Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
ROBERT QUICK
QPM
Q100 David Davies: Is there a danger
of conflict between who is running these CTIUs where, as you said,
the local Chief Constable is in charge, but ultimately the CTIUs
answer to the CTUs who answer to Counter-Terrorism Command who
answer to you, so who is actually going to give the orders? If
you want to give one set of orders, can they be countermanded
at a CTIU by a local Chief Constable?
Mr Quick: Well, in theory, they
could because, as I remarked earlier, the direction and control
of chief constables in their force areas over their resources
is unassailable. However, in practice, that has never happened,
to my knowledge, in over 40 years of countering terrorism in modern
times and indeed the risk of that happening now is probably lower
than ever before as a result of operational agreements that have
been achieved in very recent years and, most notably, last October
where the concept of the Police Counter-Terrorism Network was
agreed by chief constables across the country.
Q101 David Davies: How does Scotland
fit into this because they have a slightly separate system and
there must have been issues when the attacks happened in Glasgow
Airport last year?
Mr Quick: Indeed. They are a very
active participant of counter-terrorism in the UK. ACPOS, the
sister organisation to ACPO representing the Scottish forces,
have joined the collaboration in ACPO and indeed they have themselves
in Glasgow a counter-terrorism intelligence unit which works alongside
our CT resources in England and Wales. In fact, you would hardly
know that they were actually in a different country in a sense.
Q102 David Davies: But ultimately,
as you have just said, although things are not set in stone, basically
through the arrangements that you have got, you are effectively
in overall command, so we know where the commander is and, even
though a Chief Constable, theoretically, in England and Wales
could step in and cause you problems, the precedent is not there,
so hopefully they will not do that.
Mr Quick: Correct.
Q103 David Davies: But Scotland is
a different kettle of fish, is it not, because you do not actually
have direct control over the equivalent of the CTIUs and the CTUs?
Mr Quick: Well, indeed that is
correct, there is a difference because their resources are funded
differently, but of course you have the same issue in that the
CTIU in Scotland is under the direction and control of the Chief
Constable of Strathclyde Police who is very much a member of this
collaboration and joins us at the Police Counter-Terrorism Board
and sends representatives to my primary Board, which is the ACPO
TAM, The Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee, which meets four
times a year.
Q104 David Davies: What about Northern
Ireland, while we are looking at the devolved regions?
Mr Quick: Well, they fit under
the ACPO structure because of course that is England, Wales and
Northern Ireland. They have established their own CTIUs in Northern
Ireland. Of course, their history and context is somewhat different,
but the relationship is very strong. They are very strongly represented
at the ACPO TAM Committee meeting and they are represented in
all the different work programmes and working groups that we establish,
so really it is very difficult to differentiate them from other
parts of the structure. The differences of course between England
and Scotland are jurisdictional and legal issues and in fact,
since Operation Seagram, which was a response to the Haymarket
and Glasgow attacks, we have undertaken a good deal of work and
have started now jointly to train officers in legal and jurisdictional
issues. We are looking at improving command and control issues,
although they did work in response to those attacks and clearly
there were some issues that we identified during that response
that we have since taken forward to resolve, so we have made very
good progress, I would suggest.
Q105 Chairman: We will probably come
back to you on question two, but the next couple of questions,
Mr Quick, are slightly counterintuitive. Before that, the PSNI,
the tasking control groups, TCGs, that used to exist there, have
they now gone to be replaced by a CTU?
Mr Quick: For counter-terrorism
in England and Wales, and of course again it is a slightly different
set of arrangements in Northern Ireland, there is local tasking
at force level, there is regional tasking, which the CTIUs and
CTUs oversee, and then there is national tasking and co-ordination,
and our sister organisation for counter-terrorism, the Security
Service, are represented at those levels.
Q106 Chairman: But have the TCGs
gone in Northern Ireland?
Mr Quick: That is a question I
could not answer directly.
Q107 Chairman: Sorry, it is an arcane
question. Would you be kind enough to let me know?
Mr Quick: I am not quite sure
what your question is trying to achieve. The co-ordinating and
tasking groups occupy themselves with broader force-level tasking
for crime, organised crime and the deployment of all force assets,
and there are specific CT tasking mechanisms.
