Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING
MP, MS NIKI
TOMPKINSON, AND
MR JOHN
GRUBB
2 NOVEMBER 2005
Q1 Chairman: I am delighted
to see you this afternoon, Secretary of State. Can I just make
a short statement. We are very grateful to you and your officials
for coming to see us today on the important subject of transport
security. I am going to ask you to introduce your colleagues in
a minute, but I just want to say that transport security is a
large and important subject, larger than we could do justice to
in a single session. For that reason, the Committee will wish
to conduct a full inquiry into transport security in the coming
period. The single purpose of today's session will be to understand
the Department's security function better and to determine what
added value it can provide for keeping the travelling public safe,
but I want to make it very clear to everyone taking part that
the House sub judice rule prevents discussion in Parliament
of specific cases which are currently before the courts. The aim
of the rule is to safeguard the right to a fair trial and fair
consideration of events at an inquest. Our questioning will take
full account of the rule and it is of great importance that we
have it very clearly in mind. Finally, I hardly need to remind
you, Secretary of State, that the job of this Committee is to
scrutinise the work of your Department, something which we try
to do vigorously, but fairly, and I would like to place on record
that we do understand the constraints on you and your officials
in open session when discussing this subject. Equally, I hope
you will feel able to provide the fullest possible picture of
the work of Transec today. Secretary of State, perhaps you have
got something to say to us before we begin.
Mr Darling: I do,
Mrs Dunwoody, with your permission, but perhaps before I do that
I could introduce my colleagues. Niki Tompkinson is the Director
of Transec, the Department's transport security division, and
John Grubb is one of her deputies. After I have made a few introductory
remarks, I think it might be helpful if Niki were to outline her
perspective to indicate the areas she proposes to cover, although
of course we are happy to answer any questions within the provisos
you yourself have established. I wonder, Mrs Dunwoody, before
we get to that, if I could deal with one preliminary matter in
relation to security because I think it is relevant to your consideration
overall, and that is in relation to some tests and trials that
we want to carry out on our mainline railways and on the Underground.
You may recall that on 7 July and in the days afterwards I made
the important point that you cannot run a closed system, as we
do in the airports, on the railway system. In other words, you
cannot have a sealed system where you are reasonably satisfied
that everybody going into the system has been searched, either
their bags or themselves; it just is not possible. If you take
the London Underground alone, it carries something like three
million people a day and, again by way of comparison, Heathrow,
as the Committee will know, is the busiest airport in the world
and Waterloo Station carries four times as many passengers every
day as Heathrow. I think if you just keep that in mind, people
will accept that it is not practical to run a sealed system in
any event with the mainline railway stretching over thousands
of miles; it is not possible to seal every bit of it. That said,
there is new technology becoming available all the time. The Department
wants to make sure that, as and when new technology is developed,
we evaluate it and see whether or not it would help us in reducing
some of the risks that we know we have to encounter. To that end,
I need to tell the Committee and, through you, inform Parliament
that over the next few months we will be trialling various security
equipment on different parts of the network. I am sorry that on
Sunday somebody chose to leak part of it to a Sunday newspaper
which has given rise to all sorts of wild speculation which is
why I have said what I have said about the impossibility of having
a sealed railway system. I am afraid that is what happens when
you have to take a number of people in the industry with you before
you make any announcement; somebody will go to the business pages
of a newspaper and you just have to live with that. Perhaps I
may just explain briefly what we are proposing to do. We need
to test equipment and I can confirm that the first place we will
be testing is in Paddington Station on the Heathrow Express. We
will be carrying out further tests of different types of equipment
at mainline stations and some tube stations.
Q2 Chairman: All mainline
stations?
Mr Darling: Not all, no. What
is most important is that we are not in a position to be introducing
equipment across the network as we have in airports. This is testing
individual equipment, some of it new to the market and some of
it we have used in the past in aviation security. What we want
to do is to see how it might work in a bus station, how it might
work in a tube station, and bear in mind that these tube stations,
for the most part, were built in the 19th Century, long before
any of this problem ever arose, and obviously the environment
in which some equipment works in an airport is completely different
from the sort of environment that might work in a tube station
in central London. Therefore, what we are doing is simply testing
different bits of equipment that will come on to the market, some
of which has been developed and some of which is being developed,
but what I want to emphasise again is, firstly, you cannot run
airport-style security on the railways, tube or overground, and,
secondly, the tests are alongside other security measures that
we are taking, some of which are obvious, some of which are not
so obvious, which we do not tend to discuss for perfectly obvious
reasons. This is a commonsense approach. I think we would be open
to criticism if new equipment came along and we did not actually
trial it and ask ourselves, "Would it work? Could it help?"
