Project CONTEST: The Government's Counter - Terrorism Strategy - Home Affairs Committee Contents


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.



 
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