Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-160)
CHIEF CONSTABLE
IAN JOHNSTON
CBE QM BSC (HONS),
MR LEN
PORTER, MR
COLIN FOXALL
AND MS
CHRISTINE KNIGHTS
19 APRIL 2006
Q140 Mr Martlew: And you would put
it in the franchise?
Chief Constable Johnston: I would
see an easy route through the franchise.
Mr Foxall: The satisfaction levels
from passengers in surveys we do show a steady improvement in
this and although it is not great, you have got 60% levels of
satisfaction in general with personal safety. I agree with the
Chief Constable, I think it is extremely variable and one of the
things I would like to do later on is have a look at the variability
in a much more careful way but it is interesting that the general
perceptions are not as bad as you would like to think.
Q141 Chairman: I cut Mr Porter off
before so I must give him another chance.
Mr Porter: I am glad that I have
been given the opportunity to come back in because that is exactly
the point I wanted to make. We have done some general research
on perception and the issue of societal concern. Without being
too generalistic, it is largely associated with media hype and
there is no real concrete reason for societal concern with personal
security on the railway, and an awful lot of this is driven again
by the media. That does not matter to the public, the public have
a perception of a problem and that is what we must deal with by
communicating in the right way.
Q142 Mr Martlew: Are you saying that
the media are frightening people?
Mr Porter: Yes.
Chairman: I think any minute now Chief
Constable, you are going to find yourself censoring the newspapers,
that would be a good rally.
Clive Efford: Can I clarify, I may have
missed your answer earlier on, if I did I apologise. Mr Foxall
or Ms Knights, do you agree that all stations should be manned
at all times when trains are running?
Chairman: Staffed, I think.
Q143 Mr Martlew: That is not like
you, Chairman.
Mr Foxall: I do not think we have
answered that yet. I think the answer to that is passengers like
to see people around, it would be a good thing. We have campaigned
for ticket offices to be manned in London. We generally oppose
reductions of manning on trains and things of that kind.
Q144 Clive Efford: I am still not
clear, is the answer yes or no?
Mr Foxall: The answer, of course,
is yes but the reality is that the train companies find that difficult
to respond to.
Q145 Clive Efford: Who do you speak
for, the train companies?
Mr Foxall: I do not speak for
train companies, and you know that well, I speak for passengers
and I have said that very clearly. Passengers would prefer to
see staff and it would be desirable to have staff but what we
have to respect and understand is there are some stations which
have such low footfall, it would be difficult to put staff there,
that is a fact.
Q146 Clive Efford: Is it not a fact
that footfall will get even lower if you do not have staff?
Mr Foxall: Indeed, and that is
a major consideration and I think it needs to be taken into account
when the franchise is let. Adequate staffing on stations is something
we want to see.
Q147 Clive Efford: Ms Knights, would
you like to add anything?
Ms Knights: Yes, I would like
to add something that has not cropped up already. Mr Martlew asked
is it a success story or not and I think there are examples of
good practice but I think what is not happening is that the measures
being taken have not been evaluated against the impact on passengers'
of perceptions. This is a good case in point. There may be a package
of measures which are the solutions for smaller stations where
there cannot be staff. We do not yet have sufficient evaluation
of measures in place.
Q148 Clive Efford: Is there any evidence
or any research which anyone has done that can demonstrate having
staff at a station increases people's confidence and therefore
increases use of the transport network?
Chief Constable Johnston: The
evidence I would point to is that at a number of the major stations
over the last year in Central London we have been able to introduce
PCSOs, for example, at Victoria and crime at Victoria over the
last year has gone down by—
Q149 Chairman: What are PCSOs, Chief
Constable?
Chief Constable Johnston: Police
community support officers. They are part of the extended police
family and they were introduced, for example, at Victoria and
crime has gone down there by about 11%. It dropped initially by
about 25 or 26%, it is down for the year by about 11%. I think
one of the significant factors of that is there is a significant
number of additional yellow jackets visibly present around the
station which has made a difference to actual crime levels. Certainly
the feedback that we have—I guess it is not a proper evaluation—is
that it is very welcome.
Mr Porter: If I can comment. I
am fairly sure in saying that we have done some research on this
and there is a correlation between increasing numbers of people
and reducing crime.
Q150 Clive Efford: Can I clarify
something on CCTV. Mr Johnston, you suggested that it is important
that CCTV systems are standardised across the country and that
minimum standards should be set for the quality of images. Do
such common standards exist at all yet and why is standardisation
so important?
Chief Constable Johnston: A step
has been made, as I think you have heard from George Muir. There
is an agreement between us, the train operators and ATOC, in moving
forward to stick to a common format for the recording of the new
visual images. This is very important to us because at the moment
to download images we require different equipment for different
sets of digital imaging and this is very expensive and very inefficient
and can be very, very slow indeed. I think the standards are very,
very important in that sense. They are also important in terms
of the quality of the pictures although I can say most of the
things on the market today is infinitely better than things that
were there five years ago because poor images do not do the job
in court, so the standard for images is very important as well.
Q151 Clive Efford: How does that
sit with co-ordinating station systems with local community systems?
Chief Constable Johnston: I think
it is part of the bigger picture that the Home Office working
party has got to wrestle with because this is a problem that has
got tentacles everywhere and is, I think, probably beyond the
world. The way into it for me is through a data warehousing approach
which is the way they resolve incompatibility of computers, having
some piece of machinery there into which you can dump data which
then comes out in a format which is for common usage. I would
see that sort of approach as being the interim measure.
