Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
ROBERT QUICK
QPM
Q120 Chairman: I do not want to get
bogged down in this, but it is instructive to note that, other
than a passing reference to the other three strands, the vast
majority of this discussion this morning has been on the Prevent
strand. Clearly, prevention is better than cure. However, large
amounts of money are being sunk into the Prevent strand and it
is almost impossible to account for how successful or otherwise
it is, and you have alluded to this already, and yet Glasgow Airport,
for instance, when it was attacked, was wide open, there were
no bollards there, there were no anti-crash barriers and, patently,
the threat of the sort of attack that occurred there had not been
considered or, if it had, nothing had been done about it. My view,
as an outsider, is that the Prevent strand is dominating hugely,
but with the other three strands the issue is a bit different
because, frankly, we have had the Pursue strand ever since terrorism
was invented, but Protect and Prepare, I feel, are neglected,
or it is my observation that Protect and Prepare are probably
subordinate to the touchy-feely, immensely difficult-to-assess-and-evaluate
Prevent strand. What do you think?
Mr Quick: I would reject that,
in all sincerity. I think there is a very hard end to this business,
and that is certainly Protect and Pursue, and the softer side
clearly is Prevent. It is less tangible and harder to measure,
but probably in the end it is the most important strand in terms
of getting from the back foot to the front foot in countering
terrorism, so that is a long-term endeavour, without doubt. If
I could give you some reassurance, by aligning our national co-ordinators
to each strand, we now have a Chief Officer of Police leading
nationally and co-ordinating activity not just throughout the
network, but throughout the country in Protect, and we have ACC
John Donlan who oversees the National Counter-Terrorism Office
and the national counter-terrorism security advisers, of which
there are about 240 nationally, and, thanks to the work of Lord
West and indeed yourself, Mr Mercer, in reviewing protection nationally
we have a very strong agenda for protective security and that
is moving on at a very rapid pace. There has been enormous scoping
nationally for vulnerability in crowded public spaces, hazardous
sites and various other designations, transport systems and hubs,
where we have scoped vulnerability and we have deployed counter-terrorism
security advisers to advise the operators of those sites in protective
security. Clearly, we have had to prioritise their work and target
the most vulnerable first, so clearly airports, railways stations,
bus stations, shopping centres, the nighttime economy, all of
these areas are subject to quite intensive work now.
Q121 Chairman: Moving on then, if
I may, to your work in the Association of Chief Police Officers,
in your role as Chair of the ACPO Terrorism and Allied Matters
Business Area, what are the main threats, do you believe, to the
United Kingdom at the moment and how are we meeting them?
Mr Quick: Well, the main threats,
I think, are publicly articulated, they are from international
terrorism and violent extremism, and we are at severe risk of
attack. The current threat level suggests that an attack is highly
likely and can occur without warning, so that is singularly the
most significant threat that we currently face.
Q122 Chairman: In your day job, if
you like, as Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations,
have you got time to be both head of ACPO TAM plus your job and
coming in and talking to sub-committees and committees for two
days every week?
Mr Quick: Yes, because I am completely
devoted to counter-terrorism, security and protection. I think
you lose a lot by separating those functions because they are
all inter-related, and my command was restructured some time ago
to enable this role to focus on that activity.
Q123 David Davies: You have spoken
a bit about this earlier, but you are happy that the co-ordination
between yourself and the 44 police forces across England and Wales
and, is it, 18 in Scotland, that that all works because people
will ultimately answer to you through voluntary agreements? Is
that a fair summary of what you said?
Mr Quick: In an operational scenario,
we are developing new command and control protocols nationally
which, I think, will improve the situation further still. I am
under an obligation to bring back a new command and control national
CT protocol for the Police Service in England and Wales. Our Scottish
colleagues work with us on that and I think it has worked well
and I think it will work well in the future.
Q124 David Davies: And it works well
with the non-Home Office forces, BTP, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary,
MoD?
Mr Quick: Yes.
Q125 David Davies: Again, you would
feel that you have overall charge of the direction of counter-terrorism
operations, even if, technically speaking, a Chief Constable could
override your orders?
Mr Quick: Yes. The strength of
support to this collaboration is unquestionable in my mind.
Q126 David Davies: What about maritime
security because there has been some concern, I think, expressed
about that from other committees of the House? Do you feel that
that is joined up and joined in with the Home Office forces as
well?
Mr Quick: I think there is quite
a bit of work to be done in maritime security. You will be aware
that Chief Constable Hogan-Howe recently gave evidence to, I think,
the Defence Select Committee on maritime security. Again, the
work that we agreed to do in October is now well under way in
terms of strengthening the command and control protocols to deal
with a maritime terrorism incident.
Q127 David Davies: Effectively, the
model which you are using for the Home Office force, which is
chief constables technically having overall control, but, by and
large, delegating that responsibility ultimately to yourself,
that model needs to be put in place with maritime units, but it
is not quite there yet? Is that a fair summary?
