Examinationof Witness (Question Numbers
300-319)
MR CHARLES
FARR
15 DECEMBER 2009
Q300 Mr Winnick: **********************
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Mr Farr:
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Q301 Mr Winnick: ***************************
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Mr Farr: ***********************************
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Q302 Mr Winnick: Thank you very much,
I will not pursue that further. You have given us some background
and that is very useful. The previous Home Secretary, John Reid,
said that the threat facing Britain was "seamless".
If indeed that is the position, Mr Farr, as far as you are concerned,
does it make any sense for there to be a segregation of work between
the foreign, domestic and military intelligence? Would we not
feel more secure perhaps if such coordination took place?
Mr Farr: I would quibble, if you
will forgive me for doing so, with the term "segregation".
I do not think one should mix up the different organisations we
have with, as it were, different operational roles and operational
reality. Put it another way: we do have an organisation here,
MI5, which predominantly deals with the collection of intelligence
about the domestic threat and we have another organisation, ***************************,
which deals with the collection of intelligence and disruption
of the overseas threat. The key point is, although organisationally
separate, those work seamlessly together. They have joint sections
and communicate regularly every day. They have people in one another's
organisations both in this country and abroad.
Q303 Mr Winnick: Every day?
Mr Farr: Every day, every hour.
Their communications are common. One organisation represents the
other overseas. We have a unique integration of overseas and domestic
investigational and intelligence capability and if we did not
have that then we would indeed be at severe risk. I do not think,
and this goes to the question I was asked at the Sub-Committee
meeting, there is significant additional benefit from the integration
of the organisations to justify the very significant disruption
and, indeed, costs that would be involved. I think that is a lesson
from the States.
Q304 David Davies: I have a supplementary
but you have sort of answered it. You obviously know a lot more
about the intelligence world than I do and you say as an expert
that it would not work. I can only say as an outsider with some
business experience that it seems to me you have two sections
essentially trying to do the same thing and it would look as though
there might be an argument for having two departments at the same
organisation rather than two totally separate ones. Again, I have
to accept that you know more than I do.
Mr Farr: Well, it is a perfectly
reasonable proposition and I entirely see on the face of it the
logic, but I come back to the point that they are to a very great
extend integrated. Jonathan Evans may speak to you more about
this perhaps this afternoon, and I hope he will do so because
it is a fundamental point and I hope we can satisfy you on this
otherwise we will not be doing our job. There are joint sections
in London, joint targets, joint requirements, joint reporting,
transparency between one team and another. I do not know a single
operation run by a domestic service which is not visible to the
external service and vice versa. I still believe that the differences
between the organisations are sufficient to justify, as it were,
the different organisational structures, so long as the synergies
that I have just described remain and, indeed, grow over the next
few years. That is the intention.
Q305 Bob Russell: Mr Farr, continuing
that line of questioning, how is counter-terrorism demarcated
between the Home Office, the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism,
the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and the Cabinet Office?
Mr Farr: If I can take those in
turn. JTAC, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre that you referred
to, which of course predated CT, the organisation that I am responsible
for, is responsible for the analysis and assessment of intelligence;
it is not responsible for policy or strategy. Broadly speaking,
they are the interagency responsible for assessing the product
and we are the coordinating body responsible for strategy, policy
and implementation. The Cabinet Office, before the existence of
OSCT, used to do the strategy on counter-terrorism and had that
role since 9/11. When OSCT was created that role passed from the
Cabinet Office to OSCT and with it, of course, responsibility
for CONTEST, the counter-terrorist strategy, meaning that the
Cabinet Office now has really quite a small role on counter-terrorism.
Q306 Bob Russell: Why is the National
Security Secretariat not housed within OSCT?
Mr Farr: Because the National
Security Secretariat does a whole raft of business way outside
counter-terrorism and, therefore, it is more appropriate that
it sits at the centre in the Cabinet Office.
Q307 Bob Russell: So presumably there
are advantages to that. Are there any disadvantages?
Mr Farr: To be honest, no. Under
any administration, under any government of whatever complexion,
you will always need Cabinet Office as it is at the moment with
some responsibilities for counter-terrorism and wider security
matters, and I think it is our job to plug into that, not to supplant
it. That works very well.
