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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1085-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE TRANSPORT COMMITTEE
TRANSPORT SECURITY - TRAVELLING WITHOUT FEAR
Wednesday 11 October 2006 MR CRAIG BRADBROOK, CHIEF CONSTABLE MICHAEL J TODD, PROFESSOR ALAN HATCHER and MR MEL LITTLER
MR IAN HUTCHESON, CAPTAIN TIM STEEDS, MS GAYNOR McLAUGHLIN and MR CHRIS WELSH Evidence heard in Public Questions 399 - 538
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Transport Committee on Wednesday 11 October 2006 Members present Mrs Gwyneth Dunwoody, in the Chair Mrs Louise Ellman Clive Efford Mr Robert Goodwill Mr Lee Scott Graham Stringer Mr David Wilshire ________________ Memoranda submitted by Airports Council International, Association of Chief Police Officers, International School for Security and Explosives Education, and Ascent Aviation Security Ltd
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Craig Bradbrook, Director, Security & Facilitation, Airports Council International; Chief Constable Michael J Todd QPM, Association of Chief Police Officers; Professor Alan Hatcher, Principal, International School for Security and Explosives Education; and Mr Mel Littler, Ascent Aviation Security Ltd, gave evidence. Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, may I welcome you most warmly this afternoon. Your information will be of enormous help to us. We have one or two little bits of housekeeping. Those of you who have given evidence before will know that the microphones in front of you are simply meant to mislead; they do not project your voices, they record your voices, so when you are speaking to us, since this room does rather absorb sound, it would be helpful if you would speak up. Secondly, we will begin our own proceedings by asking whether Members have an interest to declare. Mr Efford? Clive Efford: A member of the Transport & General Workers' Union. Graham Stringer: A member of Amicus. Chairman: Gwyneth Dunwoody, a member of ASLEF. Mrs Ellman: A member of the Transport & General Workers' Union. Q399 Chairman: No directorships? No, fine. Gentlemen, may I ask you for your identification beginning with my left and your right. For the purposes of the record, can you tell me who you are? Mr Bradbrook: Craig Bradbrook from Airports Council International. Cbief Constable Todd: Michael Todd, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police and also Vice-President of ACPO with responsibility for terrorism and aviation security. Professor Hatcher: Professor Alan Hatcher from the International School for Security and Explosives Education. Mr Littler: Mel Littler from Ascent Aviation Security Limited. Q400 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. As you will realise we, the Committee, are very interested in the views of experts about the very real problems that we are facing in aviation security. What is of considerable importance to us is that there is a considerable divergence of views. If you agree with one another please do not repeat what somebody else has said, but if you want to catch my eye please do. What lessons should be learned from the period of heightened airport security in August and September this year? Mr Littler: There are several lessons. One is that we were dealing with a completely new threat and the counter-measures that were introduced immediately were probably the only option available. The other lesson we need to learn is the issue of what do we do next so that when we move the threat to an unprecedented level how long can we keep it there and what process do we then take to bring that down to a sustainable level. Q401 Chairman: Are there any particular lessons to be learned from the presence of significantly denser crowds and queues in the terminal buildings? Chief Constable Todd: Yes, I think there are. The main key to this is flexibility. You cannot have a plan in any situation which is robotically enforced, you need flexibility. I think one of the great lessons that were actually learned from the events of August was for many of the airports getting extra security staff when suddenly you have got the presence of large queues of people because they have been delayed. I think the Police Service was actually okay on this because the parent forces of each of the airport divisions was able to say, in my case to the Greater Manchester Police, or the Metropolitan Police, "We need another couple of hundred extra people". Q402 Chairman: Presumably they were not then required to do things differently from the security needs that they would have to fulfil in their ordinary tasks, is that the point? Chief Constable Todd: They still do things differently because you are taking officers away from territorial policing, from divisions around the force, they are going into the airport to assist, things like high visibility policing, that is why you need to be flexible. You need high visibility policing, automatic number plate recognition, high visibility policing around the approaches to airports, things like that. I think the lesson that has been learned perhaps for the industry is it worked exceptionally well in Manchester Airport because the airport authority had very robust call-out rotas for their staff to bring them on duty so that they could have extra security staff in immediately. That was a factor in the queues being smaller there than perhaps at some of the other airports and that is one of the lessons that has been learned. Q403 Graham Stringer: This leads straight into the question I was going to ask. From your local responsibilities in Manchester and your national responsibilities, what advice would you give to BAA running Heathrow and Gatwick from the experience at Manchester because at Manchester, from memory, the delays were about four hours and there were a huge number of cancellations at Heathrow and Gatwick? What advice would you give to the BAA? What went wrong at those airports that went right at Manchester? Chief Constable Todd: I think the call-out rota was the key issue. I am aware they have already reviewed the airports throughout the country and reviewed their procedures to bring on extra staff. They had not been in a position previously to have to bring on extra staff that quickly. At Manchester there was a properly worked out, properly rehearsed call-out regime and that, I know, has been replicated across the rest of the country. Q404 Graham Stringer: That is rather surprising, is it not, given that we knew that there was likely to be another threat. Why at the largest airports in the country did they not have this contingency plan? Chief Constable Todd: I am afraid I cannot answer for them. I know that it is something that had been worked on in partnership with the police at Manchester and there is an extremely good partnership there in terms of planning for contingencies. Personally, I think they were just absolutely overwhelmed by the sudden need to have that many more security staff on duty and at Manchester - this is not a policing issue - I have to pay tribute to the airport there because I think they performed exceptionally well. Q405 Chairman: Professor, you are nodding. Professor Hatcher: I agree with a lot of what Michael has said but your question, Chairman, was about lessons that can be learned. One of my concerns is that we are creating new targets. We have lines of people in terminals now, 200, 300 people in a queue, your bag is not searched when you go in or out, you can take 23kg of baggage with you and 23kg of ammonium nitrate mix would be very sufficient to make a good impact. Terminal 3 especially is vulnerable. That is on the bad side of lessons learned, if you like. I think the lessons learned from the joined-up approach now that is being taken by a lot of security forces is a lot better. The police forces are working better with the intelligence communities which are working well with BAA, et cetera, but there is still a lot to be learnt. Chief Constable Todd: This has sometimes been a difference in approach between policing and that is why you need a greater degree of flexibility. It has long been one of my concerns, and that is why I think we do need dedicated policing resources at airports, that we concentrate on the control zone, after you have been through the security, but the area of vulnerability, which is where we agree, is actually external to that because you would not bring down an aircraft but you could disrupt an airport very, very easily through an attack outside, or certainly you could attack confidence. That is why we need flexibility and not purely physical security all the time. You need to keep rotating the methods and keep learning so it is unpredictable, it makes a more hostile environment to terrorism. Q406 Mr Wilshire: Mr Todd, you said at the beginning that one of the great assets was flexibility, that you can call on officers from outside the airport divisions but, just to clear up something in my mind, does the possession of a warrant card by any constable mean that they could go airside without any further checks? Chief Constable Todd: Yes, they could. I have to say I go to Manchester Airport and go out on patrol with our officers airside and I have not been subject to any further checks. They do check your identity and do want to see your warrant card but normally as long as you are with a trained airport officer that is okay. I have got to say I would not normally, and I do not think any of the police forces would, put non-airport trained officers airside because there are differences there, you cannot drive a police vehicle, all of those issues. I am talking more about when you need to quickly secure an airport you can bring in officers for external patrols, to patrol the queues and the vulnerabilities. Q407 Mr Wilshire: There was a debate after the Lockerbie crash as to whether specialist policing for airports, given the risks and the work to be done, would be better done on a national basis. Is there any merit in the argument that some use that British Transport Police or an especially designated police force responsible for all airports rather than the local Police Service would be a better way to do it? Chief Constable Todd: I do not personally agree with that. Q408 Mr Wilshire: Why not? Chief Constable Todd: I am a great supporter of BTP actually, I think BTP do a great job, but I think one of the lessons that we have learned from going right back in history when we did have small airport police forces is that rotating officers in different forms of policing keeps up their energy. If you are just doing one thing potentially for 30 years I think you can get quite complacent. You need to rotate people around, they need to be refreshed, they need to have fresh challenges. Q409 Mr Wilshire: Do police forces that consider that they could well be called upon to supplement airport divisions do any training of their officers in case they are required? Chief Constable Todd: I cannot speak for every police force, I can only speak for mine. We do have officers who have left the airport and you do know who those individuals are. No, and I do not think you need to because the officers you are bringing in to supplement and increase the resources that you have in an airport at a given time are going to be used externally to it, so it is about policing the concourses, queues and the approaches to airports as opposed to actually airside itself, which is what you do need training for. Q410 Mr Wilshire: As a result of what has happened, and trying to think from a terrorist point of view that if they work out that designated airports are the ones with the sophisticated policing arrangements, those that are not designated then become the weak link, how should we look now at the undesignated? Should we change