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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC165-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
TERRORISM AND COMMUNITY RELATIONS
Tuesday 25 January 2005 CHIEF CONSTABLE MATTHEW BAGGOTT, ASSISTANT CHIEF CONSTABLE ROBERT BECKLEY, DETECTIVE SUPERINTENDENT DAVID TUCKER, MR KEN MacDONALD AND MR NICK HARDWICK Evidence heard in Public Questions 331 - 405
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday 25 January 2005 Members present Mr John Denham, in the Chair Mr James Clappison Mrs Janet Dean Mr Damian Green Mr Gwyn Prosser Bob Russell ________________ Memoranda submitted by ACPO, Metropolitan Police Diversity Directorate, Independent Police Complaints Commission and Crown Prosecution Service
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Chief Constable Matthew Baggott, Second Vice-President of ACPO and Lead on Race and Diversity, and Assistant Chief Constable Robert Beckley, Lead on Faith, Member of Terrorism and Allied Matters Team, ACPO; Detective Superintendent David Tucker, Metropolitan Police; Mr Ken MacDonald QC, Director of Public Prosecutions; and Mr Nick Hardwick, Chair, Independent Police Complaints Commission, examined. Q331 Chairman: Good afternoon. Perhaps I could start by asking each of the witnesses just briefly to introduce themselves for the record and then I will go to the questions. Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: Good afternoon, Chairman. I am Rob Beckley, Assistant Chief Constable of Hertfordshire. I am the lead on communities and counter-terrorism with ACPO TAM and faith issues with ACPO Race and Diversity. Chief Constable Baggott: Good afternoon. I am Matthew Baggott, the Chief Constable of Leicestershire Constabulary. I am the Second Vice President of ACPO. I lead on neighbourhood policing in particular. Mr Hardwick: Good afternoon. I am Nick Hardwick, Chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Mr MacDonald: I am Ken MacDonald, Director of Public Prosecutions. Detective Superintendent Tucker: I am Dave Tucker, a Superintendent working for ACPO TAM on community issues. Q332 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Mr Beckley, in the course of this inquiry we have had witnesses from most faith groups telling us that community relations have got worse over the past few years, particularly since the events of 9/11 and the increased focus on international terrorism. Would you agree with that assessment? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: We get a slightly schizophrenic assessment and I think that is reflected in the evidence that you have received. We do get feedback from communities that says since 9/11 in a local sense that their links with their local police have improved and that they are getting a lot more direct service and links with mosques and other community organisations of all faiths. It has been an opportunity that has been taken. On the converse we also get a lot of feedback about the use of counter‑terrorist powers and quite negative feedback which is not totally borne out by the figures that we have got. The figures are used very selectively and we get the feedback on a wider scale, a national scale, that the counter‑terrorist powers have had a detrimental effect on community relations. Q333 Chairman: You talked primarily there but quite fairly about relations between different communities and the police. What is your assessment of relations between communities, issues like for example Islamophobia where the Muslim groups have told us that they feel that has got worse in terms of fear, suspicion and resentment of Muslims? Would it be your sense that it is worse? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: In terms of hard evidence we have got very little. Three forces do measure Islamophobic incidents. What we have seen is a small increase in potential incidents which as much as anything could be due to recording practices. However, we do get a lot of feedback from community groups about low level type incidents and just a general climate where they feel uneasy and to certain extent under some degree of threat in communities. We have set up the National Communities Tensions Team very much to keep this monitored and to get the information from all forces, and we do not see a significant rise in tension nationally. We have not seen it. We get reported incidents and reported concerns but we are not seeing an assessed rise in tensions and problems in communities. Q334 Chairman: That is interesting. Is the information that you have just mentioned from the four forces publicly available? Is that something that could be shared with the Committee? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: Yes, it is. Q335 Chairman: Thank you. You mentioned finally, Mr Beckley, that the issue of the use of counter‑terrorism powers is one of the things that is raised with you. What assessment have you been able to make in your ACPO role of the extent to which there is a real problem as opposed to a perceived problem in the use of those powers? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: There are two particular areas of articulated concern. One is the arrests. What we are seeing in the actual figures is a reduction now of numbers of arrests. Unfortunately, it gets presented as 700 and an ever-increasing number of arrests since 9/11, which it is bound to be. That is not a very helpful way of looking at it. If you look at it in a year‑by‑year context, we are seeing a fall in the number of arrests. Last year in 2004 there were 165 arrests whereas in 2003 there were 270 arrests under the counter‑terrorism powers. The number for pre-planned operations has similarly fallen, so in terms of arrests there is a fall in the number. In terms of stop and search, which is section 44 of the Terrorism Act and which people have given evidence to you about and made much comment on, yes, there was a 300% increase against Asians, which is commonly quoted, but that was in the context of the year after 9/11 when there was a 150% increase in its use overall. Even then, the underlying proportion of stop and search is the same as the proportion in the populations where it is mostly used, within a couple of percentage points. The figures themselves do not prove disproportionate indiscriminate use of that power in those communities. The indicative figures for 2003‑04, which I think are due to be published shortly, show the indications are, if anything, the proportion of Asians being stopped and searched has been falling in that year. So in a statistical way the statistics do not bear out discrimination in the way they are often used. Q336 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Mr MacDonald, in October of last year you were reported as arguing that the war on terror had sparked a growth in Islamophobia. What was the basis on which you gave that warning and do you think that the trend has continued since? Mr MacDonald: What I said is that terrorism is creating divisions between communities, which of course is one of its purposes; it is intended to do that. We have evidence from our point of view of an increase in the sort of low-level tensions that Mr Beckley is talking about. One is talking about racially and religiously aggravated crimes involving racist and religiously motivated abuse of cab drivers at night, shop owners, people in the street, that sort of low level aggressive criminal conduct which we find has increasingly been accompanied by that sort of abuse, so it was a feeling which my front‑line prosecutors have that there are increasing tensions at that sort of low level which are probably inspired or contextualised by the threat of international terrorism. Q337 Chairman: Fine, thank you. Mr Baggott, in terms of your general responsibilities on neighbourhood policing, I think quite a specific question. A number of our previous witnesses have laid the blame for at least some of the tensions on media coverage of terrorism issues and the way that asylum and so on has been covered. Do you have a view on what contribution media coverage as a whole is making towards any community tensions at the moment? Chief Constable Baggott: I think the context is really important when it comes to either high profile security operations or the figures themselves when they are published. My colleague mentioned the 300% rise. I will give you a very specific example of that. I was at a multi‑faith dinner before Christmas in Leicester and one of the speakers spoke very passionately about the 300% rise against Asian colleagues. When you say for the whole of the country that represents about eight people a day and that it about three forces and that the powers are very specifically targeted and they are endorsed by ministers, you suddenly get a completely different take on the context. I think sometimes what people remember is the headline without the detail underneath it. In terms of confidence I think it is really important that media and others work very hard at contextualising what the figures are actually saying rather than the global side of that. It is exactly the same with ordinary stop and search figures too. Q338 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Mr Tucker, in the Metropolitan Police evidence, the Met have said that "here are also human rights issues in relation to the British Nationals held at Guantanamo Bay and a comprehensive risk assessment has been completed by the Metropolitan Police Service in relation to the repatriation of a number of British nationals to this country," which of course is taking place as we speak. Perhaps you could tell the Committee what exactly the risk was that you were assessing and what conclusions were drawn. Detective Superintendent Tucker: We came at it from the community tension angle and broadly there were five risks. One was that the