Q308 Chairman: In answer to what
Mr Mercer raised with you and, indeed, Mr Russell, why should
we not have a National Security Council bringing together all
these various bodies able to advise the Prime Minister and the
Home Secretary on these serious matters with a kind of public
figure, such as Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice? They do
not necessarily have to be Members of Parliament, but they can
be those figures that people actually know and identify with while
others in an operational way do their job, so the public know
there is someone the Prime Minister can turn to who has stature,
understanding and ability to do these pieces of work.
Mr Farr: You are talking, as I
understand it, about a rather more public and high profile National
Security Secretariat.
Q309 Chairman: Exactly.
Mr Farr: You could develop an
entirely workable model with that at its core. It has been thought
of before and is still under consideration by some people, I believe.
I would say I think the NSID structure that you are familiar with,
the ministerial structure, does do part of what you have just
mentioned at a ministerial level, but it is not sitting continuously,
which I think is what you had in mind by a National Security Council.
Q310 Chairman: We will come on to
questions on COBR. It is just that everything seems to be so reactive.
We know that you are all doing good work and promise to keep the
country safe, for which we are extraordinarily grateful, but it
seems to me the only time they get together is in a kind of national
emergency and what we need is the ability to make this continuous.
If we believe politicians that this is a very, very serious threat
and it is ongoing and you accept what Mr Winnick said about a
seamless threat, surely we need a structure that will reflect
that. Do you go to the Thursday morning meetings?
Mr Farr: Yes, absolutely. I have
read the evidence on this and seen some of your comments about
COBR sitting in more continuous mode, as I understood it. There
are a number of proactive regular meetings which I think are important
to factor into this debate. At the top as you know, Chairman,
you have the NSID architecture in various configurations: NSID
dealing with public security, or NSID dealing with extremism,
or NSID dealing with foreign policy issues. Those meet regularly
on a, if not weekly basis in certain cases then certainly a monthly
basis, and beneath that you have the CONTEST Board, which I chair,
which is the senior officials meeting looking at the development
and implementation of our counter-terrorist strategy. That meets
on a regular basis. Beneath that you have regular meetings of
what we call—forgive the jargon—the four P committees:
Pursue, Protect, Prevent and Prepare. Those meet regularly every
month looking at the development of our programme, is it working
or is it not, what do we need to do differently and are we getting
value for money. That is before you get onto the weekly security
meeting which meets every Thursday. There is quite a lot of steady
state activity. I am not necessarily suggesting it is enough but
it is more than may have been suggested to you in some evidence
sessions that I have read.
Q311 David Davies: You have sort
of answered my question but I am going to put another one to you.
I am trying to understand this structure here. There are ministers
at the top, various ones, then the OSCT, you answer to ministers,
and then MI5 and MI6 you set the strategy for. So far so good.
But MI5 and MI6 also answer separately back to their own respective
ministers and the Cabinet Office, again they obviously are ministers
and I cannot quite see where they fit in, and JTAC as well are
scrutinising MI5 and MI6 as product and also anything that comes
out of local government and anything else. Is that roughly where
we are? It is very complicated, is it not?
Mr Farr: It is certainly complicated.
I hoped we had given you a diagram, but if we have it obviously
has not made it any simpler and I apologise for that. Your description
on the Cabinet Office is not quite right, if I might say so. The
Cabinet Office are there, remember, to staff and organise all
the ministerial committees, all the NSIDs that take place on a
regular basis, to ensure the paperwork is in place, the actions
are taken, the minutes are recorded and all the rest of that.
They are also there to act as a gateway into Number 10 in both
directions: our material going in, Number 10 views coming out.
That is really important to factor into that diagram.
Q312 David Davies: Is there not a
fundamental problem here that you are answerable to a minister,
MI5 and MI6 are answerable separately to their respective ministers,
Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary, and yet at the same time
are receiving strategy from you?
Mr Farr: I do not think it is
a problem with MI5 because remember that part of the role of OSCT
is to handle, on behalf of the Home Secretary, oversight issues
connected to MI5, so the strategy and the accountability come
together at official level inside OSCT. The issue with MI6 looks
more complicated on paper but is less complicated in practice.