them? Chief Constable Todd: Yes, definitely. I do not know if you want to deal with this here at this moment. Q411 Chairman: Yes, tell us about the criteria you use for designation. Chief Constable Todd: I think it is madness now. It is an archaic system. It is an archaic system which needs urgent review. Just to defend my colleagues, Chief Constables will put dedicated policing resources according to risks where you need them, so even if it is to the detriment of local policing at the moment it is our accountability, which is another issue I would like to get into, for the safety and security, so we will put dedicated properly trained police resources into those areas. The issue with designation is that it was probably fit for purpose of its time but it is not any longer. You have some of the nonsenses that, for example, Luton Airport is not a designated airport yet it has virtually the same passenger throughput, 9.1 million passengers per year, as Birmingham Airport with 9.3 million. Birmingham is designated but Luton is not and as a result the airport operators do not pay for policing in Luton, local council tax payers are paying for policing. I have to say my own committee in ACPO, the Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, also subsidise it because we realise it would be nuts for the local council tax payers to pick up all of that bill for a relatively small police force, it would just be disabling. I do not know if you are familiar with the Stephen Boyd-Smith report that he has just carried out. I have to say we have lobbied Stephen very, very strongly. The report is about to be made public and that does signal, as I think Sir John Wheeler originally indicated, the designation debate is a bit of a dead duck. We have formulated within ACPO what we call a trigger document. The question is should there be dedicated police resources allocated to a particular airport. If so, we have produced a framework document to try to estimate, because it is not an exact science, what level of resources there should be at that designated airport, and then you get into the debate about who pays for those dedicated resources. I think we have to approach it in a very, very different way and designation really should be a dead duck. Q412 Mrs Ellman: I would like to hear people's views on the Government's general policy of the "user pays" in relation to financing security. Does anybody have any views on that? Professor Hatcher: I think one of the largest problems we are going to have is if we put everything on to the user, the carbon tax as well, potentially we are going to be putting companies out of business - potentially. In a recent bill that the Civil Aviation Authority has put out they were looking to put a 75 per cent increase on the users. I think it would be very difficult. Q413 Chairman: That is not the principle, Professor, is it? What you are saying is that the effects if it was allowed to continue in the same way would be fairly devastating but I think Mrs Ellman asked you about the principle of the "user pays". Is it a good principle? Mr Todd? Chief Constable Todd: I have to say I think that is entirely the right principle. There is a "polluter pays" argument. Many people, perhaps local people, around the airports would say they have to pay enough costs having an airport in their particular location, I do not think they should pay for policing and security. Our position within ACPO and to Stephen Boyd-Smith in the report has been that we ought to have an airport tax for policing and security. We estimate that 50p on each passenger journey would pay for the policing and security. I do not think that is a huge price to pay. I know it has been rejected by Stephen Boyd-Smith at the moment but it does not mean that is the way things will go. As we try to demystify this, looking at it ourselves over the last year or so, lots of airports have various security taxes that are imposed on people as part of the ticket price and I think it would be quite easy to add 50p on to that and perhaps demystify it so everyone knows what it is for because if you said, "For your security and for the policing of this airport you are paying 50p" I have to say I would certainly vote for it myself. Mr Bradbrook: I think the airport position is the opposite. As we laid out in our submission, aviation security has now become recognised as an issue of national state security. Terrorism is not targeting airports principally, it is targeting governments and we are just the means through which the terrorists take their battle forward, if you like. To burden the industry with the costs of what is viewed to be national defence or national security we think is unreasonable and unsustainable in the longer term. Q414 Chairman: Does anybody have a different view from that? Mr Littler: I support the view of the ACI and also I would take us back historically 30 or so years ago in the UK when there was a thing called the Central Aviation Security Fund which was a tax gathered by the organisations selling the ticket which was put forward to central government and then redistributed. That was abandoned in the early 1980s but the principle behind "user pays" is that the user is the one who pays because they are the only beneficiaries of that security function. The events of December 1988 with Pan Am 103 damaged that argument because people were killed on the ground in Lockerbie and the events of 9/11, when nearly 3,000 people lost their lives who had nothing to do with aviation, they were not on board any of the aircraft, further damage this argument. I wholeheartedly support the view of the ACI. Q415 Chairman: On the principle, on the funding, Mr Todd? Chief Constable Todd: On the principle I have to say I disagree with Craig's comments. As a simple policeman I will not get involved in the politics of foreign policy ---- Q416 Chairman: We know the police never get involved in politics! Chief Constable Todd: I have to say it is wider than national security. The policing in Manchester Airport or Heathrow Airport is not just about national security, it is about disruptive passengers, about people getting drunk on the concourses, about making it a harder environment for thieves to attack cargo, it is a whole variety of things. That is one of the things where I do not think you can separate it and it is not just the police officers carrying MP5 submachine guns. Chairman: You have convinced us of the joys of a civilised state. Q417 Mrs Ellman: Mr Littler, you referred to the European Union Regulation on transport security which you say the UK Government has not implemented. Can you tell us some more about that? Mr Littler: The European Union Regulation on aviation security in 2002, and there is a framework regulation along with an implementing regulation which gives more detail on how the requirements should be implemented. The difficulty in terms of competition is that the baseline measures are very much that, they represent measures which all Member States need to apply but each Member State has the freedom to apply what they refer to as "more stringent measures". In the UK there are several of those "more stringent measures". Going back to funding, there is a strong argument that says the industry should pay to recover the costs of the baseline measures but on more stringent measures introduced by an individual state because of an enhanced threat level those additional costs should be met by the state. Q418 Mrs Ellman: Do you think there should be an international harmonisation of standards in security? Professor Hatcher: There is supposed to be an international harmonisation of standards with ICAO, section 17 to the Chicago Convention, and through our own National Aviation Security Programme, so it is supposed to be harmonised. Q419 Mrs Ellman: But there are a large number of cases, are there not, where the UK authorities re-screen passengers who have come from other destinations, so that suggests there is not an acceptance of adequacy. Professor Hatcher: I think the problem lies with the fragmentation between the security forces. The police do a marvellous job, BAA do a marvellous job and the commercial security people do a marvellous job, but when you start involving lots of people communication breaks down and gaps appear. Where the gaps are the terrorists will locate them. My concern is that we need the harmonisation. The harmonisation infrastructure is in place but I do not think it is policed very well. Q420 Chairman: Using "policed" in the sense of the general administration and monitoring? Professor Hatcher: Yes, not uniformed police. Q421 Chairman: I would just like you to get out of the room in one piece! You may be sitting in a vulnerable position. I think, Mr Bradbrook, you were going to come in. Mr Bradbrook: Just to clarify my earlier remarks were about the costs of aviation security and not costs relating to the policing of airports. Q422 Chairman: Yes, I think we understand the difference is one of principle really. Mr Bradbrook: On the issue of harmonisation, if I could just add that internationally through annex 17 to the Chicago Convention it is a strategic objective to achieve harmonisation of standards. We are not there yet but it is something that we would like to see in the industry as quickly as can be achieved because it is very important to the efficiency of international air travel that we do have harmonisation. Professor Hatcher: Can I just make one point on the funding side and the user. I do agree in principle that it should be on the user because we are not just looking at aviation security - I know we are in this Committee - because we have the Eurotunnel and other transport users who require security. Q423 Mrs Ellman: Would you say that TRANSEC are doing a good job in protecting the public and not creating unnecessary disturbance? Professor Hatcher: In the work that I have done with TRANSEC at times I do find them blinkered in their approach. They are a bureaucratic organisation, they have rules that do not allow flexibility. The trouble is you will get subjective attitudes with whoever you speak to and, unfortunately, I believe that some of the rules can be interpreted subjectively by the inspectors. Q424 Chairman: I think this Committee is quite used to subjective evidence actually. Do you want to comment on that, Mr Littler? Mr Littler: I think generally speaking TRANSEC are doing a fairly good job but we should not underestimate the difficulty of that job. They are not just responsible for aviation, of course, but for all modes of transport. The focus tends to be on aviation because it seems to be more attractive as a target to terrorism. That does not mean that the TRANSEC operation could not be improved or is perfect but in general terms I think they are doing a very good job. Chairman: Very tactful. Q425 Clive Efford: There was a lot of baggage that went missing through the recent heightened security during the summer, do you know what happened to it? Chief Constable Todd: I have to say no, I do not, I am afraid. Q426 Clive Efford: Do you have any idea how much went missing? Chief Constable Todd: No, to be honest, I do not. Q427 Clive Efford: Does anybody? Does anybody have any idea where it went because you have all got "security" in your titles? Professor Hatcher: Unfortunately we were not all based at Heathrow at the time. Q428 Clive Efford: The reason I ask the question is what does that tell us about the security of the airports if that amount of baggage can go missing? Chief Constable Todd: I think it tells us something around the baggage handling certainly, and that is one of our concerns, but particularly one of the concerns we have got more is around the cargo where we think you need to police that a little better than it has been. What tends to happen is that