detainees on their return would seek publicity and seek to undermine the reputation of the police and/or the Government. The second one was that the detainees would become the focus of attention from people who supported them and therefore that there were potential public order issues. The third one was that they would become the focus of attention from people who were broadly against them, again public order issues. At the time there was debate around whether the detainees would be arrested when they returned to the country and we knew the decision around that was very sensitive within Muslim communities and would put the two sides of the impact of that decision. And finally there are independent observers who are assisting with the repatriation and again that is a cause of some concern within Muslim communities who would like the independent observers to be identified, but we feel the risks around that are considerable and so we have maintained confidentiality about that. So after the decisions were made that the repatriations were going to take place we had those five risks and the community impact assessment formed part of that. Q339 Chairman: Now that the process is actually underway, have things moved on since your initial assessment? What is your feeling now about whether the repatriation is likely to give rise to any significant problems? Have you anticipated the problems and are you on top of it all? Detective Superintendent Tucker: It is difficult ‑‑‑ Q340 Chairman: I realise it is a sensitive issue to ask you about but these sorts of things are relevant to the issues that we are talking about in the inquiry. Detective Superintendent Tucker: This is an on‑going operation so I need to be a bit careful about what I say, but clearly we are trying to make a judgment about whether there is going to be tension, whether that is going to cause inter‑community problems, and whether there are going to be police/community issues. We have done an impact assessment and have management measures in place and we plan to deal with any of the issues that arise. Essentially it is three London boroughs and the West Midlands Police who are affected and we have been working very closely to make sure we have all of the management facilities in place. Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Q341 Mr Green: Can I ask the ACPO representatives why there is such a wide variation between forces in the use of stop and searches under the Terrorism Act? Is it simply where suspects are living? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: It is less about where suspects are living; it is more about the potential targets, the locations. Certainly in many of the boroughs of London there are symbolic targets, financial and others, and in most of the other forces where it is used a lot it is normally around airports and other key transport hubs. It is based both on pretty well‑known intelligence sources about the likely possible places that are at risk and also at times it will based on very specific intelligence that might come forward. That accounts largely for its differential use. Ultimately, it is a decision for the force about whether they want to use that power and they will generally make it around either general or specific intelligence. Q342 Mr Green: I am fascinated by the figures that suggest that stop and search used under the Terrorism Act leads to an arrest 1% of the time whereas normal use under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act leads to an arrest about 14% of the time. Is there any evidence that stop and search is at all effective as a weapon against terrorism? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: This is something we have worked on quite a lot. You have got to bear in mind the nature of the power. When it went through Parliament it was specifically understood that it was about disruption and deterrence as opposed to detection. This is a power to be used to put people off their plans, hence it is used in a pretty random way, hence it is used against so many white people in the population. 78% of the stops are white stops. It is used in a very random way in that sense in order to deter. In terms of evidence of deterrence that is always a difficult one. It is a bit like evidence of crime prevention. This is something we keep a very close eye on because of the community impact, and we do discuss with our colleagues nationally whether there is any evidence that it has had an effect. There have been people stopped under section 44 who have come up as traces on our systems and have fitted the potential reconnaissance-type methodology of potential international terrorists. Whether they were acting in that way at the time you cannot always suppose. Particularly from some forces there is evidence to suggest it may well have had a disruptive effect as intended. Q343 Mr Green: I am sure you will appreciate how important that evidence is because what you have just said is that you are randomly stopping and searching people and this may be a price we need to pay for disrupting terrorist activity, but it is a hell of a price if people are being stopped at random on the streets. Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: But you have to then look at the context of the power. It is random in the sense of having been decided because of broad or specific intelligence in an area; it must be authorised by somebody of my rank or above; it must go through the Home Secretary or minister to be authorised, so in that sense the context of safeguards against very indiscriminate use are very strong. It is then used in the context of those specific areas with the safeguards of briefing too, because now ACPO has made significant changes to the briefing to make sure community context is taken into account, and when you look at that whole dimension, it is not a power that is used very widely and it is used in such a way as to try to have the biggest impact with the least disruption. Q344 Mr Green: If I can turn to Mr Tucker and the Met specifically. We have had Muslim witnesses who have said that those stopped and searched do not know why they have been chosen, which is consistent with what we have just heard - they have been chosen at random. More worryingly, that Met officers are undertrained and not clear as to how, why and when they should be using these powers. How do you respond to that criticism? Detective Superintendent Tucker: I think it is wrong. When we look at section 44 nationally, 82% of the searches take place in London and of those 90% take place in four specific areas, areas that we think would be attractive to international terrorists, going on what we have seen in the rest of the world but also from stuff that is available from the pronouncements of people who are at the top of al-Qaeda. Use of the power is very targeted. Officers receive training on how to exercise powers. It is a fundamental part of policing stop and search, whether it is under section 1 of PACE or section 44 and the training around that starts for recruits and goes all the way through the organisation and through one's service. We are now trying to bring in a new type of training that aims to emphasise what a good stop is, which is looking at what the outcomes are and a key point of that is leaving the person who has been stopped, if they are not arrested, with a very good impression of the officer, so that we do not create difficulties for ourselves in the future. On briefing in London we have something called Operation Rainbow. This is an umbrella for the uniformed policing elements of counter-terrorism. It brings together all of the elements of work that uniformed policing does, and a key part of that is making sure that all officers have access to up‑to‑date briefings about what the current threat is and how to use the powers properly. Q345 Mr Green: The Met Police Authority Stop and Search Scrutiny Panel reported last May. How many of those recommendations have you implemented? Detective Superintendent Tucker: There are 55 recommendations. I have got four of those that are completed. We have a team dedicated to that work. We are taking forward the work on that. Many of those recommendations do not apply to the police at all. 31 out of the 55 are for the police or jointly with other agencies. As I say, four of those have been completed. There is a group working towards taking that forward and taking forward the rest of those recommendations, working with the MPA whose scrutiny it was, and including community groups to make sure that our response is comprehensive and deals with all the issues that were raised. Q346 Mr Green: How fast can we expect the others to be implemented? Four out of 55 or even four out of 31 does not sound very many. Detective Superintendent Tucker: As with a lot of things, there are some quick wins to be made and those were the ones that were the most simple to implement. Some of them are going to be medium term. Some are long term around changing the way in which we train people to focus much more on the outcomes and making sure that appreciation of what constitutes reasonable suspicion and things like that are taken fully into account. I get the feeling you are after a date. I cannot give you that. There is some medium term stuff which will take six months to a year. There is some longer term stuff that is going to take much longer than that. Q347 Mr Green: Is the Stop and Search Steering Group up and running? Are Muslim groups involved fully? Detective Superintendent Tucker: Yes, I was surprised to see that you had received evidence that people did not know about this because the Muslim Safety Forum and the Muslim Council of Britain are both represented on the steering group and the last meeting of that was last Wednesday. Q348 Mr Green: Which suggests that particular problem does not exist but there is clearly a