Examination of Witnesses ( Question Numbers
1-19)
SIR HUGH
ORDE AND
CHIEF CONSTABLE
TIM HOLLIS
13 OCTOBER 2009
Q1 Chairman: Sir Hugh, Mr Hollis, thank
you very much for coming to give evidence today. I know that you
have had other engagements, Sir Hugh, and we are very grateful
to you for sparing your time to come and see us. As you know,
the Committee has embarked on an inquiry into counter-terrorism
generally so we are going to ask you a couple of questions about
that in view of your vast experience in Northern Ireland and then
we are going to move on fairly swiftly to ACPO and issues concerning
ACPO. Sir Hugh, you courted controversy in 2008 when you met with
Loyalist paramilitaries. Do you regret what happened? Are you
glad you did it? Do you think police officers in other parts of
the United Kingdom ought to be engaging with extremists?
Sir Hugh Orde: In terms of controversy,
it is a judgment call, frankly, Chairman. When I took over in
Northern Ireland I formed the view that I would talk to anyone
who wanted to make a difference to policing. Against that background
I have talked to extremists from all sides within the Northern
Ireland context and not only that, of course, I have a policing
board which I am held to account by, which has people who have
interesting histories on and I am obliged to communicate with
because they are the accountability body in Northern Ireland.
My learning from it, frankly, is it is good to talk. Certainly
the state where Northern Ireland was of course when I took over
it was the only way forward and I think a consequence of those
conversations, difficult though many of them were, was that people
are alive today who would not have been and that is a pretty good
backdrop against which one can justify those decisions. What I
did not do was compromise my position as a police officer. I made
absolutely clear to all those who I did speak to, be it privately
or indeed on some occasions publicly, that I would do the policing
role and they needed to be aware of that but I was happy to listen
and try and understand where they were coming from so they could
bring their communities with them and, by and large, they did
of course. You know the great complexity of Northern Ireland and,
of course, the endgame is difficult and it is more dangerous now
than it was two years ago, quite frankly.
Q2 Chairman: Your recommendation
to colleagues in the Met or those urban areas where some of these
threats have been identified would be to talk to extremist groups,
whether they be in mosques or wherever, and start an engagement
process without compromising obviously their position as police
officers.
Sir Hugh Orde: I think there are
those conversations which take place with people who have access
to people who perhaps had extremist views already. It is how you
do it, it has to be bespoke to the situation you are facing. I
am not saying that the Northern Ireland model would work over
here, the endgame of terrorism in Northern Ireland is fundamentally
different from the challenges faced by the mainland forces currently.
No-one has yet been able to give me an example of any terrorist
campaign, for want of a better description, that has been resolved
simply by physical force or military intervention. I am not sure
there is one, but I have not heard about it.
Q3 Patrick Mercer: Sir Hugh, this
sounds like a broad question, but if you could keep it as narrow
as possible. What are the main lessons in countering terrorism
that you have learned in the service of Ulster?
Sir Hugh Orde: Of course I took
over when the actual real terrorist threat of the Provisional
IRA and, indeed, the major Loyalist groups had realised they were
not going to win the so-called war. I was not there at that point,
so perhaps that is a question better directed at others. I think
the police role is a relentless pursuit of those who are engaged
in serious criminality, which of course is what terrorism is,
to create the conditions where they come to terms with the fact
they are not going to win this war and come to the table. If you
look at the history of Northern Ireland, that is where it got
to. The RUC was very successful in preventing and detecting terrorist
offences to the point where the world moved on. The first point
is we have our primary duty which is to preserve life and enforce
the law. That is what we bring to the party.
Q4 Patrick Mercer: At a much lower
level I was profoundly impressed by the establishment of the Regional
Transition Co-ordinating Groups, RTCGs. Has it not surprised you
that it has taken the English, Welsh and Scottish establishments
so long to replicate something like them in the shape of regional
intelligence units?
