Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-74)
SIR IAN
BLAIR AND
MR ANDY
HAYMAN
13 SEPTEMBER 2005
Q60 Mr Herbert: Can I
ask to what extent the policy was publicised? You have explained
the various bodies with whom you consulted but did the Met make
any statement about the fact that there was what is after all
a very significant new policy in force post-9/11, and indeed it
may not have been helpful to do so?
Sir Ian Blair: I think we have
to go back to pre-22 July and post-22 July. The Metropolitan Police
Service, along with other services, is a broadly unarmed service.
However, it has to have the capacity to use lethal force and there
are a significant number of operations that require very specialist
approaches. Let us take, for instance, the entry to strongholds,
and you saw some of that on 28 July. Let us have a look at live
kidnaps in progress or the use of firearms in public order scenarios,
as the PSNI have found the last two or three nights. Those lethal
options have been developed and discussed with officials. It has
never been thought appropriate to discuss them in public. I actually
think we have passed that point. I think a watershed has been
passed and now we have to find a process for debating these issues
without necessarily revealing the absolute detail of the tactics
which would, of course, be extremely unhelpful. I would say though,
just to deal with the law, that this is still based, as the Home
Secretary said, on section 3 of the Criminal Law Act, the use
of reasonable force, which has to be "proportionate and necessary"
to the threat. There is no question that a suicide bomber, a deadly
and determined bomber who is intent on murdering many other people,
is perhaps the highest level of threat that we can face and we
must have an option to deal with it.
Q61 Mr Herbert: Sir Ian,
you are mounting a robust defence of the policy. Does that suggest
that it is not under review?
Sir Ian Blair: We reviewed it
immediately post-22 July. We made a small number of administrative
changes but the essential thrust of the tactic remains the same.
That is now being reviewed by other colleagues in ACPO and Her
Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary, I think, has been invited
by the Home Secretary to make sure that from his perspective we
are in the right position. I am just repeating our position: I
do not know what we do with a situation in which somebody is suspected
to be about to commit the kind of atrocity that took place on
7 July. Had we seen the person who was getting onto that bus with
that bomb, what were we going to do? What were the officers going
to do? If they did not act 13 people died on that bus.
Q62 Mr Herbert: Do you
not think that a review should await the outcome of the IPCC inquiry?
Sir Ian Blair: We discussed it
with the IPCC. We have done a fairly quick review but I do not
think I would want to be sitting here in front of you saying,
"We have not launched it and we are not going to look at
it until after December when the IPCC reports". It was done
with the consent and co-operation of the IPCC.
Q63 Mr Herbert: Can I
ask why you initially opposed the establishment of the IPCC inquiry
in relation to Mr Menezes' shooting?
Sir Ian Blair: I did not oppose
the establishment of the IPCC. In my view, and I stand to be judged
on this, on that morning the Metropolitan Police was facing unique
circumstances, not only in Britain but probably in the western
world, which were of at least four apparent suicide bombers with
the intent of causing death and destruction who were on the loose
and therefore could strike again. A man who was shot dead by police
was, from all the information we had at that stage, apparently
one of them. There were two issues that needed to be addressed
and addressed incredibly quickly. The first was, had this man
been a member of the suicide bombing team his body and where he
had come from would have been part of the overall counter-terrorism
crime investigation and it was crucial with the manhunt that we
currently had under way that Andy Hayman's team had priority over
that death. Secondly, there is concern over the duty of the IPCC,
which I entirely respect, to have the maximum disclosure to the
families in these cases when some of the information relates to
secret intelligence. I therefore rang the Chairman of the IPCC.
I said to him that these were the issues with which I was grappling;
therefore, at this stage I was not going to agree to the IPCC
entering the scene and I was going to write to the Permanent Secretary
of the Home Office and indeed copy that letter to him and to the
Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority to ask for guidance
as to what it was we should do in these circumstances. It was
a completely unique set of circumstances. There has been an allegation
of cover-up. My view, which I think is fairly public, is that
you do not cover things up by writing to the Permanent Secretary
of the Home Office. I think this was a responsible decision. It
may have been a wrong decision but it was a responsible decision
by public officials.
Chairman: Thank you. These are obviously
matters that we cannot pursue further with this committee today,
but it is very much in our hands when the IPCC and the coroner
have completed their investigations for us as a committee to have
those involved back here to look in detail at the conclusions
that will be drawn. Thank you for your answers on those questions.
Can I turn now to Mr Winnick?
Q64 Mr Winnick: I am sure
that we want to return at some stage to the questions put by Mr
Herbert and your answers to him. The position is far from closed,
as I am sure you appreciate. As far as engaging with the Muslim
community is concerned are you of the view that the situation
is the same or worse after the July bombings?
Sir Ian Blair: I think I am in
a position to contradict you, Mr Winnick. I think it is better,
not worse. We had had long engagement with the Muslim communities
of London, partially through our independent advisers who had
Muslim members, secondly, through local contacts with mosques,
and, thirdly, by what was a developing organisation at that stage,
the Muslim Safety Forum. We have spent a lot of time working with
them. If I can give you a concrete example of that, it was the
re-establishment of the Finsbury Park mosque, which was done through
co-operation between the Metropolitan Police, our advisers and
the executive committee of the mosque in very difficult circumstances.