once it has been screened and it has gone into the airport the history of Heathrow, for example, has been that a lot of baggage has been pilfered over time. I should imagine that when you have got those long queues there is even greater opportunity for baggage to go missing. Q429 Clive Efford: Greater opportunity to get it out of the airport? Chief Constable Todd: I think it is difficult sometimes to get it out of the airport. Q430 Clive Efford: So there is a big shed somewhere in Heathrow Airport that has got a lot of empty cases in it? Chief Constable Todd: As I say, my job, apart from Greater Manchester Police, is looking at how we try and protect overall and to co-ordinate activity across the country but there are issues over that and I have to say whenever we are aware of it, people taking vans out of the airport without properly being checked, we bring that to the attention of TRANSEC. We have now started to work far better with TRANSEC so that we get reported to us the various security breaches and concerns that they have and we are doing the same with them and that has not always been the case. Q431 Clive Efford: If it is possible to shift that amount of swag around an airport does that indicate to us that there are still some gaping holes in the security at airports that we need to look into? Professor Hatcher: No. Any security is based around stopping people getting in. One of the dangers we have within our roles, within the security role, is that terrorism becomes the focal point and vandalism, criminal activity, normal activity, if you like, done by the bad guys gets overlooked, so there is a danger. I would be very interested to see the figures on how much baggage went missing rather than just talking about "huge amounts". Chief Constable Todd: One of the suggestions that I also made to Stephen Boyd-Smith that I hope he has taken up is I think you all alluded to the TRANSEC role and the policing role and the airport role. I think it is important that you look, to use a much abused word, holistically at it. What I have suggested is that the Department for Transport in terms of its own inspection process and the police, Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary, start to work far greater together so that you try and look at the overall security of an airport as opposed to looking at policing elements of the airport for inspection and TRANSEC looking at are you x-raying it, so it does not become a robotic process and somebody overall looks at the entire security and inspects against it. I think that would be a huge move forward. Q432 Clive Efford: You looked like you wanted to contribute, Mr Littler. Mr Littler: Yes, thank you. I think we need to be clear about what we mean by "missing". We should remember what happened on the morning of 10 August. Cabin baggage effectively was forbidden so people were asked at very short notice to take everything that was going to be their cabin baggage, or their bag itself, and check it in. Once the bag has been checked in it goes through a mechanical handling system which has a capacity, like everything else, and all of a sudden overnight it was burdened with tens of thousands of additional bags which the system had not been designed for. The fact that some of them went "missing" largely meant that they did not make the aircraft in time simply because there were physical constraints placed on the area of what we call the baggage make-up area. So we suddenly had a situation where thousands of bags were present in that area that needed sorting and which needed taking to the aircraft. There were manpower issues and in our view it was not a security issue, it was simply dealing with this huge unprecedented increase in the number of bags. Q433 Clive Efford: I do not want to labour the point but what happened to them? Were they landfilled? Mr Littler: I think most of them were reunited with the passengers. Q434 Clive Efford: Mr Bradbrook, is that a cost that you think should be borne by the airports? Mr Bradbrook: Which cost is that? Q435 Clive Efford: Security for the baggage that is airside. Mr Bradbrook: The airports are providing the infrastructure and screening systems in general for the screening of baggage on departing aircraft. The security of the baggage from the point of loading to the point of unloading at the destination is usually the responsibility of the airline and usually it is their handling agents that transport that baggage, so they bear the costs of that. Q436 Clive Efford: Okay. Can I just ask if anyone wants to comment on this particular issue, which is what contribution could new technology make to improve aviation security? Professor Hatcher: I have very strong views on this. Billions of dollars are being spent on high-tech equipment which is very good but I would like to see some empirical evidence just to show how good this equipment is in real-time use over the standard security guard, policeman, rates of arrest and fines. Slightly going off the question, I find that the security training we give our guards at the frontline is not good enough, it is nowhere near good enough. Yes, high-tech has got its place but it is not a panacea. Mr Littler: I think technology has got huge potential for the future. What we have is a situation not just in the UK but virtually globally where passenger and cabin baggage screening, for example, is being screened using the same technology as we were using 30 years ago. The difference is, of course, that with x-ray machines, archway metal detectors, the type of equipment and quality has improved immensely over that period but at the end of the day it is the same basic technology. I believe that there is an opportunity here to introduce a variety of technologies so that the terrorist, for instance, would have an element of doubt inserted into his or her mind about how he or she, or the items they were carrying, were going to be screened and what technology would be used. Q437 Chairman: Can I just ask you to address yourself to Professor Hatcher's point. Are you assuming that would be ten times more efficient than large numbers of properly trained security guards who could ask you all the difficult questions? El Al, for example, spend six months training its operatives before they let them loose in an airport and they rely upon detailed questioning and the training of the operative to assess whether or not they are being told the truth. Are you really telling us that machines can replace a nosy El Al enquirer? Mr Littler: What we generally understand to be the definition in the UK of security staff are the people you see when you board a flight, when you go through security, the people who are screening your bags and screening you as well as an individual. The people who carry out what is commonly known as profiling or risk analysis profiling are specifically trained. Q438 Chairman: Mr Littler, we can argue about who does what and when, and whether or not we are talking about the same category of people, but the point you are being asked is a much more fundamental one: can machines replace an existing system of human beings who would have responsibility? The Chief Constable has a view. Chief Constable Todd: No, you cannot is the simple answer. The machines can only be there to assist. We do need to invest in better CCTV. As facial recognition is coming on-line and starting to become more reliable I think we need to gear up for that so we have got high quality cameras, which we have not necessarily got, proper recording of those cameras afterwards, digitally you can do it a lot better now than you could historically. We need to gear up for the future but we need properly trained security staff who are inquisitive. As far as the police officers are concerned, you want people who are inquisitive, are actually asking questions, are going to stop people in a friendly way, but are going to be constantly saying, "What is wrong with this picture?" What you do not want is jobsworths. I am not suggesting we have got jobsworths but that is the difference with the El Al-type situation where you have got people. My job here is to protect this airport and that is what I am going to do every day of my working life. I am properly trained and I continually train, I think that is really, really important. That is how we solve the problem because the physical side can make it a hostile environment but you need inquisitive people who are constantly asking and searching out what is wrong with this picture. Mr Goodwill: During September I had a very interesting experience spending two days at East Midlands Airport, part of the Manchester Airport Group, watching the security first hand. I think the picture that was painted was of before security where we have people milling around, anyone can come in with a weapon or a device, but after security even Mrs Dunwoody could not get her nail scissors through. Could I ask, what is the logic behind deploying armed police officers in the secure zone which by definition is an area where people do not have access to weapons? Q439 Chairman: Chief Constable, what are you doing? Chief Constable Todd: It is still to make it a hostile environment. We want the armed officers not necessarily airside but I think it is part of the overall, "this is a hostile environment". We need to do that although, again, if you go to Manchester Airport you will see some armed officers but in the main you will see the armed officers outside because we recognise that it is before you have gone through security that to me is still the most vulnerable area. That is why I go back to my argument that we need to be flexible and not robotic about the way we introduce security measures. Q440 Mr Goodwill: Is there not a scenario where a terrorist could get the weapon from the officer and get on to a plane using that weapon? Chief Constable Todd: I have to say I extremely doubt it. Q441 Mr Goodwill: Professor Hatcher is nodding. Professor Hatcher: You were not at one of my lectures, were you? Q442 Mr Goodwill: No. Professor Hatcher: One of the points is that, yes, the terrorists are extremely well trained. These people are not stupid. If they think there is a real chance that they can take out a policeman or a bobby who is potentially giving advice to a member of the public and he gets swiped over the back of the head with a bottle of Duty Free, yes, his weapon could be taken no doubt. It is a possibility but whether it is feasible ---- Chairman: Have a little self-confidence, Chief Constable, you do not have to refute every word! Q443 Mr Goodwill: Who makes that decision about deploying those armed officers? Is it the police force involved, is it TRANSEC? Chief Constable Todd: It is the police force involved. You come up with your own deployment position. We do have national standards as far as this is concerned, which is why you would always have a minimum of two armed officers. They are properly trained in how they stand and how they interact with the public to make sure that possibility is not a real possibility. Q444 Mr Goodwill: The other bizarre operation I saw was security people x-raying bottled water because they had been told to x-ray all the food and drink that was going airside. Whilst they could see the logic behind checking the tamper seals on the bottles they found it hard to justify x-raying the water because it was a whole pallet of water and it was causing chaos in the security area. Is there any possibility that maybe people on the ground could be allowed a bit more discretion, flexibility and judgment rather than this very inflexible system that seems to be in place? Professor Hatcher: Again, I think that comes back to security training levels of people. If you had asked the security guards what they were looking for, could they have answered that question? As the