Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT
HON JOHN
REID, MP, SIR
DAVID NORMINGTON,
KCB, MS URSULA
BRENNAN
24 APRIL
2007
Q20 Mrs Dean: How many staff will
the OSCT have and what proportion of these will be existing Home
Office civil servants?
John Reid: There will be a transfer
out of staff to the Ministry of Justice if you include, say, prison
officers and so on, of around 50,000. The centre for security
and counter-terrorism we envisage would add a capacity over time
of 200, 300 or possibly 400 people who would be in addition to
the existing manpower of the Home Office, although that might
be offset by efficiencies in other areas. It would be specialists
particularly directed towards security and counter-terrorism and
its associated elements.
Q21 Mrs Dean: Have you been able
to establish the likely running costs of OSCT? Will OSCT publish
an annual report?
John Reid: The answer to your
first question is of the order of £15 million is the manpower
cost or person power cost that we think will be associated with
this as it builds up. Obviously it will depend ultimately on our
response to a changing challenge if we want to increase the capacity
or the manpower even further. This is not just redesignating a
minister which is one of the alternative proposals which adds
no capacity and does nothing but give you confusion of command,
control and communication because you then have two ministers
at Cabinet level responsible to the same Cabinet for the same
subject. This is adding real capacity and strategic thought, integration,
personnel and resources in the battle against terrorism. It also
allows the Home Secretary to be able to get up every morning and
say, "The highest priority on my mind is the protection of
the nation and the combating of terrorism along with personal
and community security."
Q22 Mrs Dean: Will there be an annual
report?
John Reid: Can I write to you
on that? [1]The
truth of the matter is I have not given full consideration as
to how you would report and, if you are dealing with matters of
national security and intelligence, there will obviously be areas
of it which would not be appropriate to put into the public domain
but might be more appropriate to put to the Intelligence and Security
Committee or indeed to this Committee.
Ev 13.
Sir David Normington: That is
right. Can I say something about the costs and the numbers? Initially
we are planning to go up to somewhere around 350, within the range
that the Home Secretary described. There are somewhere between
150 and 200 staff in the Home Office already working on counter-terrorism
and we are looking to move a substantial number of those over
time into this office. What we are trying to do as well is to
build up new capabilities, new skills and new ways of working
and to make sure this office is peopled by people from different
backgrounds. We do not want this just to be a Home Office Civil
Service Office. We want to bring in people from the agencies,
people with overseas experience and so on. We will be advertising
the chief post, the director general post, as a public competition,
albeit there will obviously be a relatively limited number of
people who will have the qualities needed and the experience to
lead that. We want to draw on the widest range of expertise we
can.
Q23 Mr Winnick: In the struggle against
potential mass murderers, the struggle for hearts and minds—let
us be blunt about it: in the Muslim community because this is
where the terrorist threat comes from—does it really help
matters that that particular aspect of winning hearts and minds
is split between the Home Office and the Department of Communities
and Local Government?
John Reid: Not just there but
the Foreign Office as well and elements of defence.
Q24 Mr Winnick: In the day to day
scene here, on the domestic scene, it is mainly the two departments,
is it not?
John Reid: There is education.
This is one of the reasons why we needed a new not only strategic
but latterly integrated, cross-government joint centre, precisely
because this is not something where you can pull a lever. The
battle for hearts and minds, the argumentation that goes on behind
this, its relationship to foreign affairs, to domestic/social
conditions, to theology, to politics is so extensive that it cannot
be dealt with just in one area or one department. Therefore you
have to have a mechanism for integrating the various departments
and you have to have a recognition that, although those departments
may have discrete and separate functions, they also have a common
and overlapping cause. That is around this idea of the values
that are enshrined in our lifestyle and our liberties in this
country and which are common to all of us. They are expressed
in different ways at different levels but since they are under
threat and under question and since there is an argument going
on all of them have to be brought together. It is not actually
a weakness or a strength; it is a reality that they are so pervasive
that they run across a lot of government departments and therefore
they all have to be brought together in the way that I am suggesting.
Q25 Mr Winnick: At this stage would
you say we are winning this battle?
John Reid: If you will permit
me to use one of my favourite quotes to, in a sense, not answer
your question, the owl of Minerva will spread its wings only at
the coming of the dusk. We will look back at some stage with the
wisdom of hindsight and the decisions we have taken over a number
of areas, domestically, foreign and so on, will be illustrated
to have been victories in that struggle for values or defeats
in it. I forget the Chinese politician who, when asked about the
effects of the French Revolution, said, "I think it is too
early to say."
Mr Winnick: It was Zhou EnLai, apparently,
but I doubt if he actually said it.
Q26 Chairman: A lot of the questions
from Members have been about the spread of responsibilities across
departments and you have made the case that that has to be such.
Would it have been better though if you had won a position that
enabled you to ensure that departments complied with the overall
government strategy? As I understand it, only the Prime Minister
has the power in this structure to knock heads together to make
sure that all government departments follow the same strategy.