Q108 Chairman: I will not take you
down that rabbit hole. My concern over this is that we seem to
have this Counter-Terrorism Network grafted piecemeal over the
independent constabularies up and down the country. Do you believe
there is an argument for Counter-Terrorism Command, or whatever
term we could care to give it, being made a separate command in
its own right with its own Chief Constable, or whatever appointment
we want to give the head of this, which operates as a national
body rather than the, understandably, fragmented organisation
that we have at the moment?
Mr Quick: Well, I would, with
respect, challenge the notion that it has been grafted on piecemeal.
In fact, it was grafted on very precisely, deliberately and in
a particular way on the basis of a lot of analysis and a lot of
consultation, and it has the support of all the chief constables.
I think what we are very close to achieving, and I would accept
there is still a good deal of work yet to be done, is the best
of both worlds because we have a very highly devolved policing
structure in the United Kingdom, as you will know, and great benefit
is derived from that and, indeed it could be argued, it has been
the envy of many other countries elsewhere. We need to retain
that because in the end countering terrorism is all about communities
and the support of communities. However, I think the arrangements
that chief constables agreed to last October amount to a virtual
national set of arrangements, so we have an organisation that
can replicate a national organisation if it needs to do so, it
can task over 3,000 counter-terrorism officers and staff in England
and Wales as a whole in concert, if necessary, and it is absolutely
connected to every police force in this country, so I think, in
a sense, we are pursuing the best of both worlds because there
are obvious disadvantages in disaggregating counter-terrorism
from the wider policing structure and separating it. In this way,
it is deeply embedded into policing, so there is a direct connection
from me, as ACSO, to every constable on every street corner or
police community support officer on every street corner in the
country, and actually through our tasking structures, if we need
to affect their behaviour in extremis and, from lunchtime
today, require them to do something different, we have the mechanism
to do that.
Chairman: That leads us nicely into Mr
Davies's question.
Q109 David Davies: Which is whether
or not there is any truth in some of the press reports recently
that SO15 might be broken up with Anti-Terrorism and Special Branch
separated.
Mr Quick: I do not think there
is any truth in that whatsoever. I think that is a popular notion
in the heads of perhaps some dyed-in-the-wool officers and staff
who hark back to a bygone era. I think the whole function of Special
Branch is evolving very quickly nationally. As you will know,
in Counter-Terrorism Command we brought together what was SO12,
Special Branch, and SO13, Anti-Terrorist Branch, into a more integrated
set of arrangements, so there are no plans to do that. We are
constantly looking at how to improve the intelligence function,
particularly now that so much emphasis, quite rightly, is shifting
to the Prevent strand of countering terrorism and the intelligence
requirements that would enable us to give our partners, whether
they be local authority chief executives, education, specialist
schools and others, the right information so that they can understand
the local vulnerabilities and risks that they need to be active
in helping to manage.
Chairman: That again takes us straight
into the Metropolitan Police Service and Project CONTEST.
Q110 Ms Buck: Can I ask you a bit
about the practical process of deciding how you resource and deliver
on the four strands because, if you have got to keep all of those
in balance and, to a certain extent, taking action under one can
effectively undermine the others, particularly on the Prevent
strand if you get that wrong and even sometimes if you get it
right, but what is the actual mechanism for how you think about
the resources and priorities you are going to put into each of
the strands?
Mr Quick: Well, each strand at
the national level has a set of priorities and objectives, and
how we sought to organise ourselves to make sure we keep the very
balance that you have suggested is required is that we re-aligned
our national co-ordinating team, so we have the Senior National
Co-ordinator in DAC McDowell who provides oversight for all the
operational activity connected to the four strands and he, in
London, runs weekly and bi-weekly tasking and co-ordinating meetings.
In addition to that, we now have a team of co-ordinators, so we
have a co-ordinator who is allocated directly to the Pursue strand
of CONTEST, so his responsibility, working to John McDowell, is
all of the policy and procedural development to pursue an investigation
and developing and building the capability. Then we have a National
Co-ordinator for Prevent, who is ACC John Wright and John oversees
Prevent. Then we have Commander Gargini, which is the same rank
as Assistant Chief Constable, he is the Co-ordinator for Prepare,
and then finally we have ACC John Donlan who is the Co-ordinator
for Protect. There are two levels of tasking. Within ACPO TAM,
there is primary tasking of all the policy and development areas
of police counter-terrorism, which is chaired either by me or
my deputy, Deputy Chief Constable Margaret Wood, who sits in ACPO
TAM, and operationally by DAC John McDowell in the Met.