communications problem around Muslim communities. As you say, we have received evidence that seems to contradict that. Are efforts being made to improve communications? Detective Superintendent Tucker: I think the mistake is to think of the Muslim community as one homogenous group. There is a huge diversity within that community, if nothing else on nationality grounds, and we obviously as a police service try to engage as wide a range of people in all of our activities so that we can explain ourselves. Perhaps we are not as well‑connected as we would like to be but we work very hard to try and target our communication through the most appropriate media so that everybody knows what we are trying to do. Q349 Chairman: Mr Beckley said the use of section 44 powers is approved in broad terms by ministers but, as you said, in London most of your stop and searches are in four locations. Would it be sensible for ministers rather than writing a blanket approval for use of section 44 powers in London (which is what I understand is the practice) to be much more selective about when and where the powers can be used in the city? Detective Superintendent Tucker: In actual fact, it is not blanket in London any more. For the last few months ‑ I cannot tell you exactly how long ‑ six or seven of the London boroughs are not now covered. Chairman: So there is a more selective policy now in place? Thank you very much indeed. Mr Russell? Q350 Bob Russell: Following up the points that Mr Green has made, you say you are working with the Muslim community to improve intelligence and the way it is used but the evidence we have had from the Muslim Council of Britain shows that they do not believe that stop and searches are based on intelligence, so what do you say to them? Detective Superintendent Tucker: I would say what I have just said which is that 82% of the stop and searches in 2002‑03 took place in London and over 90% of those were in those four areas, so it is led by intelligence. We often talk about intelligence as being behind the hand sort of stuff and clandestine meetings in pubs, but all you have to do is look at what happened on 11 September which is a major financial centre; you only have to look at what happened in Madrid, that was a transport hub; and if you look at Bali that was all about western tourists and so on. I am not wanting to alarm people but the point about this is we have evidence about where we should be putting our resources and where we should be concentrating our activity and I think that the statistics bear that out. Q351 Bob Russell: Mr Baggott, has that information and those statistics been conveyed to the Muslim Council of Britain? What is their reaction if it has and, if it has not, should it not be conveyed to them? Chief Constable Baggott: There are two issues around that. One is around section 95 and the global statistics and putting those into context around overall numbers. The second is a much more localised use of stop and search statistics per se, not just around section 44 but also section 1 of PACE and also section 60 of PACE, which is used frequently in areas of high violence for example. The issue which we are working on, particularly with the Stop and Search Action Team, is to look at ways in which those figures can be put right into the local context, taking into account the security needs, taking into account things like youth profiling to make sure the message around stop and search and its operational context is fully understood. Q352 Bob Russell: You are satisfied that none of them are fishing expeditions? Chief Constable Baggott: I think there are too many checks and balances on the use of section 44 for them to be used as fishing expeditions. My view on section 44 is we live in a unique time of high security need and these are unique powers in terms of disrupting, preventing and stopping the most cataclysmic acts. When you look at the sheer numbers that are being used some perception might be ‑ and I think this is very much a perception‑based issue ‑ that they are being used hundreds of thousands of times. When you break them down to the very real numbers involved the numbers are actually quite small. I also find it quite compelling looking for example at the use of that power in the City of London and the number of people who complain having been through an experience which is well‑briefed, well‑managed, well‑trained and assessed, it is a handful of people who over the last year made a complaint, all of which have been informally resolved or withdrawn. I do not see in terms of context the major issues that I think sometimes are raised in terms of people's perceptions. Q353 Bob Russell: You said the City of London. Did you mean London in its entirety or did you actually mean the City? Chief Constable Baggott: I meant the City of London in that particular case. Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: It is certainly used in the City of London which is again a key significant potential target, and the way they have used it, as Mr Baggott describes, has been quite targeted. As I said earlier on, however, it is a random power and it is designed to be used as such. Q354 Bob Russell: I think we can all agree that there is always scope for improving the use of intelligence but how confident are you, Mr Beckley, that all forces are aware of best practice? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: My role is to try and make sure that the best practice is picked up by forces because a lot of what we are talking about, for example the figures on things like terrorism powers, are highly symbolic. The real issue is how effectively we police local Muslim communities. It is around good policing of communities that a lot of this is won or lost. So my task is very much to try and make sure that the principles of really effective community relations, with a community that, as Mr Tucker said, is very diverse and yet very widespread and very significant, are fully spread and established. Certainly what we are trying to do is use a number of methods, including a bit of inspection, including a bit of visiting. We have run seminars for community officers nationally. We have drawn together all Muslim officers and staff and invited them to seminars so that they can give their take on both the way they are treated in the Police Service but also the way that we police the communities in which they live and that sort of feedback has been very helpful in developing quite comprehensive ‑‑‑ strategies always sounds a bit high level but actually a lot of activities where we try to influence police force activity with Muslim communities. Q355 Bob Russell: In view of what you have just said would you say there is a case for the independent scrutiny of the quality of police intelligence and its use? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: We have discussed this with the Muslim Safety Forum because we are in a dilemma. Quite often we will have very specific intelligence around things which is difficult to share. It is difficult to share because it can reveal sources and can be highly classified, but also we do see a need to have it independently scrutinised. We have been discussing the idea of panels of independent advisers who might be able to look at intelligence and give a community context and assessment, not necessarily on its veracity but its impact in communities. The difficulty with this though is even if you do create a panel it has to remain a relatively anonymous panel and certainly people cannot then publicise what they may have read or heard. Although it is something we have been exploring quite actively, and we have been doing it with the support of the Counter‑Terrorist Branch and others to look at ways of doing this, I think it is still one where we have to tread fairly carefully and learn lessons as we go along but there is certainly a willingness to take an approach like that. Q356 Bob Russell: Mr Hardwick, do you have any thoughts on that? Mr Hardwick: I do not think it would be for us to scrutinise intelligence in a general way. Our role is around conduct issues not general operational policing, but if a serious complaint was made to us in which the complaint related to a matter on which the intelligence was a relevant factor then we would have the powers to ask to see that intelligence and we have the processes in place to make sure we can deal with that evidence and material securely. In those circumstances we could say about a particularly high profile complaint that we have looked at this material independently impartially and these conclusions are the conclusions we have come to. I hope in some circumstances that would be a reassurance. Q357 Chairman: Just to take it one stage further, nationally of course the Intelligence and Security Committee of this House is able to review the use of national intelligence. Is there a case from time to time for a committee like that to look at a few sample operations that the police have undertaken who would then be in a position to assure themselves you base your information entirely on raw security material as they do at the moment. Would the police have any objection if that were introduced, not on every case obviously but from time to time? Chief Constable Baggott: The issue of public confidence is such that if you could have some degree of confidential, independent assessment that did not undermine the fundamental human rights of the sources and other issues of grave operational importance we would be very open to that and support that. Q358 Mrs Dean: Could I turn to Mr Hardwick. Does the level of complaints about stop and searches mirror their use by different forces? Mr Hardwick: No, the actual number of complaints that are made is very small. On stop and search those complaints would not come directly to us. We would record them individually so we would