Chief Constable was saying, it is no good just having a robotic security system, we need to trust the security staff. It comes back to the training of them being allowed the responsibility, to be told, "Yes, you are looking at this and the reason for doing this is...." Q445 Mr Goodwill: They said to me they were looking for an explosive or flammable liquid but putting bottles through the x-ray machine would not tell them that at all, nevertheless that was what they were doing. Professor Hatcher: It could be they are robotic and are following what they have been told to do. Mr Goodwill: The other point you made, Professor Hatcher, was you were saying we should look where gaps occur and that is where the terrorists will operate. Do you feel we are playing catch-up? It seems that every time a new threat appears we then have to cover that base retrospectively. For example, are we looking at the possibility of a terrorist with a ground-to-air missile in a field near the airport? What is the next threat or are we always going to have to wait for the terrorist to tell us what the next threat is? Can we predict that? Q446 Chairman: We are actually doing our best to suggest various ideas to al-Qaeda in case they get bored! Chief Constable? Chief Constable Todd: We do all sorts of blue sky thinking on what are the possible threats. We establish that. I do not want to go into it but ---- Q447 Chairman: Please do not. Chief Constable Todd: ---- there is a strategy in target-hardening to ensure that is not possible. Chairman: I have enough troubles as it is! Q448 Mr Scott: Chief Constable, if we go back to the latter part of August, in my view a disgraceful episode was a Southern Irish budget airline, which I shall not name, which seemed to want to make security policies for our country and they complained that they had not been consulted about things. In your experience, what consultation was had between the security services and the airline operators? Chief Constable Todd: It is a little difficult because I was not there but, as I understand, the security regime, which is a TRANSEC responsibility as part of the regulatory framework around the airports, developed a regime which they suggested. I think that went to Cobra, the Cabinet Office briefing room, where that was approved by whoever was in charge of Cobra at the time. I understand that there was a degree of consultation with the Police Service as well but that was as a result of us and the security services explaining the threat in detail to the Department for Transport. They came up with their own regime. I am not aware of there being any consultation but I am aware that they had to respond literally within a matter of hours of us saying we had a very escalating threat because we knew something was imminent. We explained that to the Department for Transport and as a result they came up with their new regulatory regime literally within hours. I think they did consult afterwards but I have to say I think that would be a matter for the Department for Transport. Chairman: I think we should not be diverted by the need of some Irish Nationals for personal publicity. Q449 Mr Scott: There were complaints that some of the aircraft were going off half full because people could not get through security checks. I must say, forgive me if I pay tribute, I went from Manchester Airport at that time and, indeed, they gave priority and called out the flights to make sure people got through. Was that generally the case, as I did not happen to be travelling through any of the other airports at the time, or was that not carried out? Chief Constable Todd: I have to say I think that was a little more specific to Manchester Airport. I go back to some of the comments I made earlier, which I will not repeat, that this was the result of them getting in the right people at the right place at the right time. Mr Scott: I compliment Manchester Airport management. Q450 Graham Stringer: We rather skated over passenger profiling. I have listened to some interesting views from police officers on Newsnight. Is there an agreed ACPO view on whether behaviour pattern recognition is a useful weapon against terrorists? Chief Constable Todd: I am not aware of there being a particular ACPO view but I have to say I do agree with that, it is entirely logical. This comes back to the comments that Alan Hatcher and I both agreed with about not being robotic about things. If you think about the response to Operative Overt, the events of August, do you have to apply exactly the same regime on a bucket and spade flight going to Spain that had been booked a year in advance by all the passengers to people who had just booked on an aircraft going to the States? I do not think you do. If you want to regard that as a form of profiling, which I think you can, we have been doing intelligence-led policing for years and I think this is a form of intelligence-led policing. Q451 Graham Stringer: So you do not agree with the police officer who said you are effectively making Muslims into criminals if you use behaviour profiling? Chief Constable Todd: No, you are not. I have to say it goes back to the same arguments around stop-search. If you want to take that to the nth degree, if we have a street robbery problem in the middle of Manchester, are you almost like a market researcher saying. "I have not stopped a 50-year old white woman so I have got to fill that in as a sort of tick-the-box"? No, you are not, you are going to be looking for young people who are involved in robbery offences. Q452 Graham Stringer: That is very clear. Can I go back to something Professor Hatcher said about evidence in real-time of the technology being used and something Mr Littler was saying about the technology being the same. Has the technology not changed dramatically in the last ten years in terms of screening baggage in the hold, which was not done before, whereas now at all airports in the UK they screen every bag and that is a big change, is it not? Professor Hatcher: There is certainly a place for it as well but we are talking about terrorists walking through the front door. If you have got an inanimate object you can put that through all the processes; if you have got a human then obviously you want to be looking in their eyes. Q453 Graham Stringer: I was not clear about what kind of technology you were talking about. Professor Hatcher: There is a place for biometrics and all these wonderful things that are appearing. I think post 9/11 the TSA spent $5 billion on x-ray machines that the handlers could not actually operate. That is my concern, that we buy high-tech equipment but what we have got, without being rude to security guards, is security guards who are not the most intellectual of people and we are expecting them to be able to interpret and handle this high-tech equipment and get positive answers out of it. Graham Stringer: That is an interesting discussion and it brings me back to something the Chief Constable was saying about the assessment of where our guards are in an airport. I should declare an interest. Chairman: You are normally surrounded by armed guards? I missed this! Q454 Graham Stringer: No, but as Chairman of Manchester Airport I was always profoundly sceptical of the policing arrangements by Mr Todd's predecessor, I never thought it was helpful to the budget to have a lot of police officers about. It was helpful to the police's budget but not the airport's budget. The answer is that there is an appeal to the Secretary of State if the airport does not like it. In a sense would it not be more helpful both to the airport and the police if there was a third party that could assess and comment both on the costs and the deployment of the police? Chief Constable Todd: Yes, it would, but I have some real concerns about the direction in which this is going, some very real concerns. If we think of the situation at the moment, the police will say, "This is what we actually feel we need to police the airport", the airport operator may well disagree and now it goes as an appeal to the Secretary of State for Transport. At least with that there is some accountability within that process. I have some very real fears about what is now proposed because I do not think there is any accountability. What is being suggested by the current report is that if there is a dispute the two parties should appoint an arbitrator each who appoints a third arbitrator and the arbitrator will then say, "Yes, I will go down one side or the other". If I could just give you an example: if the police said, "We think we need 500 officers to police this" and the airport operator said, "We think you only need 100", if the arbitrator then said, "You need 120", my problem with that is who is accountable for that decision. I think it should either be the Chief Constable, which it currently is and I accept that responsibility, or it should be the Minister. If you were conducting an inquiry two years later and we had 120 officers in there which was insufficient, was not fit for purpose, who is going to be held to account? I accept my responsibility for that across Greater Manchester and I think the Department for Transport Minister should do that. What I have suggested, which I think is a better way forward, is we go back to do we need dedicated police resources, a formula that we have started to develop, and I am quite happy to make the offer to the industry, and I have done this, to do what I would call a peer review where we would get other airport commanders to cross-check the bids that people put in for police resources. I am more than willing to let a representative of the airport operators take part in that process so there is some real visibility in that, but in the event of there being a dispute it still ought to go up to somebody, I think the Secretary of State for Transport, who is accountable for that decision otherwise I think we end up with very, very fudged accountability. Q455 Graham Stringer: You make a very strong point about accountability but what concerns me is in terms of the external assessment you are trying to keep it in-house. Would it not be better if it was a completely independent security person who could advise both the airport before there was an appeal and eventually the Secretary of State? Chief Constable Todd: If we could establish someone, perhaps the Professor, who is an expert on things I would be quite happy to do that. Where it works well, and if I use Manchester Airport again where there is a good relationship and transparency between the bids put in and exploration of them, it works pretty well, but I do understand historically because of the police putting in their bids for resources I think some of the airport operators have felt this is just a wish-list and whatever the police ask for they are going to get, which sadly is not the case in most other areas of funding. That is what I reckon. I think the Police Service has got to be realistic and involve either the airport operators or an independent party in the decision. Q456 Graham Stringer: Not many years ago, I think it was three years ago, we saw armoured vehicles outside Heathrow. Can you explain to the Committee how helpful they are to security and whether we are likely to see a similar situation at Manchester? Chief Constable Todd: I do not think we would ever see a similar situation at Manchester. We will always do whatever we do on the grounds of a threat and personally I cannot see what appear to be tanks would be repelling a threat at our airport, so I think the answer is no. Q457 Clive Efford: How much of a security threat is posed by vehicles parked in short-stay car parks in close proximity to airport terminals? Chief Constable Todd: It is a potential threat. Q458 Clive Efford: Does the situation need reviewing in that