MI6 is responsive to the Foreign Secretary on a whole range of
business way beyond counter-terrorism and its operational actions
and priorities. Where it concerns counter-terrorism, we would
expect to be briefed on its broad strategy and for its operations
to be broadly reflecting the priorities of the CONTEST programme.
I believe that is the case. I do not envy you the job of trying
to work your way round this strategy. In reality it is much easier
to manage than it looks on paper and that is partly, of course,
a reflection of size and the numbers of people working at various
levels, which are comparatively small.
Q313 David Davies: This probably
is not where we would be if we were starting from scratch, is
it?
Mr Farr: I am not sure about that.
This goes to the earlier evidence sessions we have had on this.
I do not think that the advantages of very big organisations are
proven, certainly not in this country. Remember that all these
organisations do a lot more than counter-terrorism so you cannot
brigade them together for counter-terrorism without that having
an impact on everything else they do as well.
Q314 Mrs Cryer: Can I ask you how
many times a year do you carry out a simulation of a terrorist
attack? Can I also ask you where do they take place, are they
always in the Met area or in the provinces? Would the Permanent
Secretary and the Home Secretary be present at all of these events?
Mr Farr: I did make sure that
I checked that you did ask the Home Secretary that in the earlier
session. The answer to your questions, in turn, are we have three
big exercises a year. They rotate and since 2007 have all been
outside London. Those exercises involve somewhere between 200
and 1,000 people. They take between three and nine months for
us to organise and the organisational work is done inside OSCT.
Q315 Mrs Cryer: What sort of people?
Mr Farr: Police officers, sometimes
intelligence officers and sometimes the military, or more usually
all of those, in a number of police areas, adjacent constabularies.
Between 200 and 1,000 people. The exercises usually last between
two and three days, largely because if you take that many people
out of circulation you cannot keep them going much longer than
that. A report is then written and that report comes to me and
the Home Secretary, and just this morning I got a report on **********************
***************** the June exercise, the middle one of this year's
three. That is a 30 page report with detailed findings. It then
goes to the police and learning development programme within the
terrorist bit of policing which takes account of those recommendations
and implements a programme to address them. That is broadly the
cycle we are looking at. I hope that gives you a bit of a flavour.
The answer to your question, therefore, is three a year and, yes,
they rotate outside London.
Q316 Mrs Cryer: It is just the reports
that go to the Home Secretary and Permanent Secretary, they would
not be present to observe?
Mr Farr: I am sorry, I did not
address that point. They would both be present, not always together
but often one or other of them, at the COBR end of the exercise,
not in the field.
Q317 Mr Clappison: I heard what you
just said about three exercises having taken place outside London
because various things which the Committee picked up might have
created the impression that counter-terrorism policy was too London-centric.
What would you say to somebody who has possibly gained that impression?
Mr Farr: I do not think it has
really been true since the creation of the regional CT hubs from
2005 onwards, and I know you have taken evidence about that. We
have a very significant number of dedicated counter-terrorist
police officers in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Thames Valley,
and an awful lot of activity goes on in all of those areas, they
are all pretty much working at full capacity in addition to the
work that goes on in London. It does not feel London-centric to
me any more. The situation before 2005 may have been different,
I am not best placed to comment on that.
Q318 Mr Clappison: In 2005 we had
that experience, and I would not ask you to comment on it, of
people who rather shockingly came out of Leeds from nowhere and
were involved in this terrible bombing.
Mr Farr: Yes, that is right. Reading
some of the evidence that has been given to you, the impression
may have been created that CT started after 2005 but it did not,
there was a huge amount of work going on, but the restructuring
certainly took place after 2005.
Q319 Chairman: Do you have access
whenever you want to the Prime Minister? Can you pick up the phone
and say to the Private Secretary, "I need to talk to the
Prime Minister"?
Mr Farr: I have access to Robert
Hannigan, the Prime Minister's Security Adviser, and he is my
initial point of contact inside the Cabinet Office for matters
concerning Number 10. Likewise, if he gets something from Number
10 which is connected to counter-terrorism then he will usually
come to us.
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