only have the data at the year end when we collect that material in from forces. I cannot give you a definitive answer about the number of complaints made about stop and search but all the anecdotal evidence is that it is comparatively small. That might be because nothing is going wrong and people have no concerns or it might be because people do not have confidence that if they do complain on these matters it will be taken seriously and dealt with. The evidence that we have from the baseline public opinion surveys we have done (and we did not categorise that by people's faith but we did look at, for instance, the Asian public, which I accept is a much broader term than the one we are looking at here) shows that some conclusions can be drawn. We know among Asian people generally that they have least confidence in the complaints system and least confidence that if they do complain, the matter they complain about will be dealt with effectively and seriously. So I suspect that what is actually happening here, and certainly what people report to us, is that there are concerns out there but they never get beyond the level of anecdote. They are not actually tested and it is very difficult for someone to give a definitive answer because it is as important to be able to say we have looked at this independently and we are satisfied that it was properly handled and these were the reasons why things were done. That is as important a conclusion as it is to say we think there was some misconduct here and consequences should follow. If people do not have confidence to bring their concerns forward they simply tell all their friends and community, and I think that is a much less satisfactory outcome. Q359 Mrs Dean: Do some forces use them frequently but have few complaints? Have you found out whether that is the case? Mr Hardwick: We think that generally across the piece across all forces there is a mismatch between the number of complaints, the concerns that we are made aware of, and the number of stop and searches made. I think in general with what we do it is wrong to draw a conclusion that less complaints equals good; more complaints equals bad. It is about the accessibility of the system and whether people feel confident. You can argue that people feel confident enough to complain when things have gone wrong. That hopefully in turn will lead to their trust and confidence in the police as a whole increasing and that hopefully will enable the police to do this particular aspect of their work more effectively. Q360 Mrs Dean: How can you overcome that reluctance to complain if people think they have been dealt with wrongly? Mr Hardwick: There are a number of things that we can do. Firstly, we have a very extensive programme going on at both national and local level to make contact with Muslim community and faith groups to explain how the system works. We are looking at trying to create gateways or complainant access points, so it may well be that people may not know very much about the Independent Police Complaints Commission or they may not feel very confident about us but they may have a community organisation or a mosque or a faith‑based organisation that they would feel more confident about going to. We can develop the competence of that organisation then to advise their community member about how to progress their complaint, how the system works and what outcome they could look for. Often the best option for the lower level things is an informal approach that one would think could be dealt with in hours or days rather than months or years where often what people want is an explanation of what happened. It includes what was said earlier about outcomes, about does the person who has been stopped (who might be blameless if it is a random situation) understand why that has happened and have an opportunity to ask questions and do they feel they have been dealt with courteously and properly. Q361 Mrs Dean: Are police forces responding to your calls to investigate complaints more quickly. Mr Hardwick: It is still early days. We think there is an improvement in the rate at which complaints generally are being dealt with. To some extent there has been more progress with the higher level complaints over which we have direct control than the mass of lower level complaints, but I am confident - and this is maybe a rash thing to say ‑ that we will be able to make a significant reduction in the amount of time it takes to resolve complaints. I think key to that is improving the system of local or informal resolution which is often a better way of dealing with that and we are in the process of dealing with statutory guidance at the moment which I hope will make that a more robust and satisfactory process. Q362 Mrs Dean: We have had witnesses who have told us that complaints have not risen in line with the rise in stop and search. Do you agree with that? Mr Hardwick: They have not risen. Complaints have not risen in line with the increase in the number of stop and searches. I agree with that. What is more difficult is to explain why that is the case. I suspect, as I say, it is about confidence in the system rather than anything else. Q363 Mr Clappison: Could I perhaps ask Mr Beckley first of all on behalf of ACPO, to deal with the perception which has been put to us from some quarters that a disproportionate number of those arrested are released without charge. What is your view on the statistics in this area? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: As with many statistics, they are liable to be used selectively and, to be fair, they are liable to be used selectively on all sides. There are two or three factors here. One is there are something like about 70 cases that are currently working their way through courts at this moment, so there are a large number of cases where outcomes have yet to be seen, but additionally out of those that have been arrested about half have been subsequently charged, not necessarily for Terrorism Act offences but they are still very serious offences, things like conspiracy to commit murder or certain weapons offences. Q364 Mr Clappison: Could I stop you there because I think we need to be slightly clear about the technicalities of this. Although it might not be a charge under the Terrorism Act, are the offences to which you have just referred offences which have a terrorist element but are charged as offences not under the Terrorism Act but under the general law? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: That is right and yet the outcome figures that are commonly quoted are about how many terrorist offence results there are, ie, how many Terrorism Act offences there are. The reality of this is, inevitably, because they cover a whole range of criminality you might arrest under the Terrorism Act and then find considerable fraud behind it, potentially funding terrorism but they will be charged under the Fraud Act. Q365 Mr Clappison: Fraud related to terrorism? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: Or related to terrorism, yes. Q366 Mr Clappison: Fraud related to terrorism or fraud unrelated to terrorism? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: Fraud often related to terrorism. On occasion there may be fraud unrelated to terrorism but the perception often is of these pre-planned arrests being fishing expeditions, which was a phase used a little earlier on in a slightly different context. Each pre-planned set of arrests is subject to the most rigorous community impact assessment. We look at it from all contexts as to why do we need to arrest, first of all, and then what is the impact on communities if we did and, likewise, what is the potential outcome. Ultimately, a 50% charge rate against arrests is pretty good compared to any other type of criminality. Q367 Mr Clappison: Non‑terrorist criminality? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: Yes. Mr MacDonald: Can I add something to that. There is always an attrition rate between arrest and charge and the reason is partly that the tests are different. The test for arrest is a reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed. The test for a charge for a prosecution is a realistic prospect of conviction and that it would be in the public interest to prosecute. That is a much stricter test. What happens is the police arrest someone and send us a file or consult us and we decide whether there should be a charge. Sometimes we decide there should be, sometimes we decide there should not, but the most serious terrorist charges are not Terrorism Act offences. They are conspiracy to murder or conspiracy to cause explosions. These are not Terrorism Act offences. So we have a situation where there is bound to be a rate of attrition anyway because the test is different. Secondly, very many of these individuals will be charged with terrorist offences which are not Terrorism Act offences. Thirdly, as Mr Beckley has said, very often it is discovered following arrest that in fact there is not sufficient evidence to prosecute for a terrorist offence but the individual (who is still believed to have been involved in that sort of activity) can be prosecuted for credit card fraud or possessing false identity documents or offences of that sort. Q368 Mr Clappison: Given those two points you have made about the attrition rate from arrest to charge because of the difference between the two of the tests and also the distinction between Terrorism Act offences and other offences which are related to terrorism, what reflections do you have on the number of those arrested who are eventually charged with offences of a terrorist nature, whatever distinction is made about it, and what the public would regard as terrorist offences? Mr MacDonald: As Mr Beckley has said, around 50% of the people arrested under the Terrorism Act later go on to be charged with some