Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-75)
RT HON
ALISTAIR DARLING
MP, MS NIKI
TOMPKINSON, AND
MR JOHN
GRUBB
2 NOVEMBER 2005
Q60 Mr Martlew: Just on
the bus side, the point was made before about attacks in Israel
and we did have one of the four attacks on a bus, is there enough
effort going into that?
Mr Darling: It is something again
we keep constantly under review. For example, a few years ago
CCTV on buses was pretty rare, but London will have very shortly
all its buses with CCTV and outside London increasingly new buses
come fitted with CCTV. I am bound to say it is mainly to stop
hooligans and vandals but it serves the same purpose. We are acutely
aware of the risk. We are also aware, and this comes back to the
discussion with Mrs Ellman and Mrs Dunwoody at the start, it would
be rather difficult to screen everybody before they got on a bus.
In Israel they have particular measures which include soldiers
on buses but, as we can see, no matter what you do there will
always be a risk.
Ms Tompkinson: On the point about
what do we do to find out more about the whole question of suicide
bombers and what can be done, that is very much a matter for the
police and I know they have done a lot of work with colleagues
overseas, and Israel is a case in point. We have spoken to Israeli
counterparts briefly on this but there is a lot of work going
on to look at suicide bombers which could manifest itself not
just on the transport network. In terms of buses, we have recently
put out some written guidance to all bus operators which is based
very much on the programmes we run on the rail and Underground
networks, so they have some security guidance and best practice
to work to. I think we will be doing more of that over the coming
months.
Q61 Mr Martlew: Earlier,
you said your guidance was instructions, that you had the right
to do that, is that what you are doing with the bus companies?
Ms Tompkinson: No, we do not have
powers to give instructions to bus companies, whereas we do on
the rail and Underground, and we have taken powers to be able
to extend that to the light rail systems, to the tram networks.
Q62 Mr Martlew: Are you
thinking of extending it to buses as well?
Ms Tompkinson: We are certainly
thinking about it, yes, we are.
Q63 Chairman: Bus companies
are not open to a lot of persuasion.
Mr Darling: It depends.
Q64 Chairman: There cannot
be that many wanting to get to the House of Lords, surely?
Mr Darling: If you take the CCTV,
an increasing number of bus companies can see the merit of having
it for non-terrorist reasons, and there are other things we want
to encourage too. If we think we need powers to tell people what
to do, we will take them.
Chairman: We will remind you of that.
Q65 Mr Goodwill: On 9/11
the buildings withstood the impact of the aircraft, it was the
fuel fire which actually brought the buildings down. Having worked
as a tanker driver and trained in hazardous chemicals I can imagine
probably better than most the effect of a chemical attack or a
fuel tanker being driven into a building or exploding in an area
of high population. Given we have in the region of seven vehicle
hijackings a month and it is much easier to hijack trucks than
it is aeroplanes, have you assessed the risk to people from vehicles
being hijacked and looked at areas such as better secure parking
overnight for tankers, a clamping down on the way people can obtain
operators' licences by unconventional methods and better checks
on drivers and driver training schools to stop this one happening?
Mr Darling: We have discussed
this a lot. I will ask John Grubb to comment on this.
Mr Grubb: We have recently introduced
a system of regulation for the transportation of dangerous goods
and high consequence goods, which includes the tankers you mentioned.
That does include the development of security plans which are
both how these tankers are handled in the depot and what you can
do on the road, which is of course limited, but it does include
secure overnight parking and arrangements when these vehicles
might be left in a situation where they might be vulnerable. We
do have a system of compliance now with the Department's Vehicle
and Operator Services Agency for spot checks to see these arrangements
are in place. It does include making all the background checks
you can do on drivers and satisfying yourself as best you can.
There are also arrangements which we have discussed and agreed
with the police as to what we might do in a response situation
where a tanker may be hijacked and you cannot obviously foresee
that, and that is what we have just recently done and published.
Q66 Mr Goodwill: Are you
aware of the unconventional means which can be utilised by some
companies to obtain operators' licences? For example, one company
goes out of business and they sell the limited company along with
the operator's licence. Maybe the Secretary of State would like
to look at that and clamp down on that. There are these licences
which are being advertised openly in the commercial press.
Mr Darling: We are and this is
something which VOSA, which is the appropriate agency in the Department,
is very aware of. For every reason you can think of, that sort
of activity needs to be stamped on, not just because of terrorist
implications but because it is bad for the industry generally.
