you sum up the dilemma. Mr Pattison highlighted quality not quantity
and I think that we will never be deploying 1,000 or 2,000 officers
for the reasons Mr Rimmer has quite rightly highlighted. We need
to be sending good officers, not just in the interests of our
diplomatic presence overseas but because when they go, they acquire
further skills and they come back and enrich the domestic service.
Frankly, for senior officers in particular, there is no incentive
and there are a lot of inhibitors. This is not a secret—I
spoke publicly to the Association of Chief Police Officers and
the Association of Police Authorities at their annual meeting
and I basically said, "If you submit a well written and highly
polished best value review report, that will do far more for your
career prospects than having served for six months in Baghdad."
I think that is wrong and that will be the issue, the $64 million
question if I can phrase it in that way, and unless the taskforce,
with political will, changes that situation, I am afraid I will
still be reduced to personally canvassing individuals and whilst
invariably good people—and I am not in any way decrying
that—but we are sending people who are in their last months
of service who have an eye to post-retirement employment. We need
to be sending good people to bring them back for even more challenging
domestic command appointments and, until we address that, I am
afraid that we have a major issue.
Q287 Chairman: I think we will send
the corrected version of the evidence session to all the Chief
Constables and follow it up by a copy of our report to see that
if that will stimulate. I hope it will.
Mr Rimmer: Could I add to that
because I understand Paul's frustration about some of this. You
have summed up the context, if I may say so, extremely clearly
but I do want to reinforce the fact that ministers are very proud
of the fact that we have a locally-focused police service not
just because we have, including Wales, 43 forces but their whole
culture and philosophy, for reasons Paul has described, is around
serving the communities that pay for them and to which they are
accountable. In reality, in some contexts, it is even more stark
than Paul has described with some appointment processes. There
are even issues about senior officers from other forces coming
into a particular force and, you know, `We are happy with what
we have got.' So, there is a degree of parochialism about our
system and our culture, if you like, and, in a sense, it is our
version of what Mr Gapes was talking about earlier in the context
of Iraq. Those are not things, whatever Government is saying and
doing, that change overnight. There are clearly some things which,
in terms of basic systems, can be properly applied to give a push
to this and I do not know if Mr Pattison wants to raise because
the Foreign Office have driven it very sensibly, an appraisal
system for officers serving overseas which is much more transparently
tied in to their career development in this country because that
was a very basic and obvious gap in the sense of just sort of
airbrushing out history and career development. We have within
the Home Office a broader responsibility at the moment so far
as our police reform programme to look at, to use the jargon,
career pathways generally anyway because there are huge sets of
issues for the Police Service in this country, demographically
in terms of different roles and in terms of different challenges
and capability requirements over the next few years, and I want
to reassure the Committee that this is not the only area where
people feel that we do not have the balance right and we do not
have the incentives right. This is an area of concern but it is
one of a number where we know we have to get the picture more
developed and more defined and there is no doubt that awareness
raising, and I would say not just Chief Officers, ACPO, but actually
police authorities particularly, is really important in this context
because, without sounding pejorative, a number of police authorities
do not focus on this because they do not confront the information
or they are not confronted by the information until it becomes
particularly unhelpful from their point of view like, "You
have to give up one personnel and he/she is needed tomorrow."
The final thing that I want to say—and I am sorry to go
back to it but I do think it is relevant in this context—is
that, when there is a very clearly defined requirement that the
police themselves feel they have a capability to deliver and the
obvious current example is the Tsunami disaster, then I genuinely
think that it becomes a lot easier for Paul's job to crystallise
the requirements and for police authorities as well as police
forces to quite readily respond and in my sense—and I think
this is our Minister's view—the operational response to
the Tsunami was actually a lot quicker and fleeter of foot than
the Whitehall response. Operationally, the Met and more nationally
police forces just got on with it. So, I think in summary there
is a combination of factors, there is not just one magic bullet,
that we need to be looking at coordinated through the taskforce
in the next few months and, yes, I think absolutely your report
in that context will be helpful.