Q111 Ms Buck: Are you constantly
struggling to reconcile competing demands from all of those different
strands?
Mr Quick: Yes. There will never
be enough resource to deal with the work that we need to do. Having
said that, of course police counter-terrorism resources have grown
very significantly in the last two years. We have seen a 40% increase
in headcount since 2006 and we now have this very significant
infrastructure outside of London comprising well over 1,000 personnel,
so our capacity to move forward has been enhanced quite dramatically.
Q112 Ms Buck: In the mainstream police
activity, I find that the way that you structure tasking can make
a huge difference to the type and quality of information that
you end up with. Are you confident that the structures that you
have for reviewing what comes up and shapes your tasking process
is really grassroots? How do you test it?
Mr Quick: Yes. Am I satisfied
it is perfect? No. I am satisfied it is a lot stronger than it
was a few years ago and of course, from the bitter experience
of the last few years with some dreadful atrocities and indeed
plots that were foiled which, had they come to fruition, would
have led to dire consequences, we have learnt a great deal from
that experience and we have made changes to the way we collect
intelligence and the way we support the Security Service, who
of course are the primary agency for counter-terrorism intelligence.
Indeed, I would say that the relationship between the police and
the Security Service through these more recent times since 2001
has gone through a complete revolution.
Q113 Ms Buck: The engagement officer
structure, is that the right way to go having this sort of separately
designated local structure? Would it not make more sense to have
those as tasks as part of the mainstream policing activity, or
do you think they really do add value?
Mr Quick: Well, I think the tasks
are a mainstream policing activity. I think neighbourhood policing
teams across the country do play a very important role in countering
violent extremists and indeed terrorists, so that is why the police
were very supportive under the Prevent strand of CONTEST that
we had a very localised delivery structure, so neighbourhood policing
teams and security teams in London are absolutely on the front
line here for Prevent. They are simply supported by locally deployed
counter-terrorism engagement officers and counter-terrorism intelligence
officers who are there to provide front-line policing teams, communities
and other public sector partners with the information they need
to understand the risks and the nature of the threat and vulnerability
and to engage effectively with the public, so our engagement officers
provide briefings to neighbourhood teams, in particular, and they
disseminate key bits of intelligence about vulnerability and they
receive key bits of intelligence. The CTIOs, the intelligence
officers, receive information about vulnerability back and we
can match that with other intelligence that we might have to build
a better profile of a place, it could be a meeting place, it could
be an individual, it could be a group, in respect of whom we fear
that there are vulnerabilities in relation to extremist views
and potentially moving to violent extremism.
Q114 Ms Buck: If you could have one
thing done better or more, what would it be?
Mr Quick: I think it would be
understanding the social and psychological dynamics of extremism
and radicalisation. We are in uncharted territory here. There
is of course a lot more credible research available now than a
few years ago, and indeed I would say that the Security Service
have undertaken some very revealing research about how the process
of radicalisation works and that is giving us some cues as to
what to look for and how to open up a dialogue with communities
about how vulnerability may be seen or identified. I think the
test for the police actually in the eyes of many communities is
whether, under the Prevent strand, our interventions are actually
not law enforcement interventions, that we get ahead of this before
people cross the line of offending behaviour, unlawful behaviour,
and we get to them before that occurs, and our interventions may
be through education, local authorities, or maybe through the
voluntary sector. Indeed, for example, the Association of Muslim
Police support our work by mentoring young people in communities
who, we fear, may be on the track towards extremism and violent
extremism and try to get them and coach and mentor them out of
those influences and into a more productive lifestyle. I think
we are in the very early stages of building an infrastructure
on the ground with our partners that gives us a range of interventions
that we could deploy, according to the need.
Q115 Martin Salter: Following on
from Karen Buck's questions, you seem to be saying, Mr Quick,
that there is a long way to go and a great need to have a lot
of our urban communities where there is a substantial population
of young Muslims, in particular, policed by people from within
that community. There seems to me, in my multicultural community
of Reading, to be a yawning gap and where we have got Sergeant
Adiz who is doing a fantastic job in my constituency, you notice
a palpable difference in attitude. Is that one of the objectives
of the Prevent strand?