Sir Hugh Orde: I think it was
driven by the threat quite frankly. It is a matter for UK forces
to work out when they move in that direction. I think what it
does identify is the complexity of British policing. We have 44
police forces. The regional centres have been a great example
of the ability to bring together to deal with more strategic issues
cross-force a structure that is working. I know Margaret has already
spoken to you about that and she would be far better briefed,
as would John Yates, than I on the intricacies of that, but it
shows we can do it. Of course to achieve it cost a lot of money
and it would not have been achieved, quite frankly, without that
pump-priming from Government to make it happen that quickly. My
personal view and the current position of ACPO is that larger
forces are the way to go. I think if you do that, what you achieve
are far less false boundaries, barriers and personalities, quite
frankly. What you do is you create larger units that can deliver
against the international and national threat at the top end of
the business without compromising local policing. That is doable.
Q5 Mr Winnick: Sir Hugh, we saw on
television screens in the last few days the dissident Republican
group, trying to get as much publicity for itself as possible,
paying tribute to someone who died in a suicide or otherwise.
Undoubtedly there has been tremendous political progress in Northern
Ireland, whatever may be the position at this moment in time.
Are you at all surprised that dissident Republican groups have
resurfaced?
Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, and, as I
said, in about 2007 the world was looking very positive. In about
2007 we started to pick up intelligence of small groups, Real
IRA, Continuity IRA, Oglaigh na hEireann, starting to build some
level of greater support, albeit small in the context of Northern
Ireland so, yes, I was slightly surprised that they had held on
as long as they have. I thought the endgame was always going to
be difficult. What I do know is there is no support within communities
as evidenced from the feedback after the murders of the two Sappers
and, indeed, my officer, Stephen Carroll, just a few months ago.
On the most difficult and challenging estates there was a groundswell
of disgust that would not have been seen seven years ago. They
are still isolated; they still have sufficient grip to be very
difficult. What is critical at the moment is the support from
An Garda Siochana which we are getting at 110% because many of
the attacks are mounted from the Republic of Ireland and again
making sure that our resources deployed on terrorism in Northern
Ireland are not denuded in any way, shape or form. They are beatable,
but it is going to take a little time. Of course, Government gave
us additional funding to make sure we did not drop the critical
intelligence effort against these people because on many occasions
I can say with absolute clarity events have been prevented, disrupted
and not gone ahead because of the very effective use of intelligence
from ourselves, An Garda Siochana and security forces.
Q6 Mr Winnick: You are reasonably
satisfied that nowhere near the sort of violence which existed
for 30 years is likely to return to Northern Ireland insofar as
anything can be certain about Northern Ireland.
Sir Hugh Orde: I think it is a
fundamentally different threat. If it does start to gain any ground,
it will be a different sort of campaign. This is not the Provisional
IRA, it does not have, as a starting point, that depth of support
within any community. Loyalism has moved on in that sense. Loyalist
terrorist groups, so-called, are basically criminal organisations
now, they are not a threat to the State. In terms of dissident
Republicans, they do not have that support. On the murder of Stephen
Carroll, the information that came from a deeply Republican community
was substantial and where they could not give evidence or information
they gave support and that is why it is different.
Q7 Chairman: Could we now turn to
general ACPO issues. Could I start by asking, if you had three
top priorities as the new President of ACPO—it is one of
the top jobs of policing in the UK—what would those three
priorities be?
Sir Hugh Orde: The first would
be to go back to Ireland, frankly, Chairman!
Q8 Chairman: Matt Baggot might have
something to say about that.
Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, he would.
I thought running Northern Ireland was difficult until I took
over this job. A number of things. One is I think we need to be
very clear about what ACPO is. In my judgment it is the professional
voice of the Service. I am supported by three vice-presidents,
of which Tim Hollis is but one, Sir Norman and, indeed, Matt Baggott
being the other two, but of course I am the only full-time chief
constable involved in ACPO. These people have a day job. I think
we need to become the voice of the profession and fill the gap
perhaps where HMIC has gone in a slightly different direction
where traditionally it would have been seen as the voice of the
profession, that needs to be our role. We need to be very clear
on that, I think. That would be the first one. I think the second
one would be clarity on how we are organised. I have no difficulty
with being a transparent organisation. We are more than happy
to be subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, most
of our information is owned by chief constables anyway so it is
absolutely retrievable, but I do think we are more than happy
for that and work is underway on that front with legislation that,
I am told, will be necessary to achieve it. I think transparency
is important and also we need to be clearer on how we articulate
what we do, which is a huge piece of work. We try and draw together
common policies across 44 forces so there is a consistency of
approach on the key issues of policing, be it crime, terrorism,
operational policing or diversity. Different chief constables
do this in addition to their day job. I have asked for a piece
of work to be done to clarify, if you want to do it differently,
and I am happy for that debate, what would it actually cost because
this work is done by my colleagues in addition to other pieces
of work. I think a professional voice for the Service, clarity
about what we are here to do in terms of national policy against
a localised backdrop and I will ask Tim Hollis to give the third
because I cannot think of one.
