Examination of Witness (Questions 80-99)
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
ALAN BROWN
26 APRIL 2006
Q80 Mr Martlew: Why is that?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
The boundaries of the British Transport Police are like veins
that run through our own area. In relation to those forces that
are the other side of those boundaries, that is where they stay,
whereas the British Transport Police is within the London area.
It serves and deals with the communities of London. Hertfordshire,
Essex, Kent, the Thames Valley, Surrey do not.
Q81 Mr Martlew: I am bemused by the
way that you can come forward to the select committee but, more
importantly, come forward to Parliament, with a plan to break
up the British Transport Police and yet you are saying, "We
have not given any thought to what happens to the rest. We do
not really care what happens to the rest".
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
It is not true. We do care.
Q82 Mr Martlew: I am sorry: that
was my interpretation of what you have said today.
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
Our care is about providing the best policing response to the
people of London. I do acknowledge that that would create difficulties
for policing arrangements outside of London. I am not sufficiently
knowledgeable about the British Transport Police to know whether
that would enable them to be able to continue as a separate force
or whether there would be compelling grounds to amalgamate and
have territorial policing and responsibility for policing the
railways where the railways touch their territory, but I certainly
do believe that it is the right way of providing the best policing
response to London.
Q83 Mr Martlew: But do you accept
that that might be a problem for government and for the rest of
the country?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
Indeed, and I have no doubt that it will be one of those areas
that you will have consideration of in any recommendations that
you may make.
Q84 Mr Martlew: Looking at what you
have said, the only evidence that you have brought forward today
is that there were three murders under the auspices of the British
Transport Police and they had to call the Met in to solve one
of them. Is that correct?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
That is not the only evidence that I bring forward today. What
I bring forward today is the evidence that has been provided by
the HMIC. What I bring forward today is the evidence and the undoubted
demand for the people of London to have one service to deal with
policing for the area of London.
Q85 Mr Martlew: We have just had
that evidence.
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I have just given it to you.
Q86 Mr Martlew: No: where is the
evidence that that is what the people of London want?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
Where does the evidence for that come from? That comes from polls,
that comes from reports.
Q87 Chairman: Could I point out to
you that when we are talking about evidence in polls, Members
of Parliament do not always have this blind faith in opinion polls
that you seem to have. In February a MORI poll said 53% of Londoners
thought Sir Ian Blair should resign, over half of Londoners are
not confident that the Metropolitan Police could investigate such
crimes as vehicle theft, burglary, mugging or vandalism, and on
anti-social behaviour 65% of them thought you were not going to.
I think there is a difference between evidence and opinion polls
but perhaps that is because I have been here quite a long time.
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I have said what I have said. It is the position of the Metropolitan
Police. Whether you regard that as being evidence or whether you
do not, it is there as the position of the Metropolitan Police.
It is based on a professional understanding of what policing in
London actually needs to enable it to move forward.
Q88 Mrs Ellman: The Metropolitan
Police presumably feel sufficiently confident in their abilities
to take on new responsibilities. Why do you feel that, with all
the problems that you are currently facing and without any evidence
that you have given us that the people of London are dissatisfied
with the current service of British Transport Police in London?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
In terms of are we confident that we could take on the responsibilities
that are currently held by the British Transport Police, I think
that we would be heavily reliant upon the expertise that they
already have within their membership to be able to provide that.
What I am saying is that by bringing the two forces together there
would be a greater capability than currently exists, and that
is a significant issue, particularly when you look at the evidence
of the HMIC and the concerns they raise. I am saying that by bringing
the two forces together, by putting them under a single command
structure, you would be able to release additional resources and
you would be able to increase the capability to respond to serious
incidents in a way that had greater confidence, in a way that
had greater timeliness. That is a significant issue that I think
the committee should have cognisance of when considering these
issues.