case? Professor Hatcher: I think it is under constant review. Most police forces do have that under constant review. I recently travelled through Heathrow and I was absolutely gobsmacked by the amount of vehicles that were left on the side of the road while passengers ran in to pick up suitcases or drop off some freight. It is a very real threat that needs to be monitored. Q459 Clive Efford: Can I very quickly go back to technology. What is the role of government in developing new forms of technology for security? Professor Hatcher: Have they got a role? Q460 Chairman: That is what we are asking you, Professor, do not cheat and ask us! Professor Hatcher: It was a good effort! Chief Constable Todd: We have something that was called the Police Scientific Research Department which I have to say, again, was part of our blue sky thinking. Whenever we say, "here is a particular threat", whether it is protecting party conferences, protective body armour for police forces, we give them the user requirements and say, "we would like some technology around this, even if it is a total wish-list" and they constantly scan for us - I think it is one of these non-departmental public bodies now - what is going on in the rest of the world, they work together with other agencies, particularly in the States, and they do a pretty good job in trying to constantly say, "Is there any technology we can bring in?" We identify the threat, we identify the need and they try and deliver. Professor Hatcher: The Government has got a role definitely. We go back to standardisation. There are a lot of commercial companies out there that have very good sales people who can sell incredibly expensive equipment that does not quite do what it says on the side of the can. Q461 Chairman: Mr Littler, you have views on this, what is your view? Mr Littler: I think maybe the Government could take a leaf out of the TSA's book in the United States and come up with some serious R&D. The development of the technology has been led by the Americans which means that the people who have benefited commercially have been American companies. Chairman: I do not particularly want to follow the TSA's lead because this Committee has had the opportunity to talk to them in America and we do have quite strong views on some aspects of that. Q462 Mrs Ellman: Are the current voluntary arrangements for Multi Agency Threat and Risk Assessment - MATRA - working effectively? Chief Constable Todd: No. Q463 Chairman: Why not? Chief Constable Todd: This is my view and the view of ACPO as well and all of the airport police commanders. I would probably compare it to where the Police Service was about ten or 15 years ago in partnership working where if everyone sat around the same table for a period of time they had a nice warm feeling that people were working in partnership. In a way that is probably how I would describe MATRA now. The great thing that Jack Straw did as Home Secretary was introduce Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships which brought the force of legislation to say, "You will work as partners and there are accountability processes", and I will come back to accountability, "to make sure that you fulfil your requirements". That is what I think we should do with MATRA. MATRA should be put on a legal footing. Our quick assessment, very briefly, because I know you are short of time, is lack of dynamism, lack of accountability, no bench marking of MATRA across, and it tends to be incident driven at a particular airport rather than a strategic assessment of threat. I got someone who is working on this for me to attend one of the MATRA meetings, and it was only one but I think this is quite representative, and six people turned up, three of them were police officers and one was the note taker. This was not a strategic meeting driving improvements in security at that particular airport. That causes me some concern. It is an improvement, I think the Department for Transport did well to get it on the agenda, but I have to say I think it needs to be put on a legislative footing because this is really important stuff, this is about the security of our airports. Q464 Mrs Ellman: So who should be accountable for making it work at an operational level? Chief Constable Todd: Again, this has been one of the suggestions that I have put to Stephen Boyd-Smith. I think you make it a joint responsibility between the police and the airport operator to treat the airport community like a proper community so they consult people but are jointly accountable and individuals are accountable for the actions they actually take. So you agree an airport security plan at the beginning of the year which says, "This is what the policing is going to deliver. This is what security is going to deliver. These are the physical improvements in security that we need to make" and when the battle plan has to change in light of events you again come together and say, "This is why it has got to be flexible, this is how we are going to change it". Q465 Chairman: What is your involvement with the Cabinet Office and its long-term counter-terrorism strategy? Chief Constable Todd: As a member of ACPO Terrorism Committee we have had an involvement in it and been consulted over it, CONTEST and the four Ps, and it is an ongoing---- Q466 Chairman: Prevent, pursue, protect and prepare. Chief Constable Todd: Yes. Q467 Chairman: How effective is this strategy? Chief Constable Todd: It is effective but, like anything, it is words. As a strategy, like any strategy, it is a way of assembling programmes of work. Within each of those four Ps there is a lot of work going on. Lots of the stuff that I do is around protect and to target harden. More importantly, I am involved in a lot that is pursue because we want to make sure that we do get the people who are responsible for terrorism, but also the preparation side and trying to prevent in the first place, getting into communities that we think are vulnerable and likely to be recruiting grounds, there is a lot of important work there. We have used it as an overall strategy but there is a hell of a lot of work going on underneath. Q468 Chairman: Is the Government giving sufficient priority to transport security within its overall policy? Chief Constable Todd: I think that is difficult for me to judge genuinely, I think that is more a TRANSEC, Department for Transport question. TRANSEC do a pretty good job, they are working far more with us now and over the last years since I took up this responsibility I think the interface between the police and TRANSEC is probably better than it has been for a long period of time. Q469 Chairman: Yes, but we have heard that is not necessarily much of an advance on nothing. Professor Hatcher? Professor Hatcher: I agree with what the Chief Constable said about the strategic level of counter-terrorism that we need to get in place. My concern is the fragmentation process. We should be led by the intelligence services who should be giving us a general threat assessment which should then be filtered down to a tactical and organisational level on the basis of threat analysis. I am concerned, and I have no axe to grind commercially or organisationally, that there is far too much bureaucracy around transport security and not enough flexibility. Q470 Chairman: Let us be devil's advocate for two seconds, Professor. How can you deal with that when governments must have the overall responsibility for protecting their people? Frankly, were it left to the commercial interests in aviation, do not think I am being unkind if I say possibly the standards would not be the same, they might be cheaper. Professor Hatcher: I beg to disagree, Chairman. The security staff at most airlines and commercial companies that I know of are made up of people like Michael, who are ex-Chief Constables and ex-chief policemen who know the ins and outs. I am not talking necessarily about government bureaucracy, I am talking about bureaucracy that is brought in at the organisational levels as well. Chairman: Gentlemen, on that interesting note can I thank you all most warmly. It has been very interesting and we are very grateful to you all.
Memorandum submitted by the British Airports Authority, British Airways and the Freight Transport Association Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Ian Hutcheson, Security Director, BAA, Captain Tim Steeds, Head of Safety and Security, British Airways, Ms Gaynor McLaughlin, Deputy Security Director, Easyjet, and Mr Chris Welsh, General Manager, Campaigns, Freight Transport Association, gave evidence. Q471 Chairman: Good afternoon to you all. I am very grateful to you. May I ask you to identify yourselves for the record? Mr Hutcheson: Ian Hutcheson. I am the security director for the BAA. Captain Steeds: Captain Tim Steeds. I am head of safety and security at BA. Ms McLaughlin: Gaynor McLaughlin, head of security at Easyjet. Mr Welsh: Chris Welsh, campaigns manager for the Freight Transport Association. Q472 Chairman: Can you tell me very briefly how the security alerts this summer affected your business? Mr Hutcheson: The alert had a significant impact on BAA's business. The impact probably varied airport by airport, depending upon the nature of the airport. Heathrow in particular, which operates at full capacity, had some real difficulties. The issue for all the airports is that the requirements for staff were identical to the requirements for passengers. The threat changed at two o'clock in the morning and getting staff in place to manage the airports was extremely difficult and therefore almost impossible to staff the operation at the appointed time. Some airports were able to catch up very quickly where there was spare capacity. Other airports such as Heathrow, where there is very little, if any, spare capacity in the day, were chasing their tails from the very beginning. The fact that the UK aviation industry operated on 10 August was a credit to all those involved. By Saturday the operation was beginning to return right round the country. It probably took a little bit longer at Heathrow for the reasons I have already outlined. Captain Steeds: It had an enormous effect on British Airways. We cancelled 1,283 flights. We affected over 100,000 passengers. We failed to connect the bags of a significant number of thousands of passengers. The main trouble for us after the initial obstacle on 10 August was the transfer issue. We have a very large transfer market and passengers are arriving from airports which did not have the same security requirements as Heathrow and at the flight connection centres at the different terminals in Heathrow the bags had to be removed from the passengers. There is no facility to get those bags into the whole baggage system. The result was that the passengers with bags were told to land. Customers were very cooperative because obviously a significant number of them did not have visas, but they then had to land and go back through security. That resulted in a lot of passengers missing their flights because the then had to re-check in and go back through security. That meant a lot of flights did not have the right number of passengers on board when we wanted to depart them and under the AAA arrangements we had to reconcile the bags with the passengers. This resulted in a number of flights where we had no option but to take all the bags off the aircraft and depart the aircraft with just the passengers on. These passengers who we were flying only had a plastic bag with their passport and travel documents in. They did not have their mobile phone. That was in their bag which was unfortunately left behind at Heathrow. These bags were not lost, to answer Mr Efford's earlier question. They were just misconnected with the passengers and have subsequently been reconnected with them, but it has cost the company a lot of money and it has cost our passengers a lot of inconvenience. Q473 Chairman: So not lost; not even gone before. Ms McLaughlin? Ms McLaughlin: Like British Airways, Easyjet cancelled about a third of its operation on 10 August and smaller amounts on the subsequent three or four days. With the exception of the London airports and the large Scottish airports, the operation at the regional airports recovered quite quickly. Also like British Airways, we had similar problems relating to mishandled baggage. The main issues I think were well described in relation to cabin baggage that was unsuitable for loading in the hold, going through systems that then were overloaded capacity wise. Overall, I think for Easyjet the costs were about 6.5 million for the four or five days that we had the main impact. Q474 Chairman: How happy were both the airlines with BAA's handling of the situation? Captain Steeds: Our chief executive's comments on BAA are in the public domain. At a working level we worked very closely to try and recover the situation together but the issue may be that there were not sufficient contingency plans in place for this sort of action. Q475 Chairman: How did it differ between BAA and non-BAA airports? Captain Steeds: It differed between BAA airports. The airports who recovered quickest were the airports that did not have a significant transfer of baggage issue. Manchester does not have a significant transfer market. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, which are BAA airports, recovered quite quickly as did Gatwick. I do not operate from Stansted so I do not understand what happened there. Q476 Chairman: Ms McLaughlin, did you notice any significant difference? Ms McLaughlin: There was a difference in the speed at which the BAA were able to implement changes compared to some of the smaller airports, which I think is almost inevitable given the size particularly of the London airports. Unlike British Airways, Easyjet does not have a facilitated transfer product. All of the passengers are point to point and therefore we did not suffer in quite the same way. Q477 Chairman: Are there particular lessons that we ought to have learned? Mr Hutcheson: The point I make about the staff is an important lesson. One of the options was to close but I would argue that to effect the scale of change in the security regime that was required would in any event result in some serious disruption. Given that staff are subjected to background checks and we have to apply a risk assessment in deploying new security measures, to have been able to have the staff in place much more quickly would have benefited. Tim makes the point about transfer of passengers which is extremely valid. Heathrow handles 55,000 passengers a day coming from other airports and on 10 August every single one of those arrived non-compliant. In escalating measures to the same sort of scale, we may have to differentiate between different parts of the industry. Ms McLaughlin: We rely on the public being prepared and clearly, with introducing measures at two o'clock in the morning, there was insufficient time to prepare them. Also, we rely on our crew to be part of the whole security process. We had insufficient time to prepare our crew who were equally affected. Captain Steeds: In the immediate aftermath we are going to get disruption but the lesson we learn is the need to have a harmonised approach across the aviation world, with Europe and with the USA, as quickly as possible. Until we do have a harmonised approach, we cannot get back to normal. Our transfer market is significantly down now and continues to be affected because the UK still has a different security requirement from both the USA and from the rest of Europe. Q478 Chairman: Realistically, there will be a difference in the size of the risk to the various countries, will there not? If we are talking about the USA and the United Kingdom there may be some comparison but some other countries will not need the same protection because they will not have the same risk assessments being presented to them, will they? Captain Steeds: Initially on day one I would agree with you but on day two and subsequently was the threat against the UK or was it against aviation out of the UK? Once you have closed the door in the UK, unless you quickly close the doors elsewhere, these people may be able to get on aircraft coming into the UK. Q479 Graham Stringer: Mr Hutcheson, can you describe the BAA's contingency planning process and in doing so tell us whether you have ever modelled for a situation like the one in August? Mr Hutcheson: BAA's contingency plans are wide and varied for many different events and many of them are worked up in partnership with airlines and the police. In terms of additional resource to deal with four times as much hand searching than we normally do, the problem with a contingency plan on human resources is that you do not have sufficient trained resource. What we do have is a significant number of non-operational staff that can be pressed into the operation to carry out non-designated security activities such as loading x-ray machines. On previous occasions this has always been adequate to maintain the operation and the normal flow. On this occasion in the space of four hours we had to deal with staff arriving for work to a completely different regime that had never been operated before. We had to search 100 per cent of the throughput, which was many times more than before. Passengers had to divest themselves of their cabin baggage and their mobile phones and only take a plastic bag. We had contingency plans in place which operated from six o'clock in the morning. At the Scottish airports it allowed them to operate a near normal operation but at Heathrow where capacity is an issue, until terminal five opens, there will be a problem with capacity at Heathrow ongoing. Q480 Graham Stringer: It is not much of a contingency plan, is it, if to implement it in very changed circumstances you do not have the personnel? Heathrow is Heathrow. We know the problems of capacity; we know the percentage of passengers who are changing onto other aeroplanes. What I am trying to get at is you knew all these things previously. Why were they not in the contingency plan? Mr Hutcheson: The reason that they are not in the contingency plan - this applies not just to BAA but across the board - is that security staff have to be licensed and they have to pass a national competency test. They have to be continuously assessed. We would have needed 1,300 additional security officers to man the security to deliver an operation. I would refute that any contingency plan can accommodate that scale of contingency. Q481 Graham Stringer: Was all the management brought in to do the jobs it could do as well as the security staff? Mr Hutcheson: They were indeed. Q482 Graham Stringer: Had you considered training management as back-up security staff? Mr Hutcheson: We had trained management to the degree that they could be trained. You cannot train management to be x-ray screeners. Q483 Graham Stringer: You will have to explain why that is. Mr Hutcheson: The screeners have to undergo a training course and, at the end of that course, they have to pass the national competency test. Having passed the national competency test, they have to be deployed in the operation for a period of time to become competent. Having reached that stage, they are then continuously assessed whilst they are at their work. With management you can get to the training in the classroom. The operational training does give us some difficulty but it is the continuous assessment that is just not possible to achieve in the normal operation on that scale. We have a list of managers and other non-operational people within BAA who have been trained up to the point that is allowed. Beyond that we have to rely on goodwill and overtime. There was a significant amount of overtime worked by trained security personnel to carry out the listed security duties. Q484 Graham Stringer: If there was a similar situation in the future, what would you have changed so that we do not have the chaos that went on for those days in August? Mr Hutcheson: We have carried out a full review together with our business partners to say what worked well, what worked badly and how we improve it. In terms of resilience, how much resilience do we want to build into our contingency plans? At the end of the day there will be a cost because the scale of what we had I do not think would be an acceptable resilience. Having agreed the level of resilience with our business partners, we will identify ways in which we can deliver higher levels of manpower. We are currently looking at several different options which would be to use airline staff who are in the airport. At Heathrow all duty free staff who work in the shops were trained to a degree and that will continue. Q485 Chairman: If you cannot train management because you cannot give them a constant assessment, how could you use somebody who works in duty free? Mr Hutcheson: We use them in the same way. I was just about to say we will still have to overcome how we can employ non-trained security personnel in listed security duties and that is a matter we will have to discuss with the Department for Transport. Q486 Graham Stringer: If you had to say, of the factors that led to the chaos which were the most important ones, was it the lack of staff? Was it the transfer of passengers? Was it capacity? Which was the biggest factor? Mr Hutcheson: It is not one single factor; it is a combination. If you look at the resilience of the airport, I am sure my two colleagues on my left will agree about the resilience of check-in staff when you have a higher level of passengers who are dependent upon online check-in, who suddenly have to use check-in desks that do not have the capacity built in to deal with people coming through the airport in that volume. We have to look at the capacity of the airport, not just the capacity of security. That is why this review has to be done together with our business partners so that we can identify exactly what resilience we want to build into the different functions within the airport. Q487 Mrs Ellman: Is TRANSEC an efficient organisation? Ms McLaughlin: Generally we find TRANSEC to be an efficient organisation. We find that their quality assurance processes are perhaps less mature than the other regulator that we deal with mainly in the CAA. There is less emphasis placed on industry self-regulation and TRANSEC then quality controlling that, which tends to mean that their resources get spread rather thinly and there might be better, more mature ways of managing that process. Q488 Mrs Ellman: Have TRANSEC ever directed you to take some action? Ms McLaughlin: They direct us all the time. That is how the security measures are implemented. They issue directions to us as an airline. Q489 Mrs Ellman: Have they ever had to instruct you to do something you were not complying with? Ms McLaughlin: We have had occasions where we have had discussions about the level of compliance, yes. Q490 Mrs Ellman: How often and in what sorts of areas? Ms McLaughlin: I do not think there is a general debate. They are part of our processes of review at Easyjet. The Department for Transport attend our regular security review meetings so they are part of the ongoing process of security management within Easyjet. Q491 Mrs Ellman: Are there any other observations on TRANSEC on how many times they have had to insist on you doing something? Captain Steeds: One of the issues about TRANSEC is that they have a slightly different standard than our colleagues in Europe. When the Europeans arrived to inspect in February, we found issues which caused problems to the airport and to