Mr Quick: Very much so. If I can
steal your words, the utopian position really is that communities,
in effect, police themselves. They are given the tools, the information
and the understanding and they can actually help themselves to
identify people who are vulnerable and at risk because it must
be better that we can intervene in this risk through non-law enforcement
options and get to people before their lives, and the lives of
others, are blighted by offending.
Q116 Martin Salter: I will just go
off piste a little on this one because I notice the engagement
programmes that take place, and you will be aware that Reading
is one of the areas for it, but what is the actual term for them?
There are a number of pilot areas, are there not, where there
is a specific dialogue?
Mr Quick: There are Prevent pilot
areas and then there are the PV funding areas, preventing violence
funding.
Q117 Martin Salter: Those are the
ones. I have attended, with the Chief Constable, a number of those
sessions and the dialogue can be incredibly academic. You seem
to end up with a lot of students, Hizb ut Tahrir turn up in force,
and we kind of rehearse arguments as if we are a debating society.
I am not actually sure that a lot of that initiative is getting
down into the grassroots, but it is a meeting about meetings for
people who go to meetings. As part of the Refresh Strategy, are
you looking at that again?
Mr Quick: Yes, we are certainly
looking at it and, for example, we have four areas in London where
we are trialling our approaches to Prevent and we are already
now reviewing that to say, "Well, is this biting? Is it delivering?
What do the public and the communities think about how we're doing
this? What do our partners think? Can we actually assess its impact
in an objective way? Can we tell whether we are preventing people
becoming violent?" It is in its infancy, there is no doubt
that this is still very early days, but, having said that, there
are countless examples across the country of really good dialogue
and debate with communities and partners and intervention.
Q118 Martin Salter: Let me put something
to you, and just bear with me, Chairman, on this one. The stuff
that I have seen work is not a bunch of academics having rehearsed
arguments as if it is some kind of replay of an Islamic version
of politics in the 1970s, but where you have got strong role models,
often ex-offenders of knife crime and the rest of it, who will
then come back into the communities, get kids involved in sport,
get kids involved in coming to community centres, doing something
constructive, getting them off the streets, to me, those people
are at the cutting edge of a Prevent strand rather more than the
esoteric debates which I have seen taking place usually promoted
by well-meaning people and local councillors who act for equality.
You are nodding very encouragingly.
Mr Quick: I recognise some of
what you are saying, and again I would entirely endorse your message
that the real value here is in finding good role models who can
relate to the vulnerable. Sometimes, that can be police officers
in local teams who are capable of achieving that. We bring in
of course others perhaps from outside and, as I have said, the
Association of Muslim Police have played a very keen and active
role in London and beyond, and we are hoping to extend that, where
they are providing role model leadership in their communities
and others. The Channel Programme, which is a national programme,
is precisely aimed at the point you are making of finding people
who have credibility with those at risk and who are capable of
having a dialogue with them that they would relate to about their
lives.
Q119 Martin Salter: Yes, and the
Chairman and I are both involved in Northern Ireland, with different
hats on actually. One of the most impressive bits of the Prevent
Strategy that I have ever seen were former Republican and Loyalist
paramilitaries coming out of the Maze and going into schools and
telling kids, "There is no glory in this". It does seem
to me that we have developed immense counter-terrorism capability
in Northern Ireland and it would be a great shame not to build
on some of the experiences that we have learnt over there both
in terms of conflict-resolution and in terms of the Prevent Strategy.
Mr Quick: I entirely agree with
you, and we have role models exactly like that in some of our
communities. We have not got enough, but there are people, who
have held very extremist views or were even persuaded towards
violence, who have retreated from that position and have said,
"Actually, there is no glory in this. This is wrong",
and they are engaging with young people in their communities very
productively. The risk that we all share, I think, is that occasionally
we may get this wrong, we may utilise the assistance of someone
who presents as one thing and may be another, but we will do our
best to make sure that we are dealing with bona fide people whose
opinions we may not like, whose politics we may not like, but,
if we share one common thing that we are opposed to violence,
then I think we can work together.
|