Q89 Mr Goodwill: Mr Brown, you have
talked a lot about one force, but we were told in the previous
evidence session that much of the technical expertise needed to
operate on the transport network and on the signalling system
and knowledge of the electrification, et cetera, would
mean that the merger would only ever be a merger of command and
budgets and that on the ground there would be limited opportunities
to have this interoperability you which seem to be referring to.
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
In what you say there is some significant force. We would be reliant
upon the expertise until such time as we were in a position to
be able to train some of our own people in relation to that expertise.
Q90 Mr Goodwill: Would that not be
a waste of resources, duplicating training so that you had a larger
number of officers who could go on the network or do other policing
work?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I also have no doubt that if you asked the Chief Constable of
the British Transport Police whether or not he could do with additional
resources to police some of those more remote Underground stations
and overland stations, he would say, "Absolutely". What
we are talking about here is greater connectivity, greater capability.
If one of the things that needed to be done to achieve that was
a spreading of the ability and a greater understanding of the
skills necessary to work on the railway line, then yes, we would
be in a position to do that. We certainly are not in a position
to do that at the moment.
Q91 Mr Leech: I wondered whether
you had had any discussions with the British Transport Police
about whether or not there were available other alternatives to
having a single force in London to deal with these perceived problems.
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
No. We were specifically asked by the Department for Transport
to deal through the Department for Transport.
Q92 Mr Leech: But would you say that
potentially there could be other ways of dealing with the perceived
problems of not being joined up?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
The only other way of dealing with it would be through greater
collaboration and federation of resources, and I refer back to
the evidence that is acknowledged by the Association of Chief
Police Officers, by ourselves and by the Home Secretary that collaboration
has significant inability to deliver what an amalgamated response
can deliver.
Q93 Mr Leech: What differences would
there be?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I think the differences would be those that exist at the moment
and that would exist unless you had an ability to put in a lot
of money. I know that Ian said we have got the same IT system,
particularly around intelligence. It may be provided by the same
manufacturer but it has no ability whatsoever to speak to our
system, it has no ability whatsoever to exchange information.
The command and control system is different. The equipment that
is issued is different. What I am saying is that by having one
force you get greater flexibility in terms of your deployments,
you increase the knowledge that is available to you to improve
your deployments and you are able to take into account the more
local needs, the more localised problems when considering where
you might wish to put your resources, and indeed what you would
be asking them to do when they were there, and what information
you would be asking them to do it with.
Q94 Mr Leech: And none of these issues
can be dealt with through better collaboration in your opinion?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I would say that better collaboration is the second option. Our
primary option, our first option, would be an amalgamation.
Q95 Chairman: Supposing the Government
decided to privatise British Transport Police. Would you support
that?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
We would still seek to have an arrangement that saw the Metropolitan
Police have that responsibility for policing the networks within
London.
Q96 Chairman: But supposing this
was handed to a private security firm rather than a police force.
Would that fit in with your plans?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
No, it would not.
Q97 Chairman: It would not. You do
not support privatisation in any way then?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I think policing is there for the public good. I think that privatisation
of policing leads to all sorts of difficulties, it leads to a
different set of objectives. The primary focus becomes the creation
of benefit for stakeholders. You become stakeholder driven as
opposed to being strategy driven, the strategy being there to
achieve the objectives, which must be, both for British Transport
Police and indeed London, providing the best policing services
to the people of London.
Q98 Chairman: The Office of Rail
Regulation thinks that the industry could take over responsibilities
of the British Transport Police such as patrolling stations. Do
you support that idea?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
I think you would be reinforcing some of the difficulties that
currently exist in terms of the exchange of information and the
connectivity between what happens outside the station boundaries,
and it would suggest that stations were islands within London
that had no connectivity or impact in terms of the greater and
wider communities of London.
Q99 Chairman: Should Transport for
London be given responsibility for the allocation of all transport
policing budgets in London, including that bit of the British
Transport Police which is involved within the London boundary?
Assistant Commissioner Brown:
Provided there were some caveats in terms of how they were able
to spend that money, and provided that they had to provide policing
resources which took account of connectivity through to the rest
of London, I would say yes.
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