Given the importance you put on counter-terrorism, would it not
have been better if you had been able to gain that power as Home
Secretary?
John Reid: I am not sure I entirely
understand your question.
Q27 Chairman: If the Foreign Office
or DCLG or whatever does not wish to fall in line with the strategy
that you will be overall responsible for developing within the
Home Office.
John Reid: No, for two reasons.
The premise of your question, with respect, is wrong. First of
all, the person ultimately responsible for national security is
the Prime Minister. There is no question about that. What we are
talking about is what are the structures and functions in politics
of the organisation around the Prime Minister.
Q28 Chairman: From your point of
view, you do not regard this as a weakness in the structure?
John Reid: No, indeed.
Q29 Chairman: I do not want to invite
you to repeat what you have said before but I have had that reassurance
from you now.
John Reid: It is not a weakness
because this struggle cannot be fought just domestically. Therefore,
by definition, others have to be involved. What you have to do
is find a mechanism that maximises the impact of the integration
of all of those efforts. That is what I have tried to do. The
reason I stress that is I have read over the past four months
reports that say I wanted this, that or the next thing. They have
all been completely untrue. I have never proposed, sought or indeed
wanted the control, for instance, of SIS to move from anyone other
than the Foreign Office. That would be an absurd proposition to
me.
Mr Browne: Home Secretary, a very quick
question before I get on to the couple that I had planned.
Chairman: If you do you may lose the
couple you had planned.
Q30 Mr Browne: Okay, I will lose
one I had planned. I am particularly interested in whether you
agree with me, Home Secretary, that it would be unacceptable for
the new Secretary of State for Justice, who is responsible for
criminal justice legislation, not to be a member of the House
of Commons?
John Reid: No, I do not think
it is unacceptable. I have put my view on the record on this.
When people have said, "Look, there is a good case for the
Minister of Justice being in the House of Commons", I have
said, "Yes, I think there is a good case", but during
the transition period I think it is perfectly acceptable for the
present Lord Chancellor, who has his relationship with the court
system and so on, to be the person who brings together and establishes
the Ministry of Justice.
Q31 Mr Browne: I will forfeit a second
one just to follow that up. In the transitional period you are
comfortable with criminal justice legislation being the responsibility
of an unelected member of the Cabinet, but in the longer term
would you see that as acceptable or do you think that my constituents
may feel that an elected representative sitting in the House of
Commons ought to be answerable for criminal justice policy to
the House of Commons?
John Reid: Of course at the moment
an unelected member, ie the Lord Chancellor, is responsible for
elements of the criminal justice system, there is no change there,
he has just been responsible for more elements of it. At the moment
he is responsible for the court system. The Attorney-General is
responsible for the prosecution system, another unelected member
who is responsible for elements of the criminal justice system.
There is no change there. It is not whether this is possible or
whether historically it has already happened, both are true, the
question is, is it preferable in the long run. To those people
who have made the case to me that in the long run it is probably
preferable to have it in the Commons I have said I think that
is a very understandable position.
Q32 Mr Browne: Let me get on to the
issues I was going to deal with, in truncated form. To be fair
to you, Home Secretary, the questions have been skewed in this
direction, but we have spoken for the last hour or so almost exclusively
about terrorism, the changing global threat, and I agree with
you about a lot of your analysis, but when I go to my constituency
and talk to my constituents they come up to me again and again
and again and talk about vandalism, graffiti, late night noise,
even litter, what we now group together under the category of
anti-social behaviour. Is there a danger that the changes and
the focus of the person occupying your position will be so preoccupied,
understandably but nonetheless so preoccupied with counter-terrorism
that a lot of the day-to-day concerns and blights on the lives
of my constituents, and no doubt those of everybody else in this
room, will be given a secondary order of attention when perhaps
in the minds of my constituents they ought to deserve the top
order of attention?
John Reid: No, I do not think
so. I understand the question but I think the emphasis that we
have placed as a Government on anti-social behaviour, including
at a time when others, I am not talking about yourself, were inclined
to sneer at it as being beneath the consideration of Government
ministers, by our works in that direction and our emphasis you
will see that there is not any chance of us either diminishing
our normal policing or anti-social behaviour emphasis or subsuming
it under some sort of linear structure which makes counter-terrorism
the predominant shaper of policing or anti-social behaviour, they
are separate areas. That is why I stressed at the beginning that
notwithstanding the fact that we have concentrated on the new
element here, which is the Joint Security Centre, nevertheless
what the new Home Office is about is personal and community as
well as national security.
Q33 Mr Browne: Seeing as I stretched
my luck earlier I will amalgamate my remaining questions. Do you
perceive a danger that some social, political, public concerns—domestic
violence has been cited as an example but maybe also the work
of a police force—may to some extent fall between the cracks
between the two new departments? Although the police are absolutely
the responsibility of one of those departments, they will nonetheless
have to develop relationships and take an interest in the activities
of the other department as well and as a consequence there may
be a degree of uncertainty or lack of clarity in the gap that
exists between the two departments.
