Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
MR CHARLES
FARR, OBE AND
MS GILLIAN
MCGREGOR
26 FEBRUARY 2009
Q160 David Davies: Women, gays, all
the rest of it.
Mr Farr: Correct, all of those
things, reprehensible. Equally, Qaradawi is one of the most articulate
critics of al-Qaeda in the Islamic world. I think for any government,
and I really passionately believe this, this is a real problem.
If we refuse him a visa people will come back to us and say, "Hang
on a moment. This person is coming here to speak against the organisation
which most threatens you. Surely you need to operate within a
degree of latitude which allows that". I do not say that
is a compelling argument.
David Davies: It is a moral dilemma;
I agree.
Q161 Ms Buck: It is a fantastic example
of the dilemma but it did not come out at all.
Mr Farr: No.
Chairman: You mean it was not communicated?
Ms Buck: No.
Q162 David Davies: But, actually,
if it had been communicated, it would have come over as being
rather cynical anyway—we are only letting him because he
is attacking our enemies.
Mr Farr: I do think that is, by
the way, a perfectly good argument and Qaradawi is a current issue
for us: should we just refuse him a visa? By the way, his programme
on al-Jazeera is probably the most watched programme on al-Jazeera
and, of course, he will go on al-Jazeera as well and say he has
been refused a visa to the UK. We could live with that, but certainly,
when we put advice out to ministers, we have to say, "That
is what is going to happen and you need to weigh this in the balance".
Q163 Chairman: Coming back to current
and future threats, either of you, please, or both, what are the
areas of UK counter-terrorism policy that most concern you?
Q164 Mr Farr: May I interrupt. I
was very interested in your line of questioning with the London
Underground people. I wanted to say something about this. If you
try to respond to that sort of problem with your protective infrastructure
you will not succeed. That is why most of our investment has gone
into what we call Pursue because that is still where you have
got most chance of containing the problem. It is still a very
difficult one but it is easier than trying to protect this city,
even the Whitehall secure zone, from the threats that we can imagine
over the next few years.
Q165 Chairman: The thing that concerns
me particularly with the Tube is that first of all it has been
fingered as being a primary target. It has been attacked at least
twice, maybe more than that,. I take all of your points but I
am still not convinced about the amount of deterrence that is
being used. That leads neatly onto the next question, which is,
what do you see as the greatest threat or threats to the United
Kingdom at the moment?
Mr Farr: In terms of people who
are threatening us or types of attack or both?
Q166 Chairman: Can we start with
types of attack, please? In your assessment what will be the future
most likely UK targets and types of attack against the UK? We
have already covered that but what can we do better to mitigate
against these styles of attack?
Mr Farr: I hope that we are doing
all that we can, because if there is something there which we
have not thought of then we will have failed. I do not think we
are doing it perfectly and I am sure there are areas where, particularly
if we had more money, we could do more; there always are. To me
our response must be based on continuing to consolidate and use
to best effect the resources that we have been given by the Government
over the last three years. First, broadly speaking, Pursue stays,
for the agencies and the police in particular. Secondly, we have
to continue to build up—and we have put a huge amount of
money into this—the Protect architecture. That is everything
from borders (really critical; we need to do more) back through
all the things I have just mentioned—critical national infrastructure,
crowded places and the softer targets; and, thirdly, of course,
we need to prepare for the prospect that an attack will succeed.
I do not see any real gap that we are not trying to fill, which
is not to say that we could not fill it quicker if we had more
money, but this is the real world and I understand that choices
need to be made and I am not suggesting that we do not have enough
money. I think proportionately we probably do.
Ms McGregor: I think another important
aspect of that is the way we try to exercise from these scenarios.
We have a national counter-terrorism exercise programme and that
involves all the police forces across England, Wales and Scotland
in rotation, and all the time when we are thinking about the scenarios
for these exercises, which involves government, police, the military,
we are looking at the new threats.
Q167 Chairman: Thank you, and that
takes me straight on to the next question. Again, I am making
a comparison and I appreciate that it is probably not a very clever
parallel, but we were quite good at saying, for instance, that
the IRA used single tube mortars with home-made explosive; the
next style of attack is going to be a multitude of mortars with
commercial explosives. That is very simplistic, and generally
speaking we got it right. We did not necessarily prevent it but
we predicted it. What is your prediction like and how successful
is it?
Mr Farr: There are various ways
of answering that question.
Q168 Chairman: You are familiar with
the work of ARAG, the Defence Academy's Advanced Research and
Assessment Group?
Mr Farr: Yes.
Q169 Chairman: Do you have an equivalent?
