Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
300-319)
MS NIKI
TOMPKINSON CB, CHIEF
CONSTABLE BERNARD
HOGAN-HOWE,
MR ROD
JOHNSON AND
MR BRODIE
CLARK
27 JANUARY 2009
Q300 John Smith: Am I right in concluding
that we have the least regulated leisure maritime craft in Europe
and North America—our Coastguard friend.
Mr Johnson: I do not know if it
is the least regulated but I would say it is quite benign as far
as the legislature is concerned, but I do not know where it ranks
with other States.
Q301 Mr Holloway: I appreciate what
Mr Clark says about being in the real world, but equally I have
the Port of London Authority in my constituency and they have
an incredibly good picture of exactly what is in the rather large
area that they seem to patrol. It sounds like an enormous gap
to me; when we are in an environment where there are multiple
threats, the sort of thing that happened in Bombay recently, can
someone tell me where does Jacqueline Smith or Chris Grayling
or whoever is the Home Secretary go when there is a dynamic multiple
incident taking place? Where do they go to be told what is where
and what is coming from which direction and what ship may have
met another ship or whatever it is? Where do they go?
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: There
are two primary sources and the Coastguard are one of them; they
feed their material through to the military and they have a picture,
so far as it is possible to determine it, of those vessels that
are around the coast. It is slightly different, is it not, to
the air traffic control that we see because of the speed at which
aircraft travel, they have to be monitored and managed in a different
way to the speed of vessels travelling, but that broadly is the
best picture we have, which is available either through the Coastguard
or through the military.
Q302 Mr Holloway: But is that good
enough?
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: Certainly
it may not pick up the under 24 metres but there are some environments
where that can be picked up. The question is, is it totally comprehensive?
Okay, there may be more that can be done but there are some very
significant areas that have alternative methods of surveillance
that are fed in through the military. I am not sure it fully answers
your question to give you total reassurance, but there is a level
there that probably could be offered privately.
Mr Holloway: But it is quite a big gap.
Q303 Chairman: The distinction between
those vessels that are under 50 metres and those that are under
24 is only that those between 24 and 50 have to have qualified
people in charge, but neither of them fall under the AIS regime—if
they are under 50 metres they do not fall under the AIS regime,
do they?
Mr Johnson: No, they do not.
Q304 Linda Gilroy: I still do not
have a clear picture, Chairman, of who owns what. If John's worst
nightmare happens who owns the immediate circumstances so that
the response is agile? Jacqui Smith is not going to be the first
to know, nor is John Hutton; how do you ensure that it does not
fall through the net of all your responsibilities if things are
escalated in a speedy and agile sort of way?
Ms Tompkinson: As soon as something
is known at the grassroots level. If, for example a ship puts
in an alert—the Coastguard will be informed and my staff
will be informed. One of the first things they do at a very junior
level is to get that information out to all the players and then
at a strategic level where Jacqui Smith would come immediately
is COBR, which would convene extremely quickly and she would then
get the best possible picture that we all have of what is happening,
where it is happening and who has got assets to deal with it.
By convening CBRA that is immediately where you have all of the
expertise, leading out to the home department and agencies to
bring it together.
Q305 Linda Gilroy: I am just envisaging
that from that very junior level, which is the first to pick up
what is an imminent threat, how does it get through to the level
of doing something quickly and effectively about it?
Ms Tompkinson: Because it will
feed quickly to the Gold commander.
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: I
can see why there is a concern but honestly it does not worry
me; that phone call happens very quickly and it gets through very
quickly to the highest levels. There is not a bureaucracy to go
through; if you get a ship alert that comes through TRANSEC it
will fire its way through all the systems very quickly.
Q306 Linda Gilroy: Does that happen?
When did you last have such a signal?
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: We
have had two at least in the last year.
Ms Tompkinson: The ship alerts
do happen on a regular basis and so far there has been an innocent
explanation for that in the same way that we occasionally get
hijack alerts from aircraft. So the system is tried and tested.
Q307 Linda Gilroy: You are confident
that junior personnel would be taken seriously.
Ms Tompkinson: Absolutely.
Q308 Linda Gilroy: And it would not
be "Are you sure? Go away and check."
Ms Tompkinson: No, absolutely.
Again, these things get exercised so as Bernard said it should
move very quickly.
Q309 Mr Jenkin: Mr Clark, the National
Security Strategy recommended that UKBA take delivery of some
fast patrol boats; have you got them?
Mr Clark: We have got the five
cutters which are the fast patrol boats that are reflected there
and we got those in the merger between ourselves and HMRC.
Q310 Mr Jenkin: Is that new capacity
for you?
Mr Clark: That is new capacity.
It is capacity that was there within the Customs Group but it
is now part of the UKBA set of interventions that we have got
in place.
Q311 Mr Jenkin: Do you think that
is exactly what the NSS was recommending?
Mr Clark: I think so.