Chief Constable Kernaghan: I know
that Stephen has given you a very fair assessment of the problems
and the restrictions on his ability and ministerial will to change
but, in recent months, we have had developments which go against
what we are trying to achieve. It is quite clear now that members
of ACPO who are seeking more senior appointments are judged quite
explicitly on their contribution to their local force, not to
national work but to their local force. The bonus scheme which
is being brought in is based on local performance etc. It is a
very locally centred system. We have had 52 local forces throughout
the UK; we have to have some core national capability—I
have in shorthand in England and Wales referred to 43 plus one—be
it a force, a holding unit, or an umbrella organisation. We need
to actually look after the career development of people. Stephen,
as I have said, has very fairly set out the landscape as it currently
exists. We have to change that landscape and not just accept the
current power blocks which dominate it.
Dr Greene: Can I just make one
point which is very strongly from my own perspective as I am obviously
not within the professional service but from talking to a number
of people. Awareness raising, extra inducements, changes of procedure
in the margins are all essential but without a structural change,
which means that there is a standing force into which professional
officers circulate in and out and so on, so it is not led predominantly
in terms of local policing, and structural reform, I do not think
that any degree of awareness raising will overcome some of the
challenges of career progression fast enough to be able to deliver
what we want. So, this is one of the areas when I was referring
earlier to the fact that the Strategic Taskforce should be prepared
from the outset I think to consider some quite big structural
changes to how things are done, obviously not to transform our
approach to local policing and local constabularies and all of
that but something very much along the lines that the Chief Constable
elaborated upon. I do not know of anybody who I have spoken to
in the system who believes that this will change simply through
improved awareness raising and inducements on an ad hoc
level. There is also the other challenge that as soon as people
return to the local force, structurally that knowledge is lost
to the central system quite quickly and in fact those officers
have every incentive to immediately re-insert themselves back
into the priorities of the local force, but it is so much better
if, having come back from a mission, they can transfer some of
the knowledge and expertise within the standing body that is responsible
for coordinating future missions. So, there is a whole range of
institutional reasons why the only way this can be tackled is
through some degree of institutional change and innovation.
Q288 Chairman: I think the idea of
a central pool is that somebody may be plucked out at a certain
level and then employed by the Foreign Office or whatever. Somebody
suggested—this falls into the definition of structural—that
the Home Office should issue guidelines to constabularies to encourage
them to designate a certain percentage of their staff for international
assignments. What about that?
Mr Rimmer: Under current arrangements,
we cannot envisage how that would be legitimate as a Home Office
role. The budgets of police forces are held by police authorities,
they have to make judgments through their annual plans and through
their accountability mechanisms as to how they allocate resources
within those budgets and I think it would be hard to envisage
within the current tripartite so-called framework that we operate
the Home Office in this type of activity getting more directive
and cutting through the police authority role and I think we would
envisage, if that was how it was proposed, considerable reservations
from police authorities and so on.
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Perhaps
to complement Stephen's response, I feel it would be interesting
because, if you have a large force, one would assume that, over
a period of time, they would provide more officers than a small
force and vice-versa. It might be useful for Her Majesty's Inspectorate
Constabulary, when they are doing their assessments, to simply
ask, "Have you actually advertised as requested by ACPO and
the FCO? Did you get a response?" We also accept volunteers
and that is the core principle in this but I have to say that
some forces do not advertise as requested and other forces do.
So, some forces are sharing a disproportionate burden nationally
compared to others and, at the moment, there is no detriment in
a force that simply says, "We don't want to play, that's
the end of it." I think the Home Office with the Inspectorate
might ask one or two pointed questions. I have to say, as a Chief
Constable, questions and things that get measured tend to get
done.
