Examination of Witnesses (Questions 75-79)
MR KEN
LIVINGSTONE AND
SIR IQBAL
SACRANIE
13 SEPTEMBER 2005
Chairman: This is the
final section of our hearing this morning. Can I welcome Ken Livingstone
and Sir Iqbal Sacranie to us this morning? Both, I think, are
very familiar to Members of the Committee and we are looking forward
to what you can tell us, perhaps from a community and from a London
perspective, on where we are today. I am going to ask Mr Prosser
to open the questioning.
Q75 Gwyn Prosser: Mr
Livingstone, what is your assessment of the way London has coped
with the events of last July? Can you tell us what lessons you
have learned, other than some of the evidence we have had from
the Commissioner? Perhaps you can tell us something about the
resource implications of any sort of new initiatives you might
be considering.
Mr Livingstone: We started planning
for this day after 9/11. The Government established the Resilience
Committee which was chaired by Nick Raynsford for the first four
years, and we went through every possible combination of attack
on London that we could think of. I would hate to, off the top
of my head, out of my last four budgets, extract a total figure
for what additionally we spent in preparation for this but it
is tens of millions of pounds, both in extra resources for policing,
extra equipment for policing and extra personnel for policing.
The same also for the fire authority. We predicated on the various
exercises we conducted. We did specifically conduct an exercise
on how we would cope with multiple bomb attacks on the Underground
and transport system during a Friday evening rush hour, and on
the basis that all the Government had left London for a variety
of reasons, and we also conducted exercises based on operating
under a terrorist attack on the assumption that Scotland Yard
had been neutralised by a bomb attack itself and that myself and
my office had been blown up. So we did cover virtually every possibility
and we spent a lot of money on it. Therefore, as I say, when I
got back from Singapore, and my first meeting was with Sir Ian,
we could not think of a single response that should have been
made by the emergency service that we had not done, or any breakdown
or failure. There are clearly problems arising out of the mobile
phone system. I think the particular circumstances of this attack,
in the rush hour and in quite disparate parts, meant that most
probably a third of Londoners would have thought someone they
knew or a relative might have been involved; everyone reached
for their phone and the system broke down. We also had a short
failure in the police communication system with families phoning
to get information—just the sheer volume of it. We are waiting
to hear from the mobile phone companies what we can do about this
but I am not certain there is going to be an easy, and certainly
there will not be cheap, response. There was also a delay in establishing
the family unit. Tessa Jowell, who was put in charge of this area
by the Prime Minister, has asked that my office take on board
the rapid opening of the family unit in the event of any further
attack and we would aim to have it established on the day of the
attack, not the second day. We are starting discussing with London
boroughs a range of locations in London we can identify now. With
the furniture and other equipment that is put into storage, the
objective will be that the moment we hear of an attack and we
know the location, take it out of storage and get the service
up and running. I think there are also problems about the distance
of Hendon from the centre of London, which we are looking at.
There is also, clearly, a real difficulty in getting across to
people, when you are dealing with a crime scene like this, the
length of time it will take to be able to establish the identification
of people who have been lost in an explosion, particularly the
destruction when an explosion is forced back in on itself in a
confined space. I think, perhaps, had we anticipated it, we needed
to tell people that it might be a considerable period of time
before we can identify positively, if ever, the person you have
lost.
Q76 Gwyn Prosser: In Sir
Ian's evidence you might have heard him make some remarks about
some of the difficulties of radio communication—Metropolitan
Police radios versus the British Transport Police. In evidence
we have received from the RMT Union they talk about deficiencies
in the radios which the drivers keep and the communications between
them and central control. They also talk about what they call
the "HOT" procedure, the procedure for assessing the
danger of unidentified or unattended baggage. Have you got any
comments on those matters?
Mr Livingstone: On the question
of the communications on the Underground, there are oddities and
there are parts of the system (and you understand I do not wish
to identify them) where contact can be lost for short periods
intermittently, and fortunately they pass through those points
very rapidly. We have a problem when the system closes and a train
is in those places. I inherited what I would call a seriously
underperforming PFI that had been let, I think, by a previous
government (the length of time these things take) to put in a
new radio communication system on the Underground. It was so defective,
Bob Kiley and myself looked to see whether there was any way we
could void the contract and move on but the penalty clauses were
so enormous this was not possible. So we have been working to
try and make it more effective, but it will still be a couple
of years, at the earliest, before we have the sort of system that
we want to see. This lack of total reliability of systems underground,
I think, is a real defect but they date back mainly to decisions
in the early 1990s and three very complex PFIs, and they are bad.
On the question of packages, I met the leadership of the three
rail unions in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, and clearly
they are concerned and they are nervous, and we did what we could
to reassure them. I think we now have reached a point where they
are confident that the procedures that we have in place and operate—it
is a matter of common sense. Clearly, we do not want to stop the
entire system every time somebody leaves their bag of sandwiches
on the train, and we rely on the good sense and experience of
our staff on the Underground initially to make an assessment and
make certain they call the police when there is any serious doubt.