Chief Constable Hollis: I think
the big issue for us is the high level protected service meets
the complexity of policing, Chairman, and to retain the balance.
Last Friday you will be aware there was a big announcement on
the delivery of the Policing Pledge which is very much about the
grass roots of policing, delivering for local communities at neighbourhood
policing level. Sir Hugh already indicated, and there was a question
from one of your colleagues, that the high level issues around
the serious organised threat of crime, counter-terrorism, cross-border
co-operation and joint working are also part of that same tapestry
of policing. There is a tension in policing between the local,
national and regional work currently taking place.
Chairman: We will be coming to all those
points with questions for you shortly.
Q9 Tom Brake: Sir Hugh, you said
you want ACPO to be the professional voice of the Service, but
at the same time ACPO is being given powers which are statutory
powers which mean that in some respects it is a public body. Is
it possible to be both a public body and the professional voice
of the Service?
Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, I think so.
We have very little power. I have no power, I have influence frankly.
I can influence 44 chiefs so I can try and get commonality of
approach and because most police officers come from roughly the
same point we can deliver a degree of consistency against an operationally
independent bunch of people, but I think we can be, yes. I do
not see where the conflict is, if you could help me with the particular
detail of what causes you concern.
Q10 Tom Brake: Would you agree that
the fact that ACPO is part financed by the Government, part financed
by the police authorities, as Lord Stoddart of Swindon has said,
really means that, in effect, you are a public body which has
specific responsibilities and which needs to be open and transparent
I think in the ways you said you wanted it to be, but in some
ways that does conflict, does it not, with what you have described
as being the professional voice of the Service because those two
things may not always sit comfortably together?
Sir Hugh Orde: The short answer,
I think, is no. All police forces are funded by public money and
chief officers are not backward in coming forward with their professional
judgments on things. Frankly, I think the financing of ACPO is
not satisfactory. I am absolutely up for debate on how ACPO is
financed and there may be a better way.
Q11 Tom Brake: I am sure we would
like to hear.
Sir Hugh Orde: There may be a
better way of doing it. I do not know the answer. I started conversations
with the Home Office when I took over. The budget of ACPO is about
£2 million to run the business and we handle money on behalf
of the Home Office which goes to forces, about £17 million
last year, if I remember. Very pragmatically about ten years ago
to try and get some transparency on what was a band of volunteers,
ACPO became a limited company. Am I comfortable being a limited
company? No, I am not frankly. I think that it is an awkward mix,
but at least it gave us an ability to hire people, to rent premises,
to do the hygiene factors and to publish accounts so we could
have transparency in our accounts which are, by the way, as ever,
unqualified. We had to have something. I am absolutely happy to
have a debate with whoever it needs to be on is there a better
way of structuring ACPO. The question I would raise is if people
think they have a better version we need to step back and reflect
on what it would look like and what it would cost because at the
minute the actual running of ACPO's central office, which co-ordinates
all this work and brings together the chiefs, the assistant chiefs
and our experts from our support side, is £2 million. To
beg and borrow, as we do, some from police authorities, some from
the Home Office, smaller amounts to do specific research is not
a satisfactory way of running what I think is a very important
piece of business.
Q12 Tom Brake: Do you think the fact
that there is not any clarity in terms of the funding arrangements
is actually getting in the way of ACPO doing the job it is supposed
to do?
Sir Hugh Orde: Yes, I think it
does.