Q152 Clive Efford: Is CCTV more about
being a deterrent rather than detection and actual convictions?
Chief Constable Johnston: 20%
of all the people we caught for robbery in London south last year
was through CCTV. The bombers were identified primarily through
CCTV. It is a fantastic device in terms of detection and I think
it has got massive value to the police service in terms of detection
as well as in reassurance terms to the public.
Q153 Clive Efford: Southwest Trains
pays for TravelSafe officers who are deployed by your force. In
your view, how effective are these officers compared with fully
trained police officers or community support officers?
Chief Constable Johnston: They
are less physically able. They have fewer powers but what they
do offer is a very friendly and very reassuring presence. I think
they were a fantastic initiative by Southwest Trains. They were
the first train company to pick up on this and I think they were
the precursor to community support officers. I think they are
still a very worthwhile part of the extended police family but
they do not have powers of arrest and they do not have a means
to enforce regulations other than some of the byelaws for the
railways which railway employees can enforce.
Q154 Clive Efford: Is there any danger
of confusion in the eyes of the public with so many different
enforcement officers?
Chief Constable Johnston: I have
not experienced that. To use an anecdotal approach, my wife does
not know the difference between any of them. She finds them all
reassuring and I think that is fundamentally the point, do you
find them reassuring or not.
Q155 Chairman: If she was arrested
by one of them when he had not got the legal right, she might
take a mild interest.
Chief Constable Johnston: She
has had some good advice from me about that and it probably would
be to plead guilty. I take the point. They have badges which are
very visible which says exactly what they are. Police officers
have very visible police badges on, the police community support
officers have very visible badges on. What they are is easy to
see, what that means to people is a very fair point and I do think
there is some risk of confusion but I am then back to the point
of fundamentally do they reassure and help and support. I think
they do. The risk of confusion is worth the asset that we have
got.
Q156 Clive Efford: You recently carried
out Operation Shield which was detecting people carrying knives.
How successful do you think that is? Will you use it in the future
and can it be adapted to identify other things that people may
be carrying?
Chief Constable Johnston: I think
it is a fantastic operation. We had lots of really good feedback
from members of the public about it. We have had a large number
of arrests, in fact the numbers you have got are about doubled
now to what we reported in the paper to you when the paper was
prepared a few weeks back. They are very, very effective indeed.
We had people with carving knives up their sleeves stopped by
our officers using these machines. More importantly, we watch
people who come towards them and then decide they do not want
to go near them and that raises our suspicions to the point where
we conduct an investigation and frequently find either they are
wanted or they have some weapon or some other paraphernalia on
them which they should not have. It is a very effective tool.
We put out a couple of these arches to start with in each of our
areas up and down the country. They are going to be used in Scotland
as part of the anti-knives campaign they are running up there.
It will be part of the national knives amnesty activity by Government
later this year.
Q157 Clive Efford: Are the train
operating companies investing in this technology?
Chief Constable Johnston: We have
done that through the budget provided to us by the authorities,
that is one of the initiatives we have been able to take on the
back of the money that we have got from them. We have had support
from the operators because it is on their property that we have
to place these arches and I think that they have proven themselves
to be a really worthwhile asset and if the extension around the
country is equally successful we want to do more of it.
Q158 Mr Leech: Very briefly going
back to the issue of all the different kinds of security, is there
a danger that without a co-ordinated approach we could have a
situation where you have got CSOs, TravelSafe officers, police
officers, everybody on one station and nobody somewhere else.
How does the co-ordination work?
Chief Constable Johnston: We operate
according to the national intelligence model where we have tasking
arrangements where we invite the industry along, they come along
to the meeting, they say, "These are the resources that we
have got available", we say "These are the resources
that we have got available". We look at the problems and
we jointly deploy. That is something that has started fairly recently.
There is a mixed level of take up across the industry at the moment
but it is building and it is for us to market that with industry
to avoid that sort of overlapping deployment, Southern in the
shape of Keith Ludeman, who we heard from earlier, they have a
team of security guards who work jointly alongside us. They are
part of that tasking arrangement. We have got pretty good joined-up
arrangements with these high level supports, like the PCSOs, the
specials that we have, the accredited officers that we have on
the rail industry and the TravelSafe people.
Q159 Mr Leech: Have there been any
examples where the co-ordination has failed and, if so, do you,
as the transport police, try and take control of the situation?
Chief Constable Johnston: We have
been able to show a bit of leadership on this with the support
of the rail industry. I have never seen it fail in any sense because
there is more than enough for all of us to do out there anyway.
There are examples where we could have targeted resources more
closely in one spot and perhaps have been more effective by joint
activity but that is part of the learning process of working together.
Q160 Chairman: Before you go Mr Johnston,
tell us about the rail personal security group? Is it being effective?
Are you managing to deal with the whole question of assaults against
railway staff?
Chief Constable Johnston: We have
put a lot of effort into dealing with assaults on railway staff,
we think they are entitled to proper protection. They are in a
very difficult position sometimes and if we want them to look
after the public, we have got to look after them. We were the
first force in the country to use DNA to detect offences of spitting
against railway staff. We have improved the number of clear-ups,
they have increased over the last three years by something like
85%. A lot of initiatives that we have taken have made a big difference
to the number of people who we have been able to detect. The new
group will help to get support from other partners in tackling
this very important point.
Chairman: On that note I suspend the
Committee and I am very grateful to the witnesses. Thank you very
much indeed.
The Committee suspended from 4.25pm to
4.35pm for a division in the House.
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