Do you need an equivalent, or can you use them?
Mr Farr: Can we use them? I certainly
know the people there and other people in my organisation do talk
to them and we make use of some of their work. They have produced
literature on radicalisation in this country, for example. Do
we need an equivalent? I think yes and no. We need an equivalent
in some areas but generally, of course, we look to JTAC to perform
some of the functions that ARAG might be performing for MoD. Where
I think we do need our own research capability, and we have got
one, is particularly around the Prevent space. It goes back to
your question: what drives radicalisation? I think to a degree
that is up to us to answer, and I think we need it in the communications
area, understanding how people communicate to us and working out
how we respond to them. I am thinking in particular of terrorist
organisations. In those areas I think we have got our own research
programmes. Otherwise, we tend to rely on existing organisations.
Chairman: Thank you very much. I have
to say these have been extremely refreshing answers. I am sorry
to sound patronising, but they have. Let us move on to radicalisation.
Karen, we have probably touched on a lot of this already.
Q170 Ms Buck: We have covered a lot
of it but I have two specific things about radicalisation. One
is the foreign affairs impact and particularly in recent times
what you have been picking up around Gaza. Certainly, among some
of my community there is absolutely no doubt that Gaza is the
worst thing that has happened since I have been in public life
in terms of Muslim reaction, much worse than Lebanon, even though
the Government's position was much more helpful in response than
it was at the time of the Lebanon conflict. The second thing is
an assessment of economic impact and whether you have a view about
the recession and the extent to which that will have an effect.
Mr Farr: Can I make a very quick
comment about radicalisation? It is a subject in its own right.
It has become a huge issue for the academic world as well as the
intelligence and security world, what drives radicalisation. I
have two or three remarks. One, there is no consistent answer
to the question: what drives radicalisation? It varies significantly
from country to country. Two, it varies most significantly from
one terrorist organisation to another and even within a terrorist
organisation what drives the leadership as opposed to the foot
soldiers is very different. There is also a lot of rubbish out
there, you have probably read some of it, which collapses all
those things into one big basket and comes up with a generalisation
or several generalisations which are often the source of some
despair to us and can be very misleading in policy development
terms. In simple terms, for us, subject to those criteria, we
think of three factors driving radicalisation, some political,
some psychological and some behavioural. Political factors driving
radicalisation certainly include foreign policy, or rather, more
strictly, a perception of foreign policy. They certainly include
people living overseas, the experience of living in failed or
failing states. They certainly include the experience of conflict.
And, going back to your second question, they include the experience
of deprivation, inequality, and, as it were, missed opportunity;
I put it like that, and we can talk about that. There is a range
of psychological issues driving radicalisation which I think are
particularly relevant in non-Muslim societies where there are
issues about identity and the relationships between individuals
and their families, their communities and the state itself. In
very simple terms we think of radicalisation as having political
drivers, psychological drivers and behavioural drivers. Amongst
the political drivers are, as I have said, foreign policy and
certainly economics. If you then look at the impact of the recession
in this country, of course, it could be quite problematic. There
is no doubt that under-employment and under-achievement can drive
radicalisation. There is some very interesting literature around
on how radical Muslim organisations in this country have recruited
people. We have done some research on that and some academic research
has been done which is really good. These organisations have talked
about how they recruit people and have told us that there are
two real drivers—a sense of thwarted ambition and racism.
Those two things encourage people to join that group. It does
not make them terrorists but it does get them on the track. It
is a long answer to your question. We look at radicalisation under
the three headings—political, psychological, behavioural.
Under "political", yes, foreign policy creates grievances,
or the perception of foreign policy, and the recession could do
so too.
Q171 Ms Buck: That is very helpful.
I completely accept those tiers of psychological and behavioural
as well as economic. It is also true to say, is it, that in addition
to the pure radicalisation dimension some of these factors are
relevant for you in terms of the Pursue agenda? It is the extent
to which a wider community that is not itself radicalised is influenced
by external political and economic factors in its willingness
to engage and pass on information?
Mr Farr: Absolutely. Let me put
it another way. There is a group of people that have been radicalised
and are committed to violent extremism and the only solution to
that group of people in this country is criminal investigation
and prosecution. There is a much larger group of people who feel
a degree of negativity, if not hostility, towards the state, the
country, the community, and who are, as it were, the pool in which
terrorists will swim, and to a degree they will be complicit with
and will certainly not report on activity which they detect on
their doorstep. We have to reach that group because unless we
reach that group they may themselves move into the very sharp
end, but even if they do not they will create an environment in
which terrorists can operate with a degree of impunity that we
do not want. By the way, that generalisation applies in other
countries as well. We have to reach that group. That is to a degree
what Prevent is all about.