offence and that is about right for serious crime. I say about right, it is about the sort of figure you have in other areas of complex crime. I just think these figures about arrest versus prosecution have to be treated with real caution because the point that is being made by a lot of people who quote them is not an accurate point. Q369 Mr Clappison: Can I put another point to you relating to that but moving on a stage further to actual conviction as opposed to arrest and charge. It has been put to us that a lot of those who have been convicted under the Terrorism Act ‑ d most of them according to one source - are white non‑Muslims. What reflections do you have on that? Mr MacDonald: Arrests under the Terrorism Act include people arrested for what is called international terrorism and people who are arrested for Irish or domestic terrorism. Traditionally of course most people arrested for terrorism in this jurisdiction were Irish. That reflected the reality of terrorism in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. There are still some what you might describe as Irish terrorist cases involving members of the Real IRA or other organisations who have not signed up to the peace process. They are declining as a proportion. The reality is that as far as Terrorism Act offences are concerned a much greater proportion now are non‑white although there is quite an element of prosecution in this area around Turkish and Kurdish areas. So there a number of arrests made of people of Turkish or Kurdish origin. Q370 Mr Clappison: Do you have any further thoughts you want to share on the subject on the balance of people who have been charged and convicted from your position as DPP? Mr MacDonald: The conviction rate in terrorist cases traditionally is quite high. In Irish terrorist cases it was extremely high. It was very unusual for people to be acquitted. Those cases were very different. You would often have someone who was arrested driving through London in a lorry with a bomb in the back or someone who was arrested assembling a bomb in a bed sit or someone who was arrested with Semtex in the boot of his car. These cases are different. The sorts of cases that are being brought now are based much more on circumstantial and inferential evidence. It is often evidence of communication by internet, of fundraising, of sending money abroad, of collecting equipment in one way or another. They are much more difficult to investigate, they are much more difficult to prosecute, and I would not be at all surprised if it turns out that the conviction rate in these cases is lower than the conviction rate was in Irish terrorist cases but that is a reflection of the sorts of evidence which are gathered in these cases rather than anything else. I think the conviction rate is still likely to remain pretty high but it is very early in the process. We have got a number of cases which have come to trial, some of which are being tried at the moment and a number of extremely serious cases which will be coming up over the next two years or so. I am sorry not to answer you directly but I think we are going to have to wait a year or two before we come forward with reliable figures about conviction rates in cases involving this sort of international terrorism. Q371 Mr Clappison: It may be that historians will be interested in the position with Irish terrorists in the past but can I ask you about the present: are you confident that you are successful in balancing the rights of the accused in terrorism cases with the public interest? Mr MacDonald: I think we are. We have taken a very strong position as a prosecuting authority and I have said publicly that prosecutors have to be loyal to due process. We take the view that what the public are interested in is safe convictions in which they can have confidence. I am sorry to slip back into history again but we do not want to find ourselves in the position again we found ourselves in in the 1980s of suddenly realising that people who had been in prison for very many years had not committed any offence. We are very conscious of that. We support due process, we support fair trials, and I am quite satisfied that the systems we have in place at present guarantee those rights to people who find themselves in our courts. I have said publicly that if you want to change the criminal trial process or interfere with it you have to do so with very great caution. Q372 Mr Clappison: Are there any procedures you have in place that you would regard as special procedures? Mr MacDonald: Yes, we have specialist prosecutors who work in this area. We have a senior cadre of prosecutors who work on these cases. They are very experienced and they are managed by senior lawyers who oversee their work. The work is reviewed. I think it is conducted with skill and with care. I look at it closely myself. I have close contact with prosecutors working in this area. One of them is with me today and I am satisfied from everything I have seen since I have been in this post for a year or so that this work is conducted within the CPS with conspicuous skill, and we aim to keep it that way. Q373 Mr Clappison: Thank you. Could I move across to Mr Hardwick and ask if you have received any complaints about unfounded arrests and detentions under the Terrorism Act? Mr Hardwick: Again, we have had a small number of complaints about that. What we have said to forces is that we do want to make sure they are addressed properly so we have used our powers to call in complaints arising from an arrest under the Terrorism Act. Since we have done that we have had about four or five complaints made. We do have a special process for dealing with all of those. Those decisions about handling would be made by myself personally with advice from our senior professional advisers and the cases that we have at the moment are all ones that are in progress. Q374 Chairman: Just a couple more questions if I could, Mr MacDonald. Of the 50% of arrests that are leading to charges, how many of those charges are what you might call simple immigration offences as opposed to other types of crime like credit card fraud and the more organised type of crime we are talking about? Mr MacDonald: I do not have a breakdown of that although I am sure we could try and research this for you and provide the Committee with some figures. We all have slightly different figures here, I am afraid. We have somewhat different figures from ACPO and so does the Home Office. They are general ball‑park figures. We are aware of around 460 arrests for international terrorism. That is this type of terrorism since 9/11. Of those our figures demonstrate that about 54 were charged with Terrorism Act offences and 236 with other offences. Those other offences will include forgery, identity fraud, murder, conspiracy to cause explosions, and so on and so forth. What I cannot tell you at the moment is precisely how those 236 are made up. Q375 Chairman: You would agree though that it is relatively easy to defend arresting and charging somebody if they turn out to be guilty of credit card fraud or a serious crime of that sort; less easy perhaps in the context of community relations to justify the use of terrorism powers to arrest somebody where you end up doing them just because they have overstayed on their visa. Mr MacDonald: If people got the idea that these powers were being used to conduct sweeps through communities to pick up people who were here illegally for example, that would be hugely undermining of public confidence. I am not suggesting that is the case for one moment. I am sure it is not the case. You also have to bear in mind that on occasions ‑ and I am aware of such cases myself ‑ individuals who are arrested under the Terrorism Act and who are believed to be involved in terrorist activity and in respect of whom that belief remains even after the decision is taken that we cannot charge them with Terrorism Act offences, they will nevertheless be charged with what on the face of it might appear to be pretty minor offences. It does not mean that we have changed our mind about their criminality. What it means is we have come to a determination that we do not have the evidence to proceed on a particular basis. That is not always the case but it will sometimes be the case. Q376 Chairman: The Home Secretary is expected to make his decision fairly soon about the follow‑up to the Belmarsh decision. One possibility ‑ and it is only that ‑ is that you might in future be asked to submit cases to special courts which sit, for example, without juries in order to be able to take into account the type of evidence that cannot be heard in those cases. You made a comment a moment ago about changing the processes of justice. How would you feel if in order to bring more people within the network of prosecution for terrorist offences you had to prepare cases for trial by vetted judges and without juries? Mr MacDonald: What the Government does in this area is a matter for the Government. We have been asked to contribute to the Home Office review into these questions which is going on at the moment. I have said in the past that it is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I am not sure that open, liberal societies protect themselves against terrorism by becoming closed and illiberal. It is very important that we maintain public confidence in the administration of justice. On a pragmatic view one of the best ways to avoid miscarriages of justice is due process because in a pragmatic sense it is a collection of rules which is designed to ensure so far as possible that innocent people are not convicted. It is obviously also extremely important in this area, perhaps more than in any other, that guilty people are convicted and that the activities of guilty people when they can be disrupted are disrupted. So the Government has to find the balance. What I have done in the past is to caution against changes which are not contemplated with great care and with very cool heads. Q377 Chairman: It might be more satisfactory to convict somebody properly of a terrorist offence by taking intelligence into account in a special court than to only charge them with a minor immigration offence because that is all you can do in the current system? Mr MacDonald: Yes, there are certainly strong arguments for that. I must stress this is a balance for the Government to find. Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: Just to add a bit of clarification; only eight out of 165 were detained under immigration in 2004. Chairman: That is very helpful. Thank you very much indeed. Mr Prosser? Q378 Mr Prosser: I want to talk about the media and alleged police tip‑offs. We all know about the particular incident in Manchester when a raid took place and the media were there. We also had it on television in real time. The Muslim Council of Britain have referred to that incident in particular and said how damaging it was to local community relations. They have suggested that the only motive for that happening was to inflame Islamophobia within the community and they were distressed to find that when they made approaches to the Chief Constable of Manchester he acknowledged that it could have been someone from inside his force ‑ and most of us would probably agree with that ‑ but he went on to say it was impractical to investigate it. What effect do you think such tip‑offs have on local communities and what can be done to investigate those particular incidents when they occur? More importantly, how can we stop them happening in the future? Chief Constable Baggott: The first thing to say is that tip‑offs are extremely rare in the context of operations. Clearly tip‑offs that are unhelpful and damaging to community relations are to be condemned. I would want to say that very clearly and unequivocally. Tip‑offs which themselves undermine an operation, undermine confidence and compromise due process cannot be right. I know my colleagues at ACPO would share that view very clearly indeed with me. When it comes to investigating tip‑offs they are difficult to investigate. I have been the head of professional standards in a major force for five years and you are always into a reactive investigation. Identifying who has tipped off journalists is incredibly difficult because journalists themselves are not necessarily the most forthcoming people in terms of revealing their sources. They are difficult investigations to be managed but they need to be managed thoroughly and to the very best positive effect. Tip‑offs are not good. It is as simple as that. Q379 Mr Prosser: And there any means of preventing them? Chief Constable Baggott: The means of preventing them is through very tight management of confidential information and planning before you lead to the operation itself. It is a management of information issue and ensuring there are very tights boundaries around that and very clear expectations on colleagues and a very clear spelling out of the consequences if information is not managed in an ethical way. Detective Superintendent Tucker: I want to reinforce that point about how few leaks there have been. You mentioned one case but there have been a number of cases this year that would have been of considerable interest to the media. There were no leaks around those cases and the official press releases put into the public domain has to balance between the amount of information that we should give but also the rights of the people who are going to be charged in any judicial process that may follow. The press strategies there were not undermined by leaks in those other cases. It is a very small number of cases and generally the information is kept very tight. Q380 Mr Prosser: Mr Hardwick, where there is no suspect, no known police person has acted improperly but the system has failed, would you investigate a case like this? Mr Hardwick: Yes, I think this is the kind of thing that would be a conduct matter and potentially that would fall within our remit. It is the kind of thing where although the individual consequences might not be that serious, the impact on public confidence might be great, and I think that is the kind of thing where we would want to look at it. You would not simply in that situation want to look at which individual told the journalist concerned if they were not supposed to do that but what was the climate in which that was taking place? Was that tacitly encouraged? Were people turning a blind eye? Whether that was done by a sworn officer or by a member of police staff. Both of those groups would fall within our jurisdiction and it is something that we ourselves would take a very serious view on. Q381 Mr Prosser: Mr Beckley, we have heard quite a lot about the wish to connect with local, Muslim groups especially, and for good liaison and to receive feedback, et cetera. Do you think the Hindu community gets equal treatment in that area? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: With my faith hat on I do meet with Hindu, Sikh and Jewish groups. In fact, I think some of the evidence that was presented to you by Hindu groups Mr Tucker has had direct experience of handling some of the points that were raised there. Detective Superintendent Tucker: The evidence that you received indicated that there have been 28 incidents back to 1992. I am sure that that does not present the full picture but there are not a huge number of incidents. Some of those that were described in the evidence from the Hindu Council relate to a series of arsons in 1992 and that followed the attack at the Iodia(?) Mosque in India by Hindu groups. In 2002 there were further incidents of a similar nature at Godra in Gujurat which again led to very, very great loss of life. There were no incidents in this country, so our feeling is that our ability to react to international events has become more nimble and that as a service we are much better at scanning what is going on and predicting what might happen. Certainly that is what my job is through the National Community Tension Team. It is to look at national and international events and see what the local implications of that are going to be. I hope that we are being successful in doing that. Q382 Mr Prosser: Lastly, what about the inference or the suggestion from the Hindu Forum that security incidents amongst the Hindu community are not investigated quite so seriously and given so much weight as those amongst the Muslim community? Detective Superintendent Tucker: I would say that that is not true. There is one incident that is described in the evidence from the Hindu Council about an incident at a Hindu temple in Wembley. I went along to a community meeting about that and I think that perhaps one of the failings we could acknowledge is that when we looked at taking a victim impact statement we looked at the people from the temple rather than perhaps looking a little more broadly into the community impact more generally. The truth about that is that the offence was investigated, that people were arrested having been detained at the temple by the people at the temple themselves, handed into the custody of the police, prosecuted very vigorously and received quite serious sentences in comparison for the offence that they had committed. Q383 Mr Clappison: I think the complaint that we had from the Hindu community was that - and I think it is difficult for you to comment because it is a matter of sentencing - the sentence was disproportionate to what they regarded as a grossly insulting act towards their religion, which was quite deliberate and quite planned. I appreciate that is difficult for you to answer. Mr MacDonald: I think this was two fundamentalist Christians who went into a temple and damaged a God. The reality was, actually, that the sentences they got were custodial sentences which were above the norm for an offence of that sort, but it was clearly too low to satisfy the community. I think Mr Tucker is absolutely right; what the Court would have been helped by was a broader statement about the impact of that offence on the community. There are moves afoot to give prosecutors slightly wider powers in the sentencing stage to draw the Court's attention to a wider variety of issues which ought to impact on the appropriate sentence. I think this is a very good example of where that could have made a difference, actually. Q384 Mr Clappison: Can I ask you very briefly, as well, about the Jewish community, because we have heard evidence - not just from the Jewish community but from other witnesses - that one of the surprising things about the aftermath of 9/11 was an increase in attacks upon Jewish people and an increase in tension relating to the Jewish community. Clearly, there is an internationally-generated threat to the Jewish community. Do you feel that you are fully aware of that and cognisant of that? Detective Superintendent Tucker: Yes. Again, part of the National Community Tension Team's remit is to have a view around those issues to try and raise them with all police forces across the UK. In my former job with the WST Directorate (?) at the Met we had some research done looking at anti-Semitic incidents, and there are very, very clear spikes of activity and incidents being reported that are connected to international events. After the incursion of the Israeli defence forces into Janine, with that very iconic picture of the father sheltering the child, there was a very discernible spike of anti-Semitic activity. So you can trace it very clearly through those events. Q385 Mr Clappison: Are you also aware of the terrorist attacks which there have been on Jewish targets internationally, and, also, low-level persecution of Jewish people on an everyday basis? Detective Superintendent