security. Q492 Chairman: Higher or lower? Captain Steeds: Different. I do not know whether they are higher or lower. Q493 Chairman: Tougher or more flexible? Captain Steeds: Less flexible. If you take aircraft certification which is a far more complicated subject than security, the Americans recognise the Europeans and vice versa. The Boeing 777 which I fly was certified by the FAA. That certification is recognised in Europe and it applies in the UK without any issue. The Airbus A340 was built in Europe and certified by JAA, Joint Airworthiness Authorities, and flies in America with mutual recognition by the American authorities, but when we come to security, when the end goal must be the same for all of us, the Americans do not recognise the European standards, the Europeans do not recognise the American standards and the UK do not recognise either. Q494 Chairman: It seems a very reasonable attitude to me. Have you not heard the saying, "When two men fight the third man wins"? Captain Steeds: That adds to complexity and cost. At the end of the day, it is the passengers who pay the cost and UK plc that takes the pain because of the inflexibility in our system. Q495 Mrs Ellman: How do you know that what you are calling inflexibility and different standards is not protecting the UK citizen? Captain Steeds: If you take a passenger flying from America to the United Kingdom on a British carrier, their bag goes through the American x-ray requirements; it then goes through additional requirements which are imposed by the UK. When that person arrives in the UK, we do not accept that they are clean so we rescreen them again. That causes delay and cost. To what benefit? Q496 Mrs Ellman: Suppose it was argued that the benefit was increased safety. Would you cut costs on safety as an operator? Captain Steeds: No, we would not but we do not believe that is the case. Mr Hutcheson: The Department for Transport balance their responsibilities as a regulator together with working with the industry to develop aviation security very well. What the current situation has done - it is a challenge not just for TRANSEC; it is a challenge for us all - is to say that perhaps now is the time to bring some more radical thinking to aviation security and to bring unpredictability to the measures we deploy in our airports. You can travel the world and aviation security would be a very slight variation of the same theme which I think we should resolve. There should be a fair level of unpredictability which makes security much more difficult to predict if you are coming from the other side. Q497 Mrs Ellman: Unpredictability in standards for passengers? Mr Hutcheson: No, I am not so much talking about unpredictability of standards. I am talking about unpredictability of measures. Most national appropriate authorities operate on 100 per cent measures applied to 100 per cent of the throughput. My view is there is a base line that you apply to 100 per cent of people so that there is a reassurance that you have a level of safety that you require, but then there is a further level that is applied to a proportion of the travelling public. It is quite difficult to predict that element and who it is likely to be operated against. That would give us a much greater deterrent because, certainly in the UK, I think the National Aviation Security Programme is very heavily focused on detention and also deterrence, but the balance may be slightly out of synch. Q498 Mrs Ellman: Are you satisfied about protection for freight? Mr Welsh: As far as air cargo is concerned, yes, we are. We have worked very closely with TRANSEC since the 1991 Lockerbie disaster. That is when TRANSEC started to get more deeply involved in security regulation. It is fair to say that in the early days there was quite a bit of ignorance about how the industry worked, what could work in security terms and what could not. On the industry side we spent a considerable amount of time with TRANSEC trying to explain what would work and what would not work. What came out of that process was the air cargo security regime and the known shipper concept which has worked extremely well since the early 1990s. It has been modified over that time and today we think it is probably a proportionate regime which is enabling regular air cargo to travel through the system with a minimum of delays and an appropriate level of checks. Q499 Chairman: Can I ask you about the security of premises because the known shipper system must operate on the assumption that, because you have this in place, the freight has been properly examined. Are you absolutely certain that you have sufficient control over the physical conditions of the warehousing around airports that make it impossible for people, after the known shipper system has been operated, to add something to an existing cargo? Mr Welsh: Yes, I am. The current system as it works at the moment is that if a shipper elects to be a known shipper they have to fulfil the security arrangements in terms of ensuring that staff are appropriately trained. There is vetting of staff that will be involved in the handling of their freight. There are secure premises. Q500 Chairman: How often as an association would you examine those premises? Mr Welsh: We do not as an association but TRANSEC do, because they audit those arrangements on a regular basis. Q501 Chairman: Have they identified any failures in the last two years? Mr Welsh: The way that it is currently working, known shippers have to be registered with the department and if those arrangements are not to their satisfaction effectively they will de-list them as a result of their inability to maintain those standards, but I am not aware of any shipper having had a particular problem. Q502 Clive Efford: Are any of you involved in submitting claims for compensation under section 93 of the Transport Act 2000? Mr Hutcheson: No. Ms McLaughlin: No. Q503 Clive Efford: Are you satisfied that the government's user pays arrangements of financing security operations are working? Mr Hutcheson: Up to a point, yes, it works. We have had a fairly lengthy debate, both within Europe and within the UK. For security that is generated by the operation of our business, the user pay arrangement is a fair method to fund security. Where we have some difficulty is where additional security is required as a result of national security policy, particularly through counter-terrorism. We do feel that a level of that funding should fall upon the government. This is an argument that applies to the EU particularly because, if you take the European regulation which delivers base line security across Europe, which would also facilitate one-stop security and would do away with quite a lot of the re-screening that Tim talked about, that would benefit the travelling public. There is a view certainly within Europe, which I subscribe to, that the industry should pay the base line but more stringent measures adopted by independent states should be paid for by the government. Captain Steeds: We echo Ian's position. Q504 Clive Efford: Are there any circumstances in which you would resist security measures on commercial grounds? Mr Hutcheson: No. Safety and security are given the highest priority within BAA and I cannot envisage a situation where that would change. Security is not just something that is directed upon us by the government; it is a very important issue for our customers and our passengers. If we did not take security seriously, we would not have a business. Q505 Clive Efford: You are not aware of any circumstances where TRANSEC has been required to impose security measures? Mr Hutcheson: We might have a healthy debate with TRANSEC on practicality, but not on cost. Q506 Clive Efford: Everyone concurs with that answer? Captain Steeds: It would be beneficial if TRANSEC carried out a regulatory impact assessment on what they are doing, on the additional measures above the EU base line, because at the end of the day it is the travelling public that pay. We will do whatever we are directed to do. There is no question about that. Safety and security will come absolutely first. We have recently spent quite considerable sums of money. My ID card used to be a portrait; it is now landscaped. That has cost us in British Airways a lot of money for an airside ID card. Q507 Chairman: What is a lot of money? Captain Steeds: About 15 million in total. Q508 Chairman: Any other costs that you can put on any other additional security measures, the ones that you are obliged to take? Captain Steeds: We estimate we spend £10 million a year on additional measures. Q509 Clive Efford: What proportion of that would the ticket account for, of the total amount that you spend on security? Captain Steeds: We spend £120 million a year on security which works out at about £2.50 per ticket. Ms McLaughlin: I can add Easyjet's perspective. The security costs are not easy to define in that they are often wrapped up in the passenger charges at airports but at Easyjet they are approximately 18 per cent of the fare. That is without the airport APD tax. Yes, safety and security obviously are extremely important but nevertheless they should still be proportionate and still have good value for money. Q510 Chairman: Have you an assessment of the security measures you are obliged to take, apart from that? Ms McLaughlin: Not in total. Mr Welsh: I would like to echo some of the comments that have just been made by Captain Steeds and Gaynor McLaughlin. The security measures do have to be proportionate and we would like to see an impact assessment as to how successful those security measures are. Q511 Chairman: Have you an estimate? How much does it cost the freight industry? Mr Welsh: It is very difficult to put a figure on that because of the additional training costs. Q512 Chairman: You do not have an estimate of what it adds to your costs on particular items? Mr Welsh: I do not have a ballpark figure. Captain Steeds: Can I just expand on my point about the security passes? If you want to go airside in the UK, the legislation requires that you swipe, but there is no national system so a pilot at Heathrow can swipe to go airside at Heathrow but when he wants to go airside at Manchester, unless he has a Manchester card, the systems do not talk and that applies at other airports in the UK. I wonder what the security advantage is. If you take a foreign pilot, who we have no background checks on at all and no knowledge of, they can present an ID card that looks like anything you like and they can go airside. That is why we suggest a regulatory impact assessment that could understand what the benefit is of these requirements before they are introduced. Q513 Clive Efford: Can I come back on the issue relating to luggage? You clarified the position earlier on. Are you saying that none of that luggage was lost so those headlines we saw about breaches in security were exaggerated? You stored them all in a big shed presumably somewhere and gradually you returned them all to their owners? Captain Steeds: Yes. Q514 Clive Efford: That is now something that is completely sorted out. The police must be absolutely delighted that you have a clear up rate of about 30,000 thefts for them around Heathrow. Captain Steeds: I do not believe we had 30,000 lost bags. Q515 Clive Efford: Those are the sorts of headlines that we saw. The interest of the Committee is that if those bags could go missing airport side then there are breaches in security. Captain Steeds: I can assure you that the bags did not go missing. We knew where the bags were. We just did not know where the owners of the bags were. It took some time, a lot of effort and a lot of cost to reunite them. Q516 Clive Efford: We are all relieved that you were able to clear that up. Are you satisfied with the arrangements for paying for