John Reid: No, I do not see that
there is any additional gap that has to be bridged. There is already
a gap, for instance, in domestic violence because one of the important
elements in addressing the problem of domestic violence is the
courts actually and special court arrangements and so on to deal
with that. That already sits in a different department. What binds
them together, as I showed in that slide, is the National Criminal
Justice Board. That is where the three ministers for the past
three years have come together, have taken trilateral decisions,
whoever is in the lead in the various areas, and have done it
alongside the representatives of the judiciary, because a judge
sits on that, as well as the police and the other agencies. We
have got already an integrated manner of coming together to discuss
policy and operations through the National Criminal Justice Board
which overcomes any gaps between departments which I hope will
be able, as it has done for the past three years, to address the
very points that you raise. What I am doing is trying to establish
the same sort of thing on the struggle for national security and
counter-terrorism, the same sort of integrated effort.
Q34 Mr Winnick: I think it would
be true to say that both the Lord Chief Justice and his predecessor
are not, shall we say, over-enthusiastic about the changes which
are due to take place, and no doubt you have read what Lord Woolf
told us last week. There is a good deal of concern amongst the
judges about their independence or what they may consider as a
threat to their independence arising from the new Ministry of
Justice being set up. What do you say to that?
John Reid: As I understand it,
and I listened carefully to Lord Woolf this morning, he is saying
this can be made to work but we want to talk about how we make
safeguards on it. I think he said that the key thing was to protect
the wellbeing of the nation, and I entirely agree with that, that
is what is behind all of these moves, the protection of the wellbeing,
the life and liberty of the nation. As regards specifics, I hope
you will permit me not to answer the specifics because until 9
May we still have a distinction in our portfolios where the Lord
Chancellor is responsible for these issues. He has engaged, I
know, with Lord Chief Justice Phillips and others in responding
to these matters and I think it is better left like that for him
to respond under the present arrangements.
Q35 Mr Winnick: Home Secretary, you
do not want to make any comment on a report in The Times
newspaper which said that: "Senior judges have told the Lord
Chancellor that the new Ministry of Justice would be unworkable
without safeguards to protect their independence"? You wish
to make no comment on that?
John Reid: I normally do not comment
on anonymous unattributed quotes anyway. I have commented on what
I have heard Lord Woolf say this morning, which is not anonymous
and it is attributed because he was actually saying it when I
heard it. In general I do not comment on them. In addition, I
am reluctant to comment on something, not just reluctant, I am
not going to comment on something which has already been dealt
with sensitively, I am sure, between the Lord Chancellor and his
judicial colleagues.
Q36 Mr Winnick: Can I ask you this
question. You are both members of the Cabinet, the Lord Chancellor
and yourself, without telling us anything which you two spoke
about in private, obviously you are not going to tell the Committee
and no-one would expect you to, but in general have you and the
Lord Chancellor discussed the implications of what the judges
are concerned about arising from the reorganisation?
John Reid: We have discussed almost
everything relating to this issue. In addition to that, not just
with me but I am sure the Lord Chancellor over the past few years
has been able to reflect on these things because I would not like
anyone to think that this is an idea that has been born just out
of my own deliberations in the past few months, this idea has
been around for a while. It is not entirely dissimilar to, although
it is not exactly the same as, the division of responsibilities
which occurs in a lot of European countries as well. All of this
has been around in the ether and much of it discussed over the
years and most of it discussed in particular between the Lord
Chancellor and me recently, but it is his responsibility to deal
with this particular aspect of it.
Q37 Mr Winnick: Arising from the
reorganisation, in your view is there any danger that the reorganised
Home Office, centred on security and law enforcement, will have
some difficulties with a Justice Ministry dominated by those involved
in law and human rights consideration? Can you see a perpetual
conflict between the two?
John Reid: I do not see any new
tension between, if you want to call it, justice, liberty and
protection of the citizens. There is always to some extent a symbiotic
relationship between the two anyway, I do not see that is created
in any way by the reorganisation of government. Indeed, perhaps
at a time when the threat is higher than ever, and therefore our
response must be more potent and effective than ever, it is a
good thing to have a concentrated mind on judicial elements of
it framed in an institutional fashion.
Q38 Chairman: Can I just clarify
one point, Home Secretary, and I apologise if you have answered
it already. I know you do not want to talk about what the Lord
Chief Justice has said but he did raise a particular issue, that
any changes to the present arrangements would in due course require
legislation.
John Reid: Yes.
Q39 Chairman: In preparing for the
announcement that you made before Easter you must have looked
at this issue and resolved one way or another whether legislation
would be necessary. Without asking you to go into any details
on that, can you tell us whether there will be any legislation
to entrench the new arrangements between the departments of the
sort that Lord Phillips is calling for?
John Reid: I do not think that
is intended at present. I am sorry, at the beginning of your question
I thought you were talking about Lord Woolf's reference to the
sentencing.
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