I think that after 7 July the Muslim communities of Britain were
faced with what was undoubtedly their worst nightmare, which was
the prospect of people from their own community carrying out these
atrocities in the name of some perverted version of Islam, and
we immediately went to work with them by a number of different
meetings. I went to address the large mosque up in Waltham Forest,
which has the most significant connection to Pakistan, which was
the connection to the 7 July bombings. Since that time my colleague,
Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, who is the most senior
Muslim officer in Britain, has directly engaged with a wide spectrum
of Muslim opinion. Our particular object is to do this: to make
the Muslim communities feel protected and to assist them to do
what they now need to do, which is develop some form of their
own security organisation that can identify those at risk of extremism.
We have to do both of those things while balancing our responsibilities
to other communities, whether they be Hindu, Sikh, Jewish, Christian
or of no faith at all. Those are the three objects of our exercise
at the moment.
Q65 Mr Winnick: Most people
will understand the need, certainly since the events in July,
to protect all people, including, obviously, the Muslim community,
and Muslims, as we know, are among the victims of the 7 July atrocities,
but do you feel that there is a possibility, as happened with
the black community some years ago with stops and searches, that
that could (understandably, in the view of many of us, in view
of what occurred) antagonise relationships with many in the Muslim
community?
Sir Ian Blair: It remains a litmus
test as to how successfully we can do this. The power under section
44 of the Terrorism Act, of course, requires no suspicion; it
only requires intelligence, an intelligent approach to policing.
Clearly we are going to have to work very carefully not to alienate
groups of the Muslim community. There are a number of points to
make. The first is that the word "Muslim" is not synonymous
with Asian. There are many white Muslims, lots of black Muslims
and many Asian Muslims. Secondly, it is impossible to tell the
difference without some dress code (but not all the time) between
different Asian groups. Thirdly, we are not in the business of
just stopping and searching people who fit a particular profile.
Clearly we will take account of that but, on the other hand, to
say that because all these alleged bombers were men we are not
going to search women would be a very foolish step and would lead
to the bombers operating in different ways. I think we have got
a pretty balanced and intelligent process but it is going to need
an awful lot of explanation and I know that a number of Muslim
friends of mine have found things rather difficult.
Mr Hayman: I have written just
in the last couple of days to Lord Carlile on the points that
have just been explained by Ian. The guidance that we are now
giving to our officers who are executing the stop and search under
section 44 come under the five factors to avoid any target or
any particular group. Those five factors are based on the current
threat assessment, the current level of authorisation, the areas
of vulnerability, ie, by geographic vulnerability as well as any
other issue, and also the borough counter-terrorism profile. That
in some sophisticated briefings through officers going out on
to patrol addresses some of the issues that Lord Carlile highlighted
to us in his review.
Q66 Mr Winnick: We know
that unfortunately there are extremist groups who will use any
opportunity to attack Muslims, or indeed Asians, which I will
come to in a moment; it is not confined to Muslims. Has the Muslim
community been in touch with you, Sir Ian, and other senior police
officers in London about increased attacks on their citizens since
July?
Sir Ian Blair: Yes, they certainly
have, although in fact the pattern does not show very much of
an increase. We have two categories of reporting: faith hate crime
and hate crime. The faith hate crime is almost a new development
in the last year, so it has shown a very significant rise. As
soon as you then compare it with the hate crimes you will find
the hate crimes have fallen in almost exactly the same numbers,
so it is a fairly straightforward pattern which rose a little
bit after 7 July and a little bit after 21 July but has now returned
to levels existing throughout the year. We have not seen in London
a rise in attacks of that nature.
Q67 Mr Winnick: We have
had a memorandum from the Hindu Forum of Britain who seem somewhat
unhappy for a number of reasons. They say, for example, that the
police are engaging in the Muslim community in stark contrast,
and I quote, "to the manner in which the Hindu community
and other minority faith groups have been treated". They
have said Hindus have been given 24-hour invitations for consultations,
it has often been ad hoc, and requests for ministerial meetings
to discuss their concerns, which you are not responsible for,
of course, have been brushed aside. We could ask the Home Secretary
at some other stage about that but did you know the concern of
the Hindu community that they are not being treated quite in the
same manner as the Muslim community, or is there any justification
for that?
Sir Ian Blair: I cannot deal with
the individual suggestions but I think in general there is a justification
there, and to some extent I hope it will be seen as understandable.
We have got to get into very close contact with the Muslim community
but, of course, we want to stay very close with the Hindus and
the Sikhs. On the day that I went to this mosque in Waltham Forest
I went to a Hindu temple in Harrow and to a Sikh gavara in Southall
giving exactly the same message, because in the end each of these
communities needs to support each of the other communities with
their own experience, and I am positive we will get back on an
even keel. One of my colleagues was suggesting that we have an
early meeting with the Hindu Safety Forum and with a Sikh equivalent
fairly soon and I will engage in that.
Q68 Mr Winnick: You will
do so?
Sir Ian Blair: I will, yes.