Tucker: Yes. We work very closely with the Community Security Trust to make sure that we are fully aware of all the concerns within Jewish communities throughout the UK. Q386 Bob Russell: Mr Hardwick, has the Independent Police Complaints Commission made any special attempts to engage with minority communities? Mr Hardwick: Yes, we have done a variety of things. Our commissioners are regionally based, as is a large proportion of our staff, and a specific responsibility they have at a regional level is to make contact with as many of the representative groups as they can within their area. We have now been doing that on a planned and consistent basis prior to us going live in April this year. I think that has had some impact. Secondly, we have gone to some lengths to make sure that the staff under the Commission for Public Appointments we ourselves employ are as representative as we can make, and thirdly we have done a lot of work through the various minority ethnic media to reach out to a wider audience and try and understand their concerns and address them. So this is a high priority for us. Q387 Bob Russell: So the impact was positive? Mr Hardwick: Certainly, the feedback that we have had about the efforts we have made has been positive. Inevitably, in a sense, you can reach the organised groups, but getting below that is a harder thing to do. My view about this, as in a lot of other matters in the IPPC, is that people will believe it when they see it. People will see the work we do, they will see the reports that we get in the local press and the minority press and that, I think, over time is what we need to rely on to build up our reputation and inspire confidence; it is not us making general statements of good intent, it is us actually delivering on the ground that will make a difference. Q388 Bob Russell: So there is a regular programme of contact and communication? Mr Hardwick: Yes. For instance, we have a national meeting to pursue things (coincidental with this) with people from the Muslim community, actually; talking to them - "What are your concerns?" "This is what we are doing to try and address those". As I say, that is replicated at a regional level. Q389 Bob Russell: Mr MacDonald, in your submission you list steps to engage with the Muslim communities. As I understand it, most of these are forward plans for future activities. Are you able to tell us what actions have been taken and how successful they have been? Mr MacDonald: We have already embarked on this programme. I met, in the middle of last year, about 30 representatives of the Muslim community and we set up a sort of contact group; we had two senior representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain speaking at our senior management conference last October, so they could speak to 150 of our top managers; we have issued guidance to each of our 42 areas on engaging with Muslim communities and how they should set about doing that. I speak to the media about this on occasions. At the end of this month we are starting to train key staff, including prosecutors, on Muslim community issues, and the training is going to be provided by representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain, the Islamic Foundation and Faithwise. We are going to train staff in our casework directorate - that is the people who do our most serious cases including terrorist cases - staff in our policy directorate and staff in our equalities divisions, and also we are going to train staff in those areas of the country with the highest Muslim population. So we have a programme starting at the end of this month of training people. Q390 Bob Russell: That is looking forward, which is all well and good, but I was specifically hoping that you would tell us when that programme started and how long it has been going. Mr MacDonald: I certainly started meeting with representatives of the Muslim community in the middle of last year, within three months or so of taking office. Prior to that we had developed a public policy on prosecuting racist and religiously aggravated crime, and I think we published that document in about 2001. In order to devise that policy we had a series of meetings with representatives of a number of communities, including Muslim communities. So engagement with these communities is not new for us; this is something we have been doing for some years, but clearly since 9/11 it has become more important and we have certainly, over the last year or so, been accelerating it. Q391 Bob Russell: You are building on what has gone before, and looking forward, hopefully, as productively as the other evidence ---- Mr MacDonald: I hope so. We recruited in January of last year, as our Director of Equality and Diversity, Seamus Taylor, who had been Director of Strategy at the Commission for Racial Equality, and he is taking the lead in driving this forward. I think he is being pretty energetic about it. Q392 Mr Green: Can I come back to the issue that we touched on before about crimes generally relating to race and religion? Perhaps the first question to ACPO is whether you think the recorded rise in crimes related to race is the result of a perceived rising threat of terrorism? Chief Constable Baggott: There has not been a significant rise in the number of racist incidents that we record. That is fairly catch-all because it is very much based on an individual's perception - if someone thinks it is then we record it as such. It is an investigative tool. There has not been a massive rise in those numbers in the past two to three years, so it is a little hard to say that there is a significant growing tension or a significant rise in that as result of the aftermath of 9/11. I think what there is is a greater awareness of international issues. We heard earlier, in terms of particular faith groups, that you get spikes in relation to international events, but to actually say globally there has been a huge rise is somewhat difficult to discern. I think it will become easier following the major review we have just done of our hate crime approach nationally, where we move to all forces actually recording religiously aggravated offences as well as racially aggravated offences. So it will give a better take on the picture. It is a little bit premature to do that. I can speak from the Leicestershire perspective, where we do monitor religiously aggravated offences, and there has not been a massive rise; there has been a slight rise. To relate that to 9/11 is somewhat difficult to make that connection. Q393 Mr Green: Do you think that if people are saying that either racially motivated or religiously motivated crimes are increasing there is not the evidence to support that? Chief Constable Baggott: I would have expected to see a significant rise in the number of racist incidents or religious incidents being recorded. We have not had that massive rise over the last three or four years, and that definition is very much an open-ended definition. The big jump came post the Stephen Lawrence inquiry where forces got into place some very clear processes of managing that. That has been done over the last three or four years, so I would have expected to have seen a significant jump in the number of racist incidents. There has not been that massive jump over the last two or three years. Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: I would add one thing: I think racist incidents are not always a very good barometer, in the sense that often we are pushing very much to increase recording, for a whole host of reasons. We have implemented third-party Islamophobic reporting nationally. I think a better indicator and one which we do look at quite seriously is overall victimisation rates of different ethnic groups. What that tends to show, certainly in terms of street crime and crimes of violence or harassment, is that if you are Asian or black you are more likely to be victimised. I think nearly every force will show that in their statistics. Therefore, there is an issue just about the security and well-being of our minority communities that we must address very directly, and it is about victimisation, really, rather than necessarily racially motivated crime. Q394 Mr Green: Is that victimisation going up? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: No, it is holding pretty steady. I go back to an answer I gave a little while ago, that when you look at the potential indicators to say "Is tension getting worse?" they do not tend to paint that picture. Q395 Mr Green: Is that true in the Met? Detective Superintendent Tucker: Post-September 11 we put in an operation specifically to monitor faith-related crime, crime in areas that we thought might be vulnerable. There was an increase, not to the extent that we expected, but that returned - if we can say "normal" - to expected levels by about January. So I do not think the statistics would bear out that connection. Even in the very short term they did not; the big spike, as Mr Baggott has indicated, was the Stephen Lawrence inquiry report which raised, I think, processes to deal with it, but certainly raised expectations as well. Q396 Mr Green: On the issue of conviction rates and so on, am I right that the conviction rate for religiously aggravated offences is lower than for racially aggravated ones? Mr MacDonald: I think it is about 85% for racially aggravated offences and 77% for religiously aggravated offences. We are talking about a new law here, and we are talking about, in 2003/04, only 44 cases - the year before only 18 cases. So the sample is so small I would be cautious about deriving anything from it. Actually, that conviction rate of 77% is pretty high. Q397 Mr Green: Do you expect a rise now in the number? Mr MacDonald: We would expect the number of religiously aggravated cases coming to us to rise. What happens with a new law is that it tends to take