Q13 Tom Brake: In what way is it
getting in the way?
Sir Hugh Orde: It gets in the
way because it is a very easy shot that ACPO is this limited company
full of people. I am not sure the public understands the Association
of Chief Police Officers is a limited company. As a member of
the public that seems a bit strange, so I think it is a debate
to have. In the meantime we have to have some legal status so
we can run the business, and that was exactly why it was set up.
It was not for some deeply sinister reason. All chief officers
deliver additional work at no extra money. The police authorities
allow them to do it, and thank heavens they do. I am very interested
in sharing the load and we have a conference in November to see
if we can widen the load across the 360 or so members because
some of our guys are doing a huge amount of national work as well
as their local jobs.
Q14 Bob Russell: Sir Hugh, looking
back to the speech you gave to the ACPO conference in July, what
do you see as being the greatest challenges facing the Police
Service over the coming decade?
Sir Hugh Orde: The obvious one
is funding, money spent on policing. About 80% as you will know
is spent on people, about 61% on sworn officers, about 19% or
20% on unsworn officers. Any substantial cut into the budget against
a backdrop of increasing efficiencies being delivered over the
last five to ten years at some stage will have an impact somewhere.
Our job has to be to make sure the frontline is protected as best
as it can be. In relation to that, the debate around the structure
of policing comes to the fore. With Tim and colleagues, having
attended every party conference in the recent months the debate
around a formal or independently led review of the police structure
does not seem to be on any party's agenda. I think the White Paper
will come up with encouraged collaboration which at best will
be suboptimal. We have got a struggle there, a challenge, and
we will do our level best—Tim will speak more eloquently
on this because he runs the front end of the business—to
make sure the front end is protected. That is a key issue. In
terms of crime trends, I think the terrorism issue has to remain
right at the top of the national agenda and international agenda.
I know you are seeing people specifically in relation to that
so I will not touch on that in detail. Organised crime, cross-border
crime, and we have many borders, is also top of our agenda. I
was at a regional meeting only last week where the south east
region is mobilising already to reflect the HMI's report on getting
organised around organised crime, Bridging the Gap, and
I am at Suffolk tomorrow to look at the eastern region. The work
is going on and at the front of every colleague's mind is, "How
can we do this without something else giving?" The reality
is that police officers say "yes" to everything. I think
what you will see in the future is, "If you want more of
this, please tell us what you do not want" because people
are very good at adding stuff on, they are not very good at taking
stuff off, and it is those hard choices.
Q15 Ms Buck: Sir Hugh, can you give
us an indication of how many targets you feel the Police Service
is now working to?
Sir Hugh Orde: Well, I have only
got ten fingers so I will ask Tim to deal with that because he
deals with this on a daily basis.
Chief Constable Hollis: I carry
some personal baggage here in the sense that I am Chief Constable
of Humberside Police. When I took over that force in April 2005
it was a force that was in special measures, it was engaged with
the Home Office on the Police Standards Unit and we were in a
difficult place on a very narrow set of targets to deliver. We
have now moved on and the comment is that the Home Office and
the Police Service have one the overarching target, which is public
confidence, albeit it is articulated as public confidence in the
police and the local authorities delivering satisfaction on crime
and anti-social behaviour, so it is quite a complex one but it
is one target. The other targets do still remain and are still
being monitored. There is a tension for us at the moment as police
chiefs about where we put our energies because, albeit we are
working hard to deliver the confidence target, and that is being
monitored, there is the PPSG—Police Performance Steering
Group—which is chaired by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of
Constabulary, which is a shift from the Home Office responsibility,
but which is still monitoring police forces individually and collectively
and comparing between similar families of forces on a fairly narrow
range of particular targets. The question was about are we working,
to one national target—confidence—and I think that
is right, but in practical terms we are also trying to manage,
monitor and deal with a plethora of other targets that we are
managing, not just to the PPSG, there are other people who come
into police forces to challenge you, looking at performance and
inspect. There are multiple targets we are trying to manage simultaneously.
Q16 Ms Buck: How many would you like?