Q289 Chairman: I know that this Committee
has occasionally criticised the Ministry of Defence but on one
of a number of issues where they must be complimented is when
the crisis occurred in Kosovo, they deployed—and I cannot
remember the number—around 55 MoD policemen very quickly
and they were superb there and they fitted very well into the
culture very positively, far better than a number of policemen,
often corrupt policemen, who had been got rid of no doubt by their
interior ministries and to get them into an environment where
they flourished but in a rather less positive way, so if the MoD
are capable despite all the pressures they are under of seconding
a massive number of policemen with experience of being armed,
that might be an example. I am not suggesting 55 but it shows
you that there are police forces that do have the sense of social
and political responsibility and realism to have made more than
a gesture but to have made financial commitment.
Chief Constable Kernaghan: That
is a very good example. As I understand it, there was a political
diplomatic commitment that the UK would contribute to Kosovo.
It was then discovered that the personnel being deployed would
have to be armed and then I believe there was frantic consultation.
The Royal Ulster Constabulary deployed personnel as did the Ministry
of Defence Police but I think a positive note for the Committee
is that things have moved on. Whilst at that stage my colleagues
did not envisage officers from England and Wales taking part in
an armed mission, Kosovo was a step change and I think approximately
two years ago I got my colleagues to agree that if we advertise
an armed mission, in other words volunteers know exactly what
they are volunteering for, they can now be deployed. That is the
case in Iraq. There are officers there from throughout the United
Kingdom and they all carry side-arms for personal protection purposes.
So, we actually have moved on over the last two years.
Q290 Mr Cran: Before we leave this
particular set of questions and arising out of what the Chairman
has been asking you, I just want to be clear in my mind about
those officers under the current system, as it were, who contribute
towards these international policing missions. Are they in the
main junior officers, are they senior officers or are they specialists?
What are we getting?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Typically,
you are getting someone who has 10 to 15 years' service, who actually
is a very good officer, knows they are competent etc and has a
sense of adventure and wants to be able to say after they have
retired, "I actually did something a bit different."
Predominantly and historically, the missions have been at a very
junior level but Bosnia is a good example. That mission has changed
character over the years. We are now looking for people to sit
alongside middle or senior Bosnian officers and advise and mentor
them. Notwithstanding the expertise and qualities of our officers,
a Chief Inspector has more credibility doing that with his Bosnian
counterpart than a police constable from England and Wales. That
is just a matter of fact. That is when this dilemma of getting
quality personnel becomes more acute. Chief inspectors, superintendents,
ACPO ranks are by definition people who are relatively ambitious
and career minded. That is the real dilemma. I think most missions
will increasingly be looking for middle to senior ranks which,
as I say, just exacerbates our current problems.
Q291 Mr Viggers: I would like Mr
Kernaghan to tell us his thoughts on having a standing force and
then I would like the other guests to comment on that.
Chief Constable Kernaghan: In
a fantasy world, I think it would be tremendous but I do not think
Stephen would be prepared to pay for it and I think that is quite
reasonable. It is the perfect solution but, given our current
structures, I do not see it as a viable option. I would far rather
have a group of officers serving in Hampshire or wherever throughout
the country who had a sub-specialism. It is known that they do
international policing and might go on two, three or four missions
throughout their entire police career. I would say, "Yes,
if someone wants to offer me a standing force, I would be delighted"
but I do not, with respect, feel it is a viable option and, as
I say, I have no doubt that the FCO and the Home Office would
get into interesting discussions as to who might pay for that
standing force.
Q292 Mr Viggers: How do you take
advantage of the experience that an officer who has served overseas
and has then returned to his host force has if you do not bring
them together in some way to gather some corpus knowledge?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: I think
it is important. It is positive that they go back into their own
force. I am not seeking to create a group of people who only police
overseas. Actually, what they take overseas is their domestic
expertise and I want them to come back and enrich their own force.