We are reliant on the good sense of our staff, and I have to say
it works very well. In the immediate aftermath, a week/ten days
afterwards, we were basically stopping virtually everything. I
think we have now settled back into a more measured and accurate
assessment of risk.
Q77 Gwyn Prosser: Can
I ask, Sir Iqbal, whether you are satisfied with the response
from the Metropolitan Police in terms of their counter-terrorism
or their investigations, and importantly their liaison with local
communities?
Sir Iqbal Sacranie: I think there
are two points that have come up. On the issue of the liaison,
historically the traditional relationship between the police and
the Muslim community has not been good, for various discriminatory
policing matters that have taken place. But that work has improved
considerably over a period of time. This is where organisations
like the Muslim Council of Britain and others have had regular
meetings with the police, the Police Commissioner and other senior
members, and identified areas where there was a lack of confidence
in the community as far as the local police were concerned. So
prior to 7/7 there was quite a bit of work that had taken place
on the ground, and they were asked to see a situation so that
when this tragic event took place on 7/7 the way the police actually
handled the whole issue was remarkable. The man at the SO3, Paddick,
faced the questions when he was asked whether it had anything
to do with Islam or the Muslim community. He came out very openly
and very clearly that it appeared that one should not construe
that this is something to do with the teachings of Islam or the
relationship to the Muslim community. That very powerful message,
I think, helped immensely as to how the situation went along.
There is also a problem in terms of the relationship generally
with the Metropolitan Police, which has been moving in a very
positive way, with that compared with the work of the special
unit, the SO3 or the anti-terrorist squad that when they move
in, when they carry out the measures about anti-terror activities,
there is a lack of co-ordination between the Metropolitan Police
and the police on the ground, with the SO3 because they are not
really aware of what work had been done in the community by the
police officers in building relationships with the local mosques,
and local community organisations in terms of ensuring that how
they approach the people, the methods they carry out, the language
that is used and the measures carried out. This at times gives
a very negative signal across the community, as though this is
the role of the police. Generally, the police should not be classified
in terms of the activities of the SO3 or the special squad, which
need to be looked at much more deeply, so there is a better understanding
of how they function. Of course, one also understands that the
security of the nation can never be compromised but there are
clearly ways to go about it so that, at the end of the day, the
results that you want to achieve are much more positive and effective.
Q78 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Livingstone,
do you want to add to that?
Mr Livingstone: I agree. If I
can put it in perspective, 20 years ago, I think, many of London's
ethnic minority and faith communities saw the police as part of
the problem in London. Those days are gone. That was brought home
to me shortly before the first Mayoral election in the bombing
campaign of David Copeland, and I went to Brick Lane and Brixton,
where the police were meeting with ethnic minority community leaderships,
and found an absolutely transformed situation: the ethnic minorities
saw the police as their first line of defence, and they were co-operating.
There has been, over a generation, a transformation. We could
not have made the progress we did in identifying and then, subsequently,
catching the second wave of attempted terrorists without the active
support of the Muslim community, even down to the difficult decision
one father had to take to tell the police that it was his son
that they were seeking.
Q79 Gwyn Prosser: Looking
to the future, 10 years hence, do you see an ever-increasing level
of security and regular searches and random searches on the Underground
system? If not, what is the answer?
Mr Livingstone: Given we had 30
years of the IRA campaign, we have in place a scale of infrastructure
to cope with terrorism that many other cities in the world are
now rushing to install. Likewise, when people say "Look at
what Athens spent on security", and make assumptions that
we will have to spend much more, Athens was putting in place the
technology we put in place to cope with the IRA campaign. Over
the next five years it is my intention we should double the number
of closed-circuit television cameras on the Underground and constantly
upgrade the technologies so that the images get better and better.
We have now got closed-circuit television on 95% of our buses
and that will be 100%, bottom deck and top deck, by the end of
the year. Increasingly, the cameras that we have in place for
things like congestion charging and so on are a vital resource
at key times in all these matters. I do not anticipate a dramatically
changed way of life for Londoners; most Londoners make realistic
assessments about risk. We saw the comment of Sir John Stevens
in his autobiography at the weekend that there had been eight
attempts to take lives in London. I am in no position to quarrel
with that. Over four years we have been incredibly good at actually
stopping people getting through and we eventually knew we would
fail. I suspect we will catch many others before we fail again,
but I and Sir John were both criticised about 18 months ago for
warning that it was a question of "when" and not "if".
The technologies we have put in place have helped us to minimise
the loss of life and we will continue to beef it up. There is
not at the moment any technology that we could install at tube
stations. People think in terms of what they go through at the
airport but for every person that goes through Heathrow Airport
today 15 will go through the Underground system, and you just
have to think of many of the tube stations you know, there is
not physically the space to have that sort of equipment for monitoring
baggage and so on; there would be huge tailbacks and it would
mean a dramatic change in the length of time people take on journeys.
We are alert and watching to see if anyone can develop the sort
of sniffer technology that you might walk under, but that is not
there in a way that would be useful for the Underground, bearing
in mind we have quite often fairly extensive air movements through
these places.
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