Q69 Mr Winnick: Arising
from this meeting they can have that reassurance?
Sir Ian Blair: Absolutely.
Q70 Mr Winnick: One other
point about hate crimes, which we mentioned earlier on. In their
memorandum they say that the Metropolitan Police have released
figures of such crimes and it emerged that over 930 victims of
hate crimes from the Hindu and the Sikh community occurred between
the period of 7 July and 10 August, while 600 victims came from
the Pakistani and Bangladesh communities. Clearly, among certain
sorts of thugs in Britain there is no distinction: they are all
Pakis, so to speak, in the language of such extremists. Do you
feel there is this danger, that it is not just the Muslim community
but other Asians who are just as subject to this?
Sir Ian Blair: Absolutely, and
that is why I think it is about engaging not only with each individual
community but also with these community organisations to help
one another. The kind of idiot that attacks a turban attacks a
hijab or a yar mulke for that matter. I am afraid the education
of racists is probably not very high.
Q71 Mr Malik: You mentioned
that you monitor hate crimes. I think you are only one of four
forces in the country that does so and I just wondered if you
found it helpful and, if so, might it be something that you would
recommend to your ACPO colleagues?
Sir Ian Blair: I do find it helpful
and we certainly have recommended to our ACPO colleagues. Obviously,
our writ does not run there.
Q72 Chairman: Sir Ian
and Mr Hayman, you have talked about the importance of support
from the communities. Has the volume of information on people
of concern, potential terrorists, extremists, increased from the
community since 7 July?
Sir Ian Blair: I would say yes,
it has, and we know that it did significantly in relation to some
of the arrests that took place, but Andy will have a bit more
detail.
Q73 Chairman: Obviously,
we cannot talk about individual arrests or information. It is
just a general assessment.
Mr Hayman: If you look into the
increase you will see it, but the point has to be made that it
starts from a very low base line. A lot of the challenge for the
community and ourselves is better engagement and the move from
what we consider to be a good degree of liaison and joint working,
which is a good platform to build on, to something different,
from that then encouraging the giving of information or intelligence.
I think the signs are encouraging. There is a willingness on all
sides to engage and I think that over the next couple of months
or so, building on my colleagues' work and that of other colleagues
around the country, it means a move from liaison and consultation
into intelligence and information.
Q74 Chairman: The description
that we have had this morning about the way in which relationships
with Muslim communities in particular are structured seems to
be fairly heavily concentrated on links with the community as
it is organised in and around mosques, places of worship. There
have been suggestions that the spread of extremist and radical
ideas is not actually taking place through those traditional fora,
or at least not exclusively—the use of the internet, other
informal networks and so on. Are you adjusting the way in which
you are deploying your officers and the places that you try to
make contact with the community in order to ensure that those
newer ways of transmitting ideas are covered as effectively as
the more traditional fora?
Sir Ian Blair: It remains a fairly
difficult area here because clearly one wants to do this with
the consent of the communities, but then we also have to reach
out to radicalised and alienated youth. I think the only way we
can do this is through those communities. Tarique Ghaffur has
a series of fora, including young people and so on, and certainly
in terms of our intelligence effort we would be monitoring the
internet. We also have concerns, as the Home Secretary has mentioned,
around bookshops and so on, and we are, I think, in a position
in which we would hope that the people in the mosques would start
to be aware of who the people are that used to be there but are
no longer there that have gone through an Islamic equivalent of
the house church movement in Christianity, and that is people
of whom we are not saying they are doing anything illegal but
we might have some concerns about them.
Mr Hayman: There is another area
we are responding to with colleagues and with the community, and
that is the role of prisons and what is happening when people
are serving sentences. It is in the public domain so we can comment
on this. We do know that that is a hot spot for people to be radicalised.
An initiative which is being introduced at the moment along with
the community is that on the point of release there are mentors
allocated to people released from prison with the sole aim of
informing and developing understanding of the Islamic values and
how they are rooted in the local community and to try and develop
a much bigger area of local responsibility. I believe this is
a very innovative initiative. It embraces all the agencies, including
the community, and puts a lot of responsibility across the piste
rather than in one particular area.
Chairman: Thank you. I think this committee
in particular will welcome those last remarks because it was in
the report that we published in the spring when we warned about
the danger of neglecting what went on in prisons as a potential
source of recruitment. I have to say we had a slightly dusty official
government response, but it is very pleasing to hear that the
problems are being dealt with in any case in the way you suggest.
Thank you very much indeed. Sir Ian, Mr Hayman, can I thank you
very much indeed for your evidence. Can I just say at this stage
that Sir Ian said that members of the family of Mr Menezes are
in the room. I think it is also possible that members of the families
of those who were killed in the bombing are present. I just want
to repeat what I said at the beginning of the meeting. We have
been constrained this morning by the sub judice rules about
the detail into which we can go into the individual events but
it is certainly very open to this Committee and I think certain
that this Committee will return to those events when the various
court cases and inquiries have been carried out and I hope that
we will continue to provide a forum where those who have suffered
in any way through the bombings can hear their concerns aired
in Parliament and the right people be brought to account. Sir
Ian, Mr Hayman, thank you very much indeed.
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