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Police Federation Annual Conference - 20 May 2004, Bournemouth

Author: Leigh Lewis Published: 20 May 2004

Speech: Terrorism - Policing the Unknown



INTRODUCTION

First time speaking to this conference and grateful to you for inviting me.

Let me introduce myself. My role in the Home Office is to ensure we deliver on policing and counter-terrorism measures. I am responsible to the Home Secretary who leads on counter-terrorism and on our preparedness.
Want to focus on the broad picture of what we have in place to prevent a terrorist attack, what we have in place to recover from such an attack and the valuable lessons we have learned and progress we have made over the past few years. Colin Smith and Paul Forbes will speak in more detail about procuring equipment and ensuring those expected to deal with a CBRN incident have the right training – now and in the future.

First, however, want to set this in context by giving you a general overview of the threat we face.

THE TERRORIST THREAT

Since 9/11 the UK has been on a heightened state of alert and that remains the position. There is considerable intelligence from various parts of the world to indicate that Al Qaida, and the groups associated with them, remain engaged in a continuing programme of terrorist activity.

Since the September 11th attacks we and our partners have had some significant successes in damaging Al Qaida's capability, and in thwarting potential attacks. By its nature much of this can not be made public though I dare say that at least some in this audience will know at least something of this through the work they do. Would like to pay tribute, in particular, to the work of the Anti-Terrorism Branch of the Metropolitan Police, to the Special Branches in all of our forces for their work and to the Security Service. All have contributed to the greatly increased joint working and intelligence-sharing which we now have both in this country and between governments and law enforcement agencies across the world.

But, despite these successes, the terrorist threat remains real, and serious. As the events in Madrid showed, no country is immune from attack, and it is simply not possible to guarantee against such attacks in the future.

What does this mean for what we ask the public to do? The threat is not, at the current time, to specific targets. But we do need to ask the general public to be continually vigilant, to take responsibility and, if in doubt, to raise their concerns; to report the bag without an apparent owner; to report the van having its number plates changed; to report any suspicious or out of the ordinary behaviour to the Anti-Terrorist hotline [0800 789 321]; and above all to work with you, the police. The balance which we need to strike is for the public to be alert to activities that give cause for concern, but not to be so alarmed by the broader terrorist threat that it disrupts their daily lives.

GOVERNMENT’S APPROACH TO TERRORISM

And what are the implications