Q172 Ms Buck: It raises an interesting
question because you mentioned the far right earlier on. By and
large I do not detect that there is much in the way of organised
far right terrorism, although I think there is violence on the
periphery, but there is a growing number of people voting for
one far right party in particular. I think that what you have
just described amongst the Islamic community be reflected in that—a
smallish number of people who will commit violence, a large number
of people who, for a variety of reasons that you mentioned: unemployment,
poverty, various social factors, are drawn towards that philosophy.
Do you think we need perhaps to be reaching out to those sorts
of people as well and saying, "Come back. All is not lost.
There are reasonable alternatives to what you are doing",
because I think we should and I do not think we do it with the
far right. I think we do it, rightly, with people getting involved
in Islamic extremism but not in far right extremism.
Mr Farr: I basically agree with
everything you have just said. I am slightly nervous about it
because you see the waterfront of counter-terrorism expanding
even further than it has done, but it is not necessarily—it
rather reminds me of the conversation we were having earlier—a
counter-terrorism issue; it is a community cohesion issue. It
is an issue about social policy. I would definitely say, yes,
you have to address both problem areas. Indeed, unless you address
the second the way you address the first—targeted aid assistance
programmes inside the Muslim communities—it simply risks
pushing your other community further to the right as they feel
disenfranchised and discriminated against. You can see in the
work we are doing in areas where the far right have got local
government representation how difficult that can be for us. We
have to be very careful.
Q173 David Davies: Absolutely. In
canvassing I have spoken to plenty of people who would otherwise
be quite respectable who are voting for the far right and who
should not be.
Mr Farr: This goes back to my
issue about communications. This is why communications are so
difficult. You can construct a communication strategy which will
suit the Muslim community, but you will run it into some white
communities and they will regard it as being evasive and unreal
and that we are pandering to a certain point of view and not taking
a sufficiently robust stance towards it. I do not defend that
point of view, nor do I think it is accurate, but it would be
idle to deny that it is not a perception that we have not come
across.
Q174 David Davies: I think you have
given us some very interesting food for thought there.
Mr Farr: Yes. We have to be aware
of them.
Chairman: Prisons, mosques.
Q175 David Davies: There is radicalisation
going on in prisons; we think there is. Are you aware of that
and, if so, what role do you have in preventing it?
Mr Farr: We are very aware of
it Muslims constitute a disproportionate percentage of the total
people in prison in this country, somewhere between 12 and 13%,
from memory. That is over 8,000 people; it is a very significant
group, and we know that once they get inside prison there is a
danger that they will be radicalised. It is not a danger just
in this country; it is a danger throughout every prison system
in the world, including the United States and prisons in the Muslim
world as well. There is an additional risk that, for entirely
legitimate reasons, people can get converted in prison to Islam.
We are very aware of the risks. Since we were created, and it
was one of the priorities we were given, we have worked very closely
with the Ministry of Justice to develop a counter-terrorist programme
inside prisons. I do not think you are taking evidence from the
Ministry of Justice but if you had more time it would be well
worth doing, if I may say, because I think it is not yet a success
story but it is a story of real progress. We have certainly enhanced
the intelligence infrastructure in prisons; we have created an
intelligence infrastructure, in fact, working very closely with
the police as well. Of course, we are anticipating—which
is already happening—what we are going to do when people
who are convicted of terrorist offences are released; that sounds
very odd but it is already happening, and when they back into
the community what are we going to do about that? There is a very
large complicated programme run by NOMS, the National Offender
Management Service, under the strategic framework that we have
provided. We are funding it. They do not have enough money so
we have transferred some of our programme budget, and it is a
good thing that we are able to do that, into the Ministry of Justice
to enable them to get it off the ground.
Q176 David Davies: What percentage
of that 12 or 13% were Muslims when they went in, because I have
always had probably a stereotypical view that one problem you
do not have in the Muslim communities is the petty crime that
plagues other communities because Muslims tend to be very law-abiding?
Mr Farr: Most of the 12 or 13%
were Muslims when they went in. I do not have that statistic but
definitely most would have been.
Q177 David Davies: Am I wrong in
thinking that? What you are suggesting is that there is a bigger
problem with crime in the Muslim community.
Mr Farr: Yes, there is, absolutely.
Q178 Ms Buck: Predominantly young
Muslims.
Mr Farr: Yes.
Q179 David Davies: Young males.
Mr Farr: Yes, less than 30.
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