So, I actually want a constant cycle of personnel doing a mission
and going back. Let us use Hampshire as an example. I want them
to come back, go back to Gosport, go back to Basingstoke etc and
they always have to remember, and be very clear about it, that
they are Hampshire officers because I know that I can ensure high
standards etc and they know they have to reintegrate. I do not
want people to go mission crazy and spend the rest of their lives
going from trouble spot to trouble spot. So, there are great strengths
in bringing them back. My concept of a holding unit etc would,
for the more senior ranks in particular, giving them certain career
guarantees and I think that, for the ACPO ranks, that is quite
crucial because Hampshire and Warwickshire cannot hold a vacancy,
they will replace an ACPO rank and that person may go on a mission
in good faith for a year, the situation may change dramatically
for the better or for the worse and the FCO may say, quite rightly,
after six months, it is no longer viable. What do we do with that
individual? I think we need a small holding capability. It might
only have 20 people at max that they can look after etc. A large
bespoke force I do not think is viable but I have to say that
I would not reject it.
Dr Greene: I think the question
is quite what one means by standing force. I think what I would
say is that we do need a standing capability. I do not think that
standing capability necessarily means that police officers will
be permanently throughout their career assigned to it. I can see
the advantages of having cycling through. On the other hand, I
think it is really important that police officers who are sent
on policing missions do not immediately reintegrate into local
policing the moment they come back because a lot of information
that gets gathered, lessons learning and so on really needs to
be there. I am not aware of how well developed a concept of the
43 plus one, the 44th constabulary that is customised for this,
might function but it seems to me that it has some essential elements
which seem to me to sound a little like a loose concept of a standing
force which I hope and I think is consistent with what the Chief
Constable was saying. In other words, I do think that people need
to be able to take career steps through this standing body, that
is primarily assignments for the support of international missions.
That does not mean to say they necessarily spend their whole career
there but, if performing well, they can progress while in it.
I think it is quite important that that has sufficient capacity
that it is not simply a residual entity, that it has some internal
dynamics that can really link with groups and it is not simply
a way of residually looking after people until their next local
posting. I also think there may be certain ways in which it could
be customised in a way that is not characteristic of, as it were,
the other 43 constabularies, one of which has a different balance
perhaps between police officers and civilians. Some of the police
support missions do not necessarily require only police officers,
they need a core of police officers but those experts on institutional
change, on how to manage changed institutions, manage transport
systems, all of the things that may be needed, managing intelligence
service forensics and so on may not always be coming from a police
force. So, you could imagine some context in which you have a
standing body which is embedded in some sense in police structures
but there are some personnel within that standing capacity that
in a sense are permanently allocated to it in a support function
to do with helping with the institutional reform and capacity
building and helping with the mission planning where you really
do need some experience in order to be able to do that well. So,
I would be more positive towards the concept of a standing force
while not at all saying that I think we need to go down the route
of having police professionals who essentially make their career
only in international operations. I think in some cases they would
lose credibility in some areas if they were to do that. As with
all professions, there is nothing that has more credibility with
a local hard-pressed police commander to meet somebody who has
recently met similar challenges rather than international support
challenges. So, I hope that clarifies my own position.
Mr Rimmer: These are clearly issues
for the taskforce to look at and I totally endorse the starting
point from Paul on this, but there is one specific to add to it
because I want to stress that the Home Office is not remotely
resistant to the notion of getting capability analysed more effectively
in this area and getting good practice in doctrine embedded in
a more systematic way. They strongly support that and a number
of things are already going on across the policing agenda to try
and reinforce that and in particular ministers have proposed in
the White Paper which came out in November a national policing
improvement agency which at its core is designed—and we
are working with ACPO and others to get this going as soon as
possible during the course of this year—to be the point
at which the professional leadership of the Police Service identifies
key capability requirements and identifies the means by which
those requirements will be met. We already have a "starter
for ten" in terms of priorities on that but it is an evolving
structure and there is no reason in principle why some of the
issues around embedding clear understanding and capability around
support for international policing work should not be coordinated
by that agency. That is certainly an option that we will need
to look at in the context of the taskforce.
Q293 Mr Viggers: Mr Pattison, as
your taskforce moves forward, how would you see the thinking that
has just been expressed fit in with the Post Conflict Reconstruction
Unit and the Conflict Issues Group?