Immediately after the aftermath of the events of 7 July, there
was one particular company appearing to suggest that they had
kit which was ready to go if only the Department for Transport
would buy it. That is not so. Equipment that can screen three
million people a day without unduly inconveniencing them just
does not exist at the present time here or anywhere else in the
world. Therefore, what we are doing is simply testing this equipment.
The reason I wanted to tell the House was that from time to time
it will see this equipment, from time to time people will be asked
to take part in these trials, to be screened and so on, and it
is right that we should tell Parliament we are doing it. I will
arrange for a fuller statement to be laid before the House tomorrow,
but I thought it might be useful for the Committee to know this.
Q3 Chairman: Can I just
ask you very briefly, you said the Heathrow Express, but is that
both ends of the Heathrow Express, therefore, at Heathrow and
at Paddington?
Mr Darling: No, initially it will
be at Paddington Station.
Q4 Chairman: Anywhere
else?
Mr Darling: This equipment will
be at Paddington, but over the next few months, and I do not have
start dates, we will be trialling equipment at other locations
which we are still definitely to decide on. I should just emphasise
again that this is not in place of what is there already. Some
things will work, some things will not work, but if we do not
test it, then we will never know. This whole business of how you
reduce risk and have a grown-up discussion about these things,
some things are possible to operate, some things are not, and
I just want to test them over the next few months.
Q5 Chairman: Do we have
any indication of how long the trials will last?
Mr Darling: We think probably
about six months.
Q6 Chairman: Who have
you consulted about this? Have you had talks with the Commissioner
of Police?
Mr Darling: Yes.
Q7 Chairman: Also the
Mayor of London?
Mr Darling: Absolutely, yes, and
the Mayor, for his interest, is absolutely happy about this. He,
like the rest of us, is determined that we should do everything
that is reasonable, but the Mayor has also made the point that
you cannot operate a completely sealed system as you do in the
aviation field.
Q8 Chairman: Could you
tell us who is going to evaluate the results?
Mr Darling: The Department will
and from time to time obviously we will discuss with the police,
we will discuss with London Underground, we will discuss with
Network Rail, with the train-operating companies and various other
agencies as well, but we want a thorough evaluation. The other
thing of course we are discussing, and we continue to discuss,
with the people who are actually developing this technology when
new technology comes along is whether or not it is practical.
Q9 Chairman: I take it
from what you have said that it would be some mix of existing
technology and some experimental?
Mr Darling: Yes. I should also
say that we will not always make an announcement before we do
it because that would be self-defeating.
Q10 Chairman: Yes, but
it just would be helpful for the Committee to know, and we assume
there will be some indication, that if they are major stations
Parliament will at least be given an indication of which stations
will be involved.
Mr Darling: I can confirm that
the first one will be Paddington and then as and when we have
decided on other stations. What I cannot promise the House is
that we will make an announcement in respect of every piece of
equipment because there remain some things we want to test, but
we do not particularly want to broadcast that we have that capability.
Q11 Chairman: Secretary
of State, you have made the point very correctly, and we are now
talking millions of people, not 10, that it is important to most
major stations that passengers are not impeded.
Mr Darling: This is always the
balance between making sure that people can go about their lawful
business, people can travel, and reducing risk. At its extreme,
the safest form of transport is one that is completely shut down
and nobody can travel on it because not a lot can go wrong then.
Q12 Chairman: We have
already tried that system!
Mr Darling: We have tried that
from time to time and not always because of this particular threat.
I think people would expect us to do things which are reasonable.
People understand the risks under which we live, but, as I say,
there will be things that we need to test and we will not be making
a public announcement because we would be ill-advised to do so,
but other stuff is perfectly obvious.
Q13 Mr Leech: You have
half-answered my question already. Are you able to tell us what
sort or any of the sort of technology that is going to be used?
Mr Darling: Yes. Some of the stuff
that we will be testing is some of the stuff that we use at airports.
For example, people will be familiar with the swab-testing we
do of people's bags to see whether explosives have been used.
Again it is useful to test that in an environment like a station
where the air is of a different quality, shall we say, than it
is in a sealed area. We will also want to look at screening equipment,
what is practical and what is not practical. There is other equipment
coming along that we will want to look at as well and this should
very much be seen as sensible planning for the future.