a while to get going, partly because it is just not in people's minds. We would expect it to rise. In 2003/04 we received 4,700-odd racially aggravated cases from the police, which was an increase of 12% over the previous year, and 44 religiously aggravated cases, which was up from 18 the previous year. Q398 Mr Green: Do you have a view on the proposed offence of incitement to religious hatred? Mr MacDonald: I think the main issue around that is managing expectations. As you know, we already have an offence of incitement to racial hatred. Since 2001, so far as we can gather - and, again, the figures are not entirely certain - there have been 86 referrals for this offence, 6 prosecutions (because there were only six cases which we felt could be prosecuted), 2 convictions, 1 dropped and 3 on-going cases. The reason for that is that incitement to hatred, whether it is racial or religious, is a form of interference with free speech and justified by the need to maintain public order and so on and so forth, but it means that the courts have set the bar very high for proving this offence. One of the dangers around incitement to religious hatred is that communities - and indeed representatives of the Muslim communities have said this to me - believe somehow this is going to protect them from people being offensive or rude about Islam. It is not going to do that. You are perfectly free to be offensive or rude about any religion, there is no law against it. The danger is that if people think it is going to protect them from that and it does not they feel very let down by us, by the police, by the Government and by everybody else, and we get accused of being racist or incompetent, or a combination of the two, when in fact we are just applying the law. So it is very important that people understand what that offence will achieve: it will stop the grossest sort of conduct, but it is not going to stop people being rude about Islam. Q399 Mr Green: Would you expect there to be, if you like, a rush of failed attempts? Mr MacDonald: What will happen is that the police will investigate allegations of this sort, they will send us the files, and we will look at them and decide whether we think a prosecution would meet the appropriate test - in other words, whether there is a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest. If we get the Attorney General's consent, which we need in these cases, we will prosecute. However, experience around incitement to racial hatred teaches us that very many of the cases referred to us by the police do not get prosecuted because they do not meet the very high test which is required. Q400 Mr Green: What is the police view on that? Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: We concur. We have supported and been very public about supporting the creation of the offence because we do not believe it is right that the protection of the law is afforded to, say, Sikhs and Jews but not to Hindus and Muslims. So we support the law. In a previous life I was responsible for the National Hate Material Index, around which I had a lot of links with the CPS. The bar is very high; incitement to hatred is a very hard case to prove, but in that respect, for even a handful of cases over a year or two, I think it would be a necessary and useful offence. Q401 Mr Green: I am interested in the contrast there. It does not seem intrinsically a very sensible way to pass a law in a sensitive area if what it is going to do is raise expectations well beyond what is likely to be fulfilled. It looks like gesture politics. Assistant Chief Constable Beckley: I think we have managed, over time, the expectations on the incitement to racial hatred. This has become an area where the rational debate has gone out of the window slightly; people are not actually discussing it, it has become slightly polemic. The reality of it is, as with many pieces of legislation, it is one bit of the jigsaw that provides protection to our communities in general. It is only a small bit, but, nevertheless, what we regard as quite an important piece. Q402 Mr Clappison: Two very quick questions for the Director of Public Prosecutions. You mentioned the incitement to racial hatred, which is a similar offence (I think the law has been amended actually to include religion in the racial element) but do you accept that there is a distinction between racial criticism and religious criticism, because it is difficult to see that there could be a legitimate criticism of somebody because of their race but there could be a legitimate criticism of their religion? Is that something which you will take into account in your test? Mr MacDonald: I do not think we will be able to because if Parliament says incitement to religious hatred is an offence, it is an offence. You are certainly right that one of the arguments deployed by people who are opposed to this offence is that protecting a belief system is very different from protecting a racial identity. In the United States, for example, you could not have this legislation because of the First Amendment guaranteeing free speech. Under European Convention jurisprudence the right to free speech can be curtailed appropriately in the interests of public order and protecting people, and so on. Clearly, this is an appropriate curtailment of it. The answer to your question is that if the law is passed then prosecutors will deploy it where they can, and we will obviously prosecute appropriate cases rigorously. The point I am trying to make is that it is very important that the communities that this law is designed to protect understand what this law will achieve and what it is not designed to achieve. It is not designed to prevent people being rude about Islam. Q403 Mr Clappison: I have seen, and I think other people have seen as well, that there does seem to be this understanding, in certain quarters at least, that this will be the effect of it and you are saying it will not be. Do you think it is important then, at this stage, that people should be aware that it is not going to have that sort of effect in order to avoid misunderstanding later on? Mr MacDonald: Whenever I talk to representatives of the Muslim communities I make this point. I have discussed this with Sadiq Khan and he understands very well that it is not going to have that effect. The point is to get this across to the communities. If we have a difficulty two years down the line, in a sense, it will be our own fault for not being clear about what we are doing. Q404 Mrs Dean: Mr Tucker, the Secretary General of the Association of Muslim Police was reported as saying that it was a lucky day if he could walk into a police station in traditional dress without being stopped on suspicion of being a terrorist. With that in mind, how confident are you that police officers from religious minorities receive proper treatment from the Metropolitan Police Service? Detective Superintendent Tucker: I know the Secretary General very well and clearly there are issues on which he does not conform to the stereotypical policeman, and that is sometimes difficult for colleagues to adjust to. I think it is a question of evolving the service that has people from a broad range of backgrounds so that is no longer the case, and that will take some time. I am confident that ACPO and the senior management within the Metropolitan Police Service are absolutely committed that the Metropolitan Police Service and the police service in the UK is as welcoming to people from the whole range of backgrounds as it can possibly be. I am confident that we are making significant progress. Q405 Chairman: Mr Baggott, the ACPO evidence is very critical of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy of the four Ps - prevention, protection, pursuit and preparation - because it misses out communities, which ACPO say you explicitly wanted as part of the strategy. If the Government counter-terrorism strategy had a fifth strand on communities what would it look like and what difference what it make to the issues we have been discussing today? Chief Constable Baggott: It may not be explicitly there but I do believe that the citizen focus and neighbouring policing agenda set out in the White Paper, the National Policing Plan, is incredibly important in maintaining some real momentum over the last couple of years. There has been an immense amount of learning - whether that is through the priority policing area work or through the community cohesion work or reassurance work - about the way in which you can deploy police officers in the right numbers in the heart of vulnerable communities in a style of policing that delivers relationship building and confidence. I think that is an incredibly important part of any terrorist strategy because it is about the hearts and minds of people; it is about accessibility, it is about a whole range of confidence building issues that simply have to be the bedrock of what is built upon it. So it may not be there explicitly in that strategy and, certainly, I think there is a gap there, but in relation to where the police service is going I think there is a real change taking place about the way that local policing takes place. I was looking at the evaluation done by an independent academic called Geoff Berry of a policing style, actually, in the West Midlands, and he speaks about the policing role having become "agents of community cohesion, brokers of change" actually working in not simply law enforcement but fundamentally brokering arrangements between faith groups, between community groups, understanding those problems - an incredibly powerful way of dealing with local concerns. So it is there but it is there probably on a bigger scale than actually is simply in that specific strategy. Chairman: Can I thank all of our witnesses for, I think, a tremendously useful session. Thank you very much indeed. |