Q312 Mr Jenkin: Can you describe
what they are?
Mr Clark: They are 42 feet long,
they travel at 20 knots, they take a staff of 12 people, they
are deployed around the country, normally on a tactical/threat
assessment basis but they can be deployed to support other agencies
in following their critical operational activities. Each of them
has within it a rigid inflatable boat which can take five people;
they can travel at 35 knots—I can carry on with the description
if you want.
Q313 Mr Jenkin: Is five enough? We
have a large coastline.
Mr Clark: Yes, we have a large
coastline but my earlier point was that you have to make sensible
and reasonable judgments and decisions on the basis of the risk
and the threat around the UK. We will deploy those five effectively
and they will add to the value of security for the UK border.
Q314 Mr Jenkin: Has Northern Ireland
got one, has Scotland got one?
Mr Clark: They are not allocated
in that way. They are allocated around the UK in terms of what
the assessment at any time is in terms of threat or risk, so they
are not linked to a particular part of the coast. Invariably the
greater part of the deployment is around the southern parts of
the coast and the eastern parts of the coast but that does not
exclude other areas where we will go and test risk from time to
time.
Q315 Mr Jenkin: Generally would further
surveillance capacity and interdiction capacity be helpful—and
this is a question for all the witnesses really—or do you
feel you are adequately covered?
Mr Clark: Can I make a couple
of comments? This is a risk assessment business, it is not one
model fits every part of the country, so in a sense your conversations,
lots of people talking together, are bringing together threats
and risks around the UK in order to know where best to deploy
those resources that between us we have actually got, separately
and in support of each other. In a sense of course all of us could
use more resource, but actually there is a reasonableness around
what we have and that is deployed on the basis of risk and threat.
Q316 Mr Jenkin: You have got enough
and nobody is going to highlight any shortages?
Mr Clark: Not highlighting concerning
threats and risks to the UK but always if there are more resources
you could further develop technologies and of course we would
all welcome that, but what we have we are delivering individually
as agencies and also together.
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: One
thing I would support Brodie in is that if you remember I said
there were 43 forces of which 12 have a marine capacity, boats
of various sizes and various types, which means around 115 vessels
of which a third, broadly, are with the Ministry of Defence. If
you take the Ministry of Defence as an example, they will be grouped
around their particular assets to make sure that they protect
and assist in surveillance around their assets, but if you follow
Brodie's line in the event that you need to move some of those
resources around the coastline, then that is what we would need
to do. Forces have invested in that type of asset, as has the
Government. The boats are the things that are quite expensive
to buy and it is putting the staff in them that makes them expensive
to run. Of course, you could make an argument that every coastal
force ought to have some capacity but not all parts of the coast
are navigable by the types of boats that we would have, so there
is a reasonableness test. We have got a capacity, however, for
the Police Service to deploy in terms of surveillance, which takes
me back to one of my first points: if you want to confront something
like an oil tanker it would not be a wise option. There are some
things they can do but they cannot do everything. Do we need to
invest hugely in that at the moment, I would think not.
Mr Clark: Where we see higher
risk we look to share and invest and we have got some shared investment
with Kent Police in terms of a launch that they have; we operate
that in effect together for our joint interests.
Q317 Mr Holloway: Who has patrol
boats for example in our ports? Is it the police and Coastguard?
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: It
is quite a mixture if you go around the coast and you could have
a map of where all these boats are positioned. Then of course
you have got the Private Port Police in some places who have their
own craft as well so there is certainly a significant surveillance
capacity.
Q318 Chairman: You have just told
us that there are 115 vessels available, of which about a third
are owned by the Ministry of Defence. When Minister Ainsworth
was in front of us Mr Jenkin asked: "How many vessels are
available to Her Majesty's Government, Royal Navy, Coastguard
and other government agencies, for coastal protection?" The
answer was: "We have two frigates effectively, one fleet-ready
escort available at short notice, and we then have another frigate
that can supplement that [ ... ] Then we have got three river-class
offshore patrol vessels and there is always one minesweeper."
That does not sound to me like a third of 115.
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: Chairman,
I saw that transcript and I think the gentleman who was answering
may have been answering a different question. I think what they
were being asked was "What is your military capacity to respond
to something at sea if there is a need for military intervention?"
The Ministry of Defence Police retain some small craft for surveillance
and when I answered Mr Jenkin those are the numbers I was talking
about. Generally we would operate within rivers, to some extent
at sea and, to be honest, I do not know exactly how we operate
all the time. The numbers I am talking about include the smaller
craft, not what might be seen as the sea-going fleet, so that
may be a reason for the discrepancy but obviously I do not know
exactly why that gentleman answered in the way he did. That was
how I read it.
Q319 Chairman: How many Ministry
of Defence vessels, of whatever size, would you say were available
to do some of this surveillance or responding work?
Chief Constable Hogan-Howe: I
think the figure is 45.
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