Mr Pattison: Let me make a couple
of points. On the standing force, I do not think I have anything
to add to what has already been said but there is one element
of the standing force which is something we will look at in the
group and this is the question of rapid deployment and trying
to have a rapidly deployable capability. We have something on
paper already but we need to refine this a little, but it is an
area in particular where the Ministry of Defence thinks it might
be able to work with us on that. There is certainly a question
I think as to how we distil the expertise that our serving officers
have and we consolidate that. It is a very important question.
We are doing it a bit—we try to debrief officers when they
return—and we are doing a bit more with the contingent commanders,
the commanders of the UK contingents, in order that they have
a clearer idea of their role and what they can contribute to this
area, but that is an issue which we will need to take forward
in due course. You asked specifically about the PCRU. As I said
earlier, the PCRU has not quite identified its role in this area.
One of the things we will be looking at is a database of police
officers interested in serving overseas or who have already done
so and that indeed will also help us develop this community of
police officers with expertise on whose advice we can draw in
future.
Q294 Mr Havard: As regards the standards
issue, there has been a lot of talk which I have seen developed
in the discussion this morning. You have talked about the various
forms of coordination that are going to come, the Post Conflict
Resolution Unit and the Strategic Taskforce and the question about
maybe having joint doctrine and how you think there is going to
be some consistency in standards as far as police advice is concerned,
all the various agencies, and how the police are going to understand
it themselves and that seems to be developing quite well. I spoke
to a number of policemen in Iraq on two separate occasions this
year and one of the answers that come back—and I think you,
Chief Constable, alluded to it earlier on—is how the control
and command works. Military officers going into a major deployment
can still be subject to the authority of the Chief of Defence
staff and coordinate through PJHQ and PJHQ would have a role in
the mission. Is there an argument that there should be a senior
police officer or an ACPO rank or whatever who actually does that
level of coordination of all of the various police officers who
are out deployed on these missions as a way back in the way that
military officers would do to the Chief of Defence staff? Maybe
that person could be embedded in PJHQ or have a particular relationship
with PJHQ. That seems to be an issue about which a lot of police
officers say, "Why can't we have that?" and I say, "I
don't know, I'll go and ask."
Chief Constable Kernaghan: The
situation at this point in time is that an officer from Hampshire
volunteers and they are then seconded to the FCO and deployed
by the FCO to the United Nations mission in Kosovo, for example.
Their loyalty should be to the UN Commissioner and he or she commands
the police there. What the FCO has also done in fairness, is that
there would be a double hatted police officer, they will be working
in the UN—section commander, assistant chief of staff—but
they will also be designated as the Contingent Commander and they
are primarily in a welfare role but they are also there trying
to ensure that the UK provides a highly professional service and
that is positive. In terms of strict military control ultimately
via PJHQ back to General Sir Mike Walker, Chief of Defence Staff,
no, we do not have that because every police officer's loyalty
ultimately is to his or her local Chief Constable. There is not
a national structure, so it could be whoever was contingent commander,
something to do with the FCO, back to Barbara Wilding in South
Wales or myself in Hampshire. It is not laid down but I think
morally and professionally I take the view that I have a responsibility
to that officer, say, from South Wales deployed in Bosnia, Kosovo
or Iraq. I have a day job and that has to be my first loyalty,
to the Hampshire Police Authority but I am very clear that, if
there is a problem, and they are maybe asked to do something that
they consider to be unprofessional, I am their first port of call.
It would never arise because the FCO would never ask them to do
anything unprofessional but theoretically I would want them to
come to me and say, "We do not believe this is best professional
practice" and I find that people are very willing to raise
minor welfare issues when I am in contact with them. They are
quite perceptive about high-level strategies, where is the mission
going? What more could the UK do? Actually, I have to say to the
Committee that we are here because we are allegedly of a certain
level of seniority but junior officers talk about exactly the
same issues that you have put to us. They may use slightly different
language but they are seized of the need for better career development
and more explicit structure, "What do you want us to do?"
and I find that really encouraging. As I say, there is no formal
structure but I take the view that I have a responsibility to
all staff deployed overseas.
