Select Committee on Transport Minutes of Evidence


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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