Q14 Mr Leech: Is some
of this technology stuff that people will not have seen at airports
and elsewhere?
Mr Darling: Well, it will be from
time to time. I am grateful for that, but could I now turn to
the subject of your inquiry and, before I ask Niki Tompkinson
to say a few words, may I make some preliminary comments. Transec
is a directorate of the Department for Transport. It is headed
up by Niki Tompkinson who reports directly to me, although she
is very much part of the Department for Transport. It is not an
agency or anything like that, but it is very much a part of the
Department and works with other officials there. It also works
very closely with other Whitehall departments, with other agencies
and of course with the various transport industries. Originally
when it was set up, it was set up with very much aviation as the
centre of its operations, but over time, for obvious reasons,
it has expanded into ports and into railways, though the approach
it adopts in relation to what it does will vary from time to time.
I think it is important to emphasise that it is not a policeman;
it is basically there to advise, to inspect, to make sure the
standards are constantly reviewed and put in place and that they
are actually operated. It can only work with the full co-operation
of other agencies and other industries, which it does quite well.
You will have questions, which we will answer, on the budget and
the number of staff, but what I would say to you, Mrs Dunwoody,
which may be of help to your Committee, is that when I became
Secretary of State just over three years ago, it was an important
part of the Department, but it did not take up over-much time.
In the last few years it has become an increasingly important
part of the Department and takes up an increasing amount of my
time. I think it would probably be appropriate at this stage,
if it is okay with you, to ask Niki Tompkinson perhaps to give
an overview of what she does and then we can take it from there.
Q15 Chairman: Yes, exactly
right, Ms Tompkinson, would you do that for us please.
Ms Tompkinson: I will try to keep
my opening remarks brief because I know you have read the memorandum
that we sent along ahead. I thought perhaps I could make just
four points to begin with which outline the priorities that Transec
has been working to since 9/11, which was the watershed, I think,
for those of us who work on transport security. There are four
things we have been focusing on. The first is to maintain and
to develop the security programmes that were already in place
at that time and we have continued to build on those. I think
it is fair to say that we started from a position of strength
on 9/11; we already had very well-developed and regulated programmes,
particularly for aviation, as the Secretary of State has remarked,
and we also had some security in place for passenger ships, particularly
the cruise ships, and we were already giving advice and guidance
to the rail and Underground networks, so those programmes were
there and we have been able to build on them. Domestic aviation,
which was our focus then and continues to be a prime focus for
us now, was really a model for other people and that has been
one of our strengths. We continue to put an effort into maintaining
that and other programmes and adapting them to new circumstances,
so one of the pieces of work we have to do on a regular basis
is to continue to review what the threats are, what we know about
them and whether our current programmes are fit for purpose, and
that takes quite a lot of our time. After 9/11, there was not
really a great leap forward in terms of our domestic aviation
programme, but a stronger focus certainly on in-flight security
was the main lesson that came out of that. I would say at that
time and now, standards of compliance were good. We already had
an inspection regime in place that indicated that and, since then,
we have had a number of outside audits and we have had Sir John
Wheeler's review in September 2002 which endorsed our programme
on aviation. On the international side, this is an area where
we have actually increased more than on the domestic focus. Increasingly,
we have felt that we needed to give more advice and guidance to
airlines and to the shipping industry in their overseas operations,
and we have now quite an extensive programme in place with a number
of individuals posted overseas to advise on transport security
in the regions where they are based. We have also put more resource
into working with international bodies, such as the International
Civil Aviation Organisation, and with the European Commission
to raise standards worldwide, so all of this is part of doing
what we do, our professional work, and making sure that we keep
the standards high. That is the first point. The second point
is we have put a lot more focus on to new programmes, which has
been another key priority since 9/11, the work on the maritime
programme, for example, the work that was promoted by the UN,
the International Maritime Organisation and by the European Commission
to extend the regime, which we already had in place, to cargo
and other ships. There is also a new dangerous goods regime which
has come in in the last year or so. Since Madrid, the bombings
in Madrid, and the events this year in July here, there of course
has been an increasing focus on our rail and Underground systems,
the soft targets that we have there, and in that respect we have
now formalised the informal regime we already had in place and
those industries are now subject to formal regulation. We have
kept this under constant review since Madrid and a further review
after July. The third point I just wanted to make briefly is that
a key focus for me and my team has been to build Transec in order
to build all this work; it could not have been done without that.