policing of designated airports? Mr Hutcheson: We think there should be a ceiling where the security generated by the operation of our business we pay for but, when we get into national security, we should seek some subsidy from the government. Q517 Chairman: Why? Mr Hutcheson: If you look at the security that we provide in terms of screening passengers and their baggage, which is a direct consequence of the operation of an airport, the user pays is an absolutely ideal way of funding that; but since 9/11 the threat to the nation has escalated and there do not appear to be additional charges to other industries consequent to the increase in the security threat. There are increases in security costs appertaining to airports. Therefore, it seems that as we already fund security, where there are additional costs linked to a significant increase in the security threat, that cost also flows through to the operator. It may well be that those threats are not generated by the operation of our business but they could be generated as a result of government activity or government policy. Q518 Chairman: Government policy that involves protecting its citizens is not exactly unusual, is it? Mr Hutcheson: No, it is not but rather than through national taxes ---- Q519 Chairman: Who would take this Olympian decision and say, "This is not a question for the government; this is a question for commercial interests" or alternatively, "This is not a matter for the responsibility of commercial concerns but only of the government"? Mr Hutcheson: TRANSEC could make an assessment of that and make recommendations to ministers. Q520 Chairman: We are not getting very far here. I understand the "not me, guv" theory. It is not entirely unusual but tell us precisely where the line would be drawn. Mr Hutcheson: I can give you a precedent. If you take the threat to aircraft in flight following the attacks in Mombasa, measures have been put in place to mitigate the risk of that type of attack. Currently that is paid for by the government and it is that sort of example that I would allude to. Q521 Clive Efford: There are changes being incorporated into the Civil Aviation Bill. Are you confident that they are going to address any concerns that you may have? Mr Hutcheson: I have to be honest. I have not made a study of the Civil Aviation Bill so I am not totally au fait with its contents. Mr Welsh: On the question of costs and whether the proposals put forward by government are practical or not, it is a question that does need debating. We have tended to concentrate this debate on air transport at the moment but there is a plethora of other security regimes in place for maritime transport. Now, the Home Office and the police are involved in additional security measures that are being introduced. The European Union as well are getting in on the act with security measures. From the industry's point of view, as users of transport - particularly freight - the costs of compliance and the different nature of regimes that industry has to comply with are quite onerous. Indeed, some of the proposals particularly that have come forward from the Home Office in relation to its border management proposals took industry completely by surprise several months ago. They have not been consulting with industry and, as far as we can see at the moment, those proposals are unworkable. Q522 Chairman: With respect, if the government's response was to simply say, "You will not import anything, particularly freight, through these ports" that would have somewhat of an effect on your business, would it not? Mr Welsh: It is quite close to that if we go ahead with the Home Office proposals. Q523 Chairman: You feel the Home Office proposals would stop you? Have you given us a specific note on that? Mr Welsh: I can give you an additional note. Chairman: If it is as dire as that, I think we should have it. Q524 Mr Wilshire: I am sure you will understand why I mention at the outset that, because I represent a large number of people who work at Heathrow, it is important to say that the individuals caught up in the front line worked their socks off and went way beyond the call of duty. If there is to be criticism, it should not be levelled at those individuals. Captain Steeds, why was it that BA appeared to cancel a greater proportion of its flights than the other airlines, particularly British Midland, which is the other big operator there? Captain Steeds: The straight answer is because we have more transfer passengers than the other operators at Heathrow and we got into a position that we could not reconcile the bags and passengers. We were shipping passengers with plastic bags, without their baggage and, at the end of the day, we took the decision to cancel the short haul to try to stop that getting any worse. Q525 Mr Wilshire: Was any of the cancellation due to the fact that third parties asked you to cancel flights? Captain Steeds: Not initially, no, although the BAA did impose a cut - I believe it was 30 per cent - from three o'clock in the afternoon on 10 August which we applied because they had asked us to. Our belief is that not all operators did apply that. Q526 Mr Wilshire: Were the cancellations due to lack of aircraft, lack of passengers or a mixture? Captain Steeds: They were due to the inability of us to get passengers and bags onto the aircraft and to get staff in the right place. On the morning of 10 August, we did not have any refuelling staff who had got through airport security until about nine o'clock. It might have been 8.30 in the morning. We start operations and the first aircraft start arriving, as you know, before five o'clock in the morning and if we cannot refuel them and turn them around we rapidly run out of parking space. Q527 Mr Wilshire: You referred earlier to the frustrations with your chief executive. So that there can be no confusion, for the record, can you tell the Committee what those frustrations were? Captain Steeds: I would prefer, if it is all right Madam Chairman, to give you a written response on that. Chairman: I think that is always wise with chief executive officers. Q528 Mr Wilshire: Could I turn to BAA? The message I am hearing - am I right in getting this message? - is that it was the big airports rather than the small ones that carried the brunt of this? Mr Hutcheson: Heathrow carried the brunt because of the transfer issue. We have to flag up that the transfer issue will remain with us for some time, even after the expected changes in the EU regulations next month. In terms of operating capacity, Gatwick had some delays but operated near normally, near to 95 per cent of flights. Heathrow had a problem in relation to the transfers. Stansted had a particular issue about the method of operation at the airport in that the carriers that operate at Stansted, by and large, like to get four rotations of aircraft out, so you have four very heavy waves in the day as opposed to an even flow of passengers. In the end they overcame that by opening security at three o'clock in the morning, after negotiations with the trade unions, to get started particularly early. Different airports had different problems, but you would be right to assume that the three major airports in the south-east had more difficulty than the other airports. Q529 Mr Wilshire: If big in this case is not beautiful, are we developing an argument for why the monopoly should be broken up? Mr Hutcheson: I am not in a position to answer that question. Q530 Mr Wilshire: I am going round the world with no answers. You said earlier that closing the airport was a possibility. Did the Department for Transport give you that option? Mr Hutcheson: The Department did not give us that option. The threat changed and we were given a new regime to operate from 6am, when the airport opened. At that level of threat assessment, not operating would be an option. Q531 Mr Wilshire: If you were to take such an option, do you have a contingency plan for how you handle the closure, let us say, of Heathrow or Gatwick? Mr Hutcheson: We do. Q532 Mr Wilshire: Would you be willing to share that with us? Mr Hutcheson: I would rather do that in writing. It would be quite complicated. Q533 Mr Wilshire: That is three out of three, Chairman. A lot of the claim and counterclaim that has been made about what went wrong, if anything wrong and, if it did go wrong, who was to blame has been based on general assertions. Again I suspect the answer will be you will do it in writing, but could you for each of your airports tell us on that particular morning what the routine number of people was that you were expecting in to do security work? How many extra people were you able to call on at each of those airports to see what degree of on-call flexibility you had? Mr Hutcheson: That is a significant amount of detail that I would have to forward in writing. Q534 Mr Wilshire: Similarly, there were those who said there were check points that were not being used. For your airports, could you tell us, having done your research, how many check points are available at each of those airports and how many of them were available after you had called in the extra people? Mr Hutcheson: Could I clarify what you mean by "check points"? Q535 Mr Wilshire: The handling of passengers going airside. Mr Hutcheson: Do you mean a complete check point or a lane within a check point? Q536 Mr Wilshire: However you care to define it, if you say it is by check point and how many lanes you have or alternatively the individual lanes you have and how many were open. I think you can see the point that I am trying to get at. Mr Hutcheson: Yes. Q537 Mr Goodwill: Mr Welsh, it is obviously easier to get access to the cab of an HGV than the flight deck of a plane. We only have to see the loads of cigarettes and whisky getting hijacked to know that there is a potential threat from HGVs carrying dangerous loads being hijacked. How realistic do you think the danger is of a terrorist using a goods vehicle to carry out an attack in this country? Mr Welsh: It is difficult to comment on how realistic it is. It is a potential threat. It has been identified as a threat. The Department for Transport and TRANSEC have issued specific instructions relating to the carriage of dangerous goods. They have imposed additional responsibilities on industry in terms of dangerous goods operators developing a security plan, the checking again of staff, training and that kind of thing. The problem over truck theft is quite a serious one, particularly in relation to goods on trailers. There is a number of schemes in place operated by the Metropolitan Police, in particular Truckpol, to help identify the sorts of trailers that might end up being used in a terrorist attack. The one criticism that we have there is that unfortunately not all police forces throughout the country are sufficiently engaged with that process. More effort and more resource could be put into that, we think, by the police. Q538 Chairman: That may be a reasonable argument but if it is true that the National Road Freight Crime Intelligence Unit says that the total value of HGVs and loads between July and September 2005 was £20.2 million I would have thought the industry has a small responsibility for taking some fairly active steps. Mr Welsh: Indeed. Our members are actively involved in that process and we work very closely with the Metropolitan Police and so on to try and deal with that. Manufacturers of commercial vehicles are now producing trucks with security devices, immobilizers and that kind of thing, so a great deal more effort is being made by industry to improve the security of trucks. Chairman: On that very cheerful note, thank you gentlemen and Madam. It has been very instructive. We are very grateful to you all.
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