Mr Quick: In fact, there is now
an ACPO Maritime Counter-Terrorism Security Strategy and SOP which
would achieve exactly that, so, if we had a secure vessel off
a coast, then we would look to the command being established in
the force whose coast it is off, and the Counter-Terrorism Network
would support that force, but, if it were a moving threat, ie,
one that was not under control, then my deputy, the Senior National
Co-ordinator, would take operational command.
Q128 David Davies: Just to ask you
the difficult one, which I am afraid we have to ask you, given
some of the press speculation, do you feel that your relationship
with the new Chief Constable of the Met is perfectly good?
Mr Quick: The Commissioner?
Q129 David Davies: Yes, the Commissioner.
Mr Quick: Yes. I guess I would
say do not believe everything you read in the newspapers!
Martin Salter: Really? Good Lord!
Chairman: A bit of deja" vu
here, I think!
Q130 David Davies: We shall perhaps
gloss over the implication of that supplementary! What about the
Ministry of Defence? Do you feel that you can call up support
from the Armed Forces, primarily the Army, if you require it,
and that you have that link with the relevant people?
Mr Quick: Yes. Indeed, we have
longstanding procedures to call on military assistance to the
civil power. They are well tried and tested and very well exercised.
My command, the Counter-Terrorism Command, and indeed now the
wider Counter-Terrorism Network exercise and rehearse this almost
all of the time.
Q131 David Davies: Finally, and this
may be something that you would be more comfortable dealing with
at the end, but, to a lay person, it is sometimes hard to understand
exactly why the Security Service has responsibility for intelligence
when, one would assume, that is a role that could be quite easily
undertaken by relevantly trained police officers. It is because
of the difficulty, the understandable difficulty perhaps, in getting
information about how the Security Service operates. One wonders
why and who is actually in charge there. Do the Security Service
come to you and say, "We think that Mr X is suspicious and
we'd like you to keep an eye on him", or do you go to them?
Who is in overall command there because one feels that they are
a completely separate entity almost? Hopefully, certainly you
talk to each other, but who is in overall command of directing
operations? If you do not want to answer that now, please say.
Mr Quick: I cannot give you any
detail about the detailed working practices, save to say I think
the formula that we have in the United Kingdom in countering terrorism
is much-admired around the world.
Q132 Chairman: Can we pursue this
in private or will you give the same response in private?
Mr Quick: I think I am very limited
in what I can say even in private on these issues, but I would
like to offer some reassurance that the police make a huge contribution
to countering terrorism in intelligence terms, but I do think
it is right that the Security Service have the lead because of
the relationship with other intelligence agencies that would be
difficult for the police to achieve.
Q133 Chairman: Just going back to
the CTUs for a bit and talking about military liaison, what embedded
military personnel are there inside the CTUs?
Mr Quick: There are advisers in
the CTUs and CTC who work alongside counter-terrorism officers,
and again they are there themselves to learn and to make sure
that the appropriate state of readiness is there, and we are constantly
revising our protocols and our practice, taking learning out of
exercises that we do jointly with the military.
Q134 Chairman: So there are military
officers who have offices within the CTUs?
Mr Quick: Liaison officers, yes.
Q135 Chairman: They are there on
a daily basis?
Mr Quick: Whether they are there
on a daily basis, I am not sure, but they have desk space and
they work alongside our officers to make sure that our organisations
dovetail and particularly obviously in a crisis.
Chairman: We are moving now on to the
terrorist attacks that we saw in Mumbai, bearing in mind that
in this country we have experienced attacks of this scale before,
albeit not for some years. Clearly, they raise a number of different
questions.
Q136 Ms Buck: Have there been UK
representatives going to Mumbai to actually see on the ground
what lessons can be learned?
Mr Quick: Yes.
Q137 Ms Buck: Are you able to tell
us what the kind of headline knowledge was that was gleaned from
that?
Mr Quick: It is difficult to talk
about that detail, I am afraid, but I can tell you that we deployed
CTC, Counter-Terrorism Command, officers and indeed we have now
deployed officers from the wider network at a very senior level
and they have been given great assistance by the Indian authorities
so that we can extract the learning from their bitter experience,
and we have brought that learning back to the United Kingdom and
it is the subject of work as we speak.
Q138 Ms Buck: Obviously, we would
be interested in knowing more, but I understand if you are not
able.
Mr Quick: I think that does take
us into detailed operational responses that are very difficult
for me to talk about in public or in private.
Q139 David Davies: Just on that subject,
have we sent representatives to any of the previous host countries
of the Olympic Games to learn about past security threats and
ways to deal with them?
Mr Quick: Of course. We have an
international network of counter-terrorism liaison officers and
some of those in countries that are former hosts. I have been
to Australia to learn about their security operations for the
Sydney Olympics. We have officers in Counter-Terrorism Command
who have very recent and detailed experience of the Athens Olympics
who are embedded into our Olympic security planning.
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