Q67 Graham Stringer: I
wanted to follow up on your answer to Mr Martlew's first question,
that when you get on any aeroplane you are in the system, and
previously you talked about aviation being a closed system, but
it is more closed in parts of the system than other parts, is
it not? If you get on at Heathrow, Gatwick, New York, there is
tight security, if you get on an aeroplane in Africa—Kinshasa,
Nairobi—the security is not as good in most cases. What
are you trying to do to improve that?
Mr Darling: You are absolutely
right that the system is only as good as the weakest link in it.
It is one of the things I am concerned about, but it is not just
the stereotypical airport you describe in areas where there may
be a lack of awareness, there are other countries in different
parts of the world which ought to be aware of the problem and
ought to be doing more than they actually do. Part of it is inter-governmental
pressure, partly it is at departmental level and also the European
Union itself is trying to drive up standards, but it is a matter
of concern.
Ms Tompkinson: You are absolutely
right to flag this up, it is one of the areas of greatest concern
to us and we put a lot of effort into trying to tackle it. It
is a difficult area for the reasons you have said, any airport
can be the weakest link As I mentioned in my opening statement,
we now have a number of people based overseas to work with host
countries and to work through the Foreign Office. The Foreign
Office also have in every post overseas an individual whose designated
post is aviation security officer, so wherever you have a UK embassy
or high commission there is someone in there with some aviation
security responsibility although it will not be their whole job.
In addition, we have a small number of people who are there full-time,
they are aviation security experts, they have been trained in
Transec and posted overseas to work with the host countries in
their region to advise them about better standards of security.
That is something we have to do through negotiation, host states
have responsibilities for following international regulations,
standards set by ICAO or the European Commission in Europe. We
feel we can add value by working very closely with countries to
advise them on how they could do better and, if need be, make
some additional resources available to them. One of the things
we do routinely is invite the officials from those countries to
visit the UK to see how we do security at our airports so they
can learn from that and we can talk to them on that. We also have
one person whose full-time job it is to look to see where the
Government could make some modest investment, through a fund available
in the Foreign Office to practical projects overseas. So if a
country cannot get its security right because it has a lack of
resources, equipment or training, then we can help them with that
in a very practical way.
Q68 Chairman: Secretary
of State, can I ask about your National Security Committees? Do
you appoint the people who sit on them?
Mr Darling: We bring them together;
the Department brings them together.
Q69 Chairman: Who appoints
them?
Mr Darling: It is more of an invitation
than an appointment.
Q70 Chairman: Could you
tell us what they do and what things they look at?
Mr Darling: There is one for aviation,
one for railways and one for maritime. It is a forum to enable
them to discuss current issues, to discuss future developments.
For example, in aviation they discuss things like—
Q71 Chairman: Do they
make recommendations? Are they accountable to anybody?
Mr Darling: It is more of a forum
where you can bring people together.
Q72 Chairman: Even fora
occasionally produce results.
Mr Darling: These ones do. In
fact we would not have them if they did not have some purpose
because I can think of better ways of spending a couple of hours
than endless discussions. They have proved to be pretty productive
actually and they sometimes do result in things which otherwise
would take months to agree.
Q73 Mr Leech: I wanted
to pick up on the point about people working abroad in other countries.
Is that just outside the EU? Anyone who has been on holiday to
the Mediterranean would probably agree that some of the practices
in some of our EU partner states are not as good as they could
be.
Ms Tompkinson: We do not have
anybody based within Europe. It is obviously very close to us
so we can make visits to our European counterparts. We work very
closely with the European Commission. They have their own programme
of regulation, 23/20, on which of course the UK's national programme
is based—or their programme is based on ours, it depends
which way you look at it. So there should be the same baseline
measures in place across all European countries and countries
should be adhering to that. It is the responsibility of the European
Commission if countries are in breach of the European regulations
to tackle that.
Q74 Chairman: Secretary
of State, you and your colleagues have been very good and helpful
to us but I think there are a lot of questions we still have to
ask and this is probably not the time. I know you have been travelling
overnight and I think you have been holding up astonishingly well;
you did not even drop off in the middle of anything the Chairman
was asking you. Could I therefore ask you, before I let you go,
if we can send you a series of questions about one or two other
aspects and you could send us some notes?
Mr Darling: If you let us have
the questions you would like further details on, we would be very
happy to let you have that information.
Q75 Chairman: Thank you.
This is the beginning of quite a big amount of work and we are
grateful to you.
Mr Darling: You may want to come
back on some specifics.
Chairman: I think it is quite possible
we will want to do that. In the meantime we are very grateful
to you, Ms Tompkinson and Mr Grubb.
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