Dr Greene: That strikes me as
being as it should be within the present structure but, within
the standing capability, I do see a role in addition for having
a senior officer who is looking out for—
Q295 Mr Viggers: That is what I am
wondering. If you have a minor grade, as it were, doing a sub-specialism
where it is maybe not the standard or whatever, then maybe this
comes into play.
Dr Greene: I think there are certain
experiences which all chief constables need to be aware of but
it can become quite specialised knowledge. One of the points I
emphasised earlier on is the challenges in potential police support
missions or how to engage with the priorities of peace building.
Sometimes there are real dilemmas in how to prioritise policing
in a way that professional police officers can find really tricky.
I can remember talking to an Italian policeman who was talking
about strategies of policing in Pristina where, for peace building
purposes, he was essentially briefed to ignore all past crime
because those guys were too tough to take on in terms of the broader
peace building process and those are real dilemmas that should
not be ducked. There are always questions of prioritisation but
there are cultures built up in the UK about what is the appropriate
way of doing it which are not necessarily the right ones for a
peace mission. So, if one is to build this standing capability,
it would benefit from having somebody who accumulates expertise
on these professional trade-offs and understands and, having accumulated
some of the expertise, understands some of the specifics of that
and although the Chief Constable here is extremely experienced
at this, there are a number of chief constables around the country
who will not be very sensitised to it and may not be able to give
the best support.
Q296 Mr Viggers: In a sense my next
question runs on from what you have just said which is about how
people are equipped to mingle in, pre-deployment training. There
is obviously a whole range of things that someone would benefit
from knowing before they go into a particular set of circumstances.
We met officers in Iraq who had had no weapons experience before
they had been out there, they had been the community bobby in
Derbyshire and were now as it were, "Stick us on the range,
give us a block and we will have a go!" This guy had to be
trained up while he was there. He is quite happy doing it now
because he knew it was experience for him, but there is the whole
question about how consistent and well structured in pre-deployment
training . . . Language, cultural, social mores, all of those
sorts of things, the interface within different criminal justice
type system, one that is inquisitorial. All those things, a myriad
of different things and this question of proper pre-deployment
training for these people and some consistency in standards.
Chief Constable Kernaghan: In
fairness, the FCO who sponsored this have provided consistent
training. As always, it could be longer. There is a cost factor
about deploying people etc. We have to recognise that an officer
from one of your constituencies has grown up in the UK, they flick
a switch and light appears, they turn a tap and drinking water
flows. I make that point quite seriously. They have not undergone
basic military training. Our gendarmerie counterparts will have
and people who have done national service in continental countries
will have. So, there is some very basic stuff that they have to
be taught. Yes, they get a familiarisation with the cultural environment
they are going into and that is absolutely critical. Hopefully
depending on the task when they are in mission, they will be told,
"It is inquisitorial; you need to have a different relationship
with the magistrates to what you are used to back in the UK."
Yes, longer training would be desirable, I do not think that anyone
would deny that, but it is a question of what is feasible etc.
Just in relation to the specific example you raised, I am quite
clear that we send UK officers with a personal protection weapon,
it is there to protect them in extremis. Hopefully, they
should never ever need it. Yes, there are some people training
Iraqi officers and we are ensuring that it is professional with
qualified trainers in firearms etc, but the Home Secretary quite
rightly and I have to say very clearly said, "I will not
deploy previously qualified firearms officers. Their priority
is to provide a service to the people of England and Wales"
in his case. "So, anyone who goes overseas, we will train
them for that specific role but we will in no way diminish the
pool of qualified firearms officers in the UK" and that was
a very clearly policy statement when I first got them to send
armed officers overseas.