We inherited a strong team, I think, just after 9/11, people who
knew their business very well, and we wanted to build on that,
but we have increased from a staff of 81 to 200 now to do that
work. Finally, again a point that I think the Secretary of State
has also made, the key focus for us is to strengthen our links
to other agencies. We do not work in isolation, we never have
done and we certainly do not do now. We cannot ring-fence just
our activities as being the only way to deliver transport security,
so we have been building increasingly close links and synergy
with others, particularly the border agencies, the police and
customs, as well as of course our very good relationship with
the industry itself. That really is just to set out my stall,
if you like, the areas that I have been focusing on, and I am
happy to take questions on any of that.
Q16 Chairman: You have
mentioned railways and the Underground, both of which of course
are "soft targets". One could say that with the terrorist
attacks on 7 and 21 July, we got it wrong and we have actually
failed.
Ms Tompkinson: I would not say
that we have failed. I think those attacks, terrible as they were
with the number of deaths and injuries caused, were the type of
attack which it would have been extremely hard to avoid anywhere
on any system in the world. Our focus on the Underground and rail
has been on other types of attacks to ensure that other sorts
of security are in place. One of the things that we constantly
remind ourselves of is that whatever the attack is today, there
have been other types of attack that we need to protect the transport
industries from and we cannot just focus on the one that has happened
and there are things that we do which will prevent other sorts
of attack.
Mr Darling: I would just make
one point in relation to the Underground. I am quite clear that
one of the reasons that the emergency services and the people
working on the Underground were able to respond so well on 7 July
is because of the training and the exercises that were carried
out in the preceding few years, and also because three years ago
we were concerned about the ability to conduct that sort of rescue.
A lot of expense was incurred and effort was put in to improving
the equipment that the emergency services carry. Of course I accept
that that is dealing with the aftermath of an incident, but, from
my own observations, had this happened three years ago, then of
course the men and women working in these services would have
performed heroically, as they did, but their preparedness was
much better than it was and I think that is an essential part
of what we do. For Transec, part of its job is to look at this
response and to ask, "How can we make this better?"
as well as of course looking at things that can deter and prevent
these attacks taking place.
Q17 Chairman: Have you
in effect made your training programmes better and improved on
them since then?
Mr Darling: Yes, I think all the
emergency services after 7 July had, as you would expect, the
debrief to look at what could have been done better and I think
that process is continuing in that they have not reached a concluded
view there, but I know that three years ago a lot of the kit they
actually carry now just was not available. There is a huge amount
of work which has gone on sometimes, I must say, rubbished by
commentators outside when we test these things where people have
said, "Look, there isn't a risk. You're just exaggerating
these things", but I am very glad we did that work because
I am quite sure it has contributed to what I think, on any view,
was quite a heroic effort on 7 July and in the days and weeks
after that.
Q18 Mrs Ellman: In your
memorandum, you talk about achieving a balance between security
for the public and burdens on industry. How do you assess where
that balance lies and is it not a concern that if decisions are
taken on a commercial basis, it is likely that security will be
at risk?
Mr Darling: No, and I will ask
Niki to say something in a moment about that on the operational
side. What that means is, as I was saying earlier, you have to
strike a balance between what is a reasonable proportion, what
is a reasonable position, if you like, on passengers and on an
industry and where you tip over into something that is just unreasonable
and is causing so much inconvenience that it is not worth it.
For example, I will use the example of screening which is now
commonplace in every airport around the world, but 30 years ago
there was a big debate as to whether or not that was a big imposition
on people to have to go through detectors or it was an imposition
on the industry to put that in, but most people think that is
perfectly acceptable. You can imagine a situation where you could
introduce more screening, perhaps 20 minutes per passenger to
screen them, and you say, "Is it worth doing that? Would
you actually find something? Is it worth virtually bringing an
airport to a halt by doing that?" These are judgments that
you have got to exercise all the time, but I can think of no instance
where people have said, "Well, actually we would really like
to do this. It would be really first class, but it's too expensive".
It is a judgment reached, there is no science behind it, it is
really a commonsense judgment.
Q19 Mrs Ellman: Are you
saying that there are no instances at all where it was felt that,
for security reasons, something should be done and, for commercial
reasons, the operator concerned did not want to do it? They may
not have put it in that way.
Mr Darling: No, I cannot.
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