Chief Constable Hollis: You do
need targets. We are accountable to the public, and there is a
link here between police accountability, be it to police authorities
or whoever, and understanding what is being delivered by the local
service. The majority of people in this country will judge us
by how it feels for them within their neighbourhoods. They judge
us by the feel, how their families and friends feel about the
local police. As a public service we clearly do need to be able
to articulate and account for performance. It is not as simple
as saying "Just get rid of targets". We do need a well-informed
debate between ACPO, the Association of Police Authorities and
the Home Office to agree what are the critical ones and what are
the ones that are less critical, the risks involved are less significant,
and where perhaps we can spend less time. With any target you
need to capture data, record data, collate it and send it up the
chain, so there is a link here to the performance and bureaucracy
in the recording issue.
Q17 Ms Buck: Can we have a slightly
more sophisticated debate about this because it seems to me, Sir
Hugh, that you told the ACPO conference that targets were not
disappearing as quickly as you would like, the Home Secretary
said there is only one target, and you say there are a number
of operational targets for judgment and, indeed, accept that has
to be so as a management tool. It is very hard to understand how
it is possible to do without targets at all to monitor performance
and efficiency. It seems to me that debate is being conducted
at an air wall level and the Home Secretary, public opinion and
yourselves are not really engaging at the same level of debate.
How do we resolve that?
Sir Hugh Orde: I think you just
described the complexity of policing and it is very hard to get
a satisfactory set of measures. I am absolutely for confidence
in policing and fear of crime, I think that is what the public
understands. One could simplify what we have. Frankly, if you
are thumped you are not that interested if it is a section 18,
a section 20 or a section 47 or the fine tuning of crime recording,
which actually adds huge complexity to describing what is going
on on the streets. A radical look at how crime is recorded may
go some way to establishing a new baseline as confidence in stats,
as we all know, has plummeted, and it could not get any lower,
and that might be quite helpful in being able to capture some
sensible numbers which people understand, violence being one area.
If we look at the Americans, and they are not necessarily the
best place to look, they really only have confidence now in their
murder figures because dead bodies are hard to hide, but if you
look at other trends of violent crime they tend to track murder,
and that has been going on ten to 15 years in the States. If you
follow the murder trend, the trends around violent crime and knife
crime tend to mirror it in the large cities. A different way of
looking at it in which the public have confidence is critical.
I have no difficulty with Her Majesty's Inspectorate going into
the outward-in look, that is where the Inspectorate is now positioned,
which is fine, that is representing the public view of policing
and it has been a fierce advocate of public policing. I have no
difficulty with challenge. I think colleagues would plead for
a simplification of the number of agencies and bodies involved
in the oversight. Northern Ireland was a case study. I needed
four PowerPoint sites just to get the oversight bodies' logos
on to the screen, and we were a hub of the industry. I think if
we had some more simplicity around who we are being held to account
to and how we are being checked, that may add some more clarity
to that process.
Q18 Chairman: I think we would be
astonished at what Mr Hollis has said, that in order to bring
these targets or decide on the right targets there ought to be
discussions between the Home Office and ACPO. Surely this is what
you do all the time. Is ACPO not in and out of the Home Office
on a regular basis discussing things?
Sir Hugh Orde: I have not got
a pass!
Q19 Chairman: Apart from you, Sir
Hugh, is that not how it all works, that you work very closely
with the Home Office on a whole range of issues?
Sir Hugh Orde: Certainly since
I have been here I think we have achieved a step change in relationship.
Too much was done on paper, frankly, and understandably the Home
Office moves on fairly tight timescales. Working with Stephen
Rimmer and the Permanent Secretary we now have an ability to pull
together the right people in my world. I see one of my roles is
to bring together the experts in whatever field it is, be it crime
recording, issues around the White Paper, accountability, to make
them available to those who are charged with legislating and influencing
policing, and to have a frank and open discussion. We were asked
to do that, we delivered it and I am happy to deliver it again.
Yes, the door is open within the Home Office. I do not want to
be in a position where I am seen as shaping to the point of influencing
inappropriately because accountability has to be independent and
it is that balance. I am very conscious of that balance and it
feeds in some sense from the question from Mr Brake on accountability.
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