Q297 Mr Viggers: You asked the question
that I was asking really in a sense in that it is all very well
funding but who is going to pay for it? Maybe we should have somebody
here from the Treasury to explain this. Is the Foreign Office
going to stump up? Where is the money coming from? Do not tell
me, "The taskforce is going to deal with it"!
Mr Pattison: As I said earlier,
the funding for the deployment of UK police overseas will come
from this global conflict prevention pool where it has to compete
with a number of other priorities and we all have to negotiate
with the Treasury for exactly how much money is going to go into
it every spending round. That said, so far we have done, I think,
pretty well in terms of getting funding for policing because people
do recognise that it is an important priority. Obviously, the
more money we have, the more time we could spend doing more training
and providing an even better service. So, if you want to raise
it with Treasury colleagues, please do.
Dr Greene: I have had experience
of the global conflict prevention pool and I think it is an extremely
good innovation and it has a lot of potential and has already
realised some of it. One analogy here is that there was a time—and
I cannot remember the precise status now—where peacekeeping
operations were nominally funded through the conflict prevention
pool but in a sense were tagged a little bit and therefore not
subject to the normal competitive round of this or that project.
I think that the conflict prevention pool is the ideal vehicle
right now for funding some of the changes while we are still developing
and exploring but I think ultimately—and that is not too
many years hence—one should be looking for relatively earmarked
funding in order to provide some sustained development in this
capacity. Whether or not that then is linked intrinsically with
the conflict prevention pool so it is inter-departmental I do
not know, but it cannot constantly be up every year against the
various priorities in conflict prevention because it will be a
core capacity. So, I think that is important. On the training
side, I have just two points to add. What training there is tends
to be focused on how to survive once you arrive and how you operate
and that is obviously of first order of importance and that is
a priority. I think there is some review needed regarding some
of the content of the training to do with how to contribute most
effectively to an overall peace mission and some of the challenges
associated with that, but the second area which may be of higher
priority is how to ensure that there is a relevant feed in of
best practice, expertise and maybe supplemental training as the
mission progresses and particular demands become clearer. There
tends to be a sense of things are rushed enough and the police
officers at the moment are on such short-term secondments that
you would not think about training them but we have to move towards
slightly longer term deployments and therefore there is some work
to be done on that sort of in-service focus on how to operate
better.
Q298 Mr Viggers: We are moving towards
the conclusion, so I must ask you to be fairly brief when answering
a couple of points in the nuts and bolts area. What kind of training
do you think is appropriate? Do we need a dedicated training establishment?
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Again,
what I would like to see is much more partnership training and
training at military establishments where that is appropriate
and, on occasion, some military training with us. I may have covered
this earlier but we have to teach our people the language of mission
planning; they need to know what an SO2(G3) is. It does not make
them cleverer people but it means that certain people will understand
them and give them credit for their professional expertise. If
we are going under that umbrella—and at the moment we do
not train people in these skills—we should be sending people
to Shrivenham, to the new Joint Service Staff and Command college,
maybe for a week, two weeks or three weeks, not to do the whole
course but actually to understand where their colleagues are coming
from and then they can display their own expertise. Again, it
comes back to, why should a force send a superintendent for two
weeks to Shrivenham? I think it would be good practice but it
does not affect the local policing plan. The European Police College,
CEPOL, ran a very good course about civil crisis management, about
planning, training people to be planners for external missions
etc. Malta was represented, Cyprus was represented, and I do not
say that in a derogatory sense but they have very small police
forces. The UK was not represented. It was a French Army Colonel
who gave what I would describe as the idiot's guiding to military
planning. It was superb; very precise and very concise. There
should have been a UK officer there but there was no UK force
individually represented because it was not in Hampshire's interest
and it was not in Warwickshire's interest and it was not in the
Met's interest to send someone. There should be someone in the
UK, myself or Stephen, saying, "We want an officer to attend
that course and we will fund them to attend that course for two
weeks." That is where we need to move to in respect of training.
Q299 Mr Viggers: So many of these
things come back to motivation and money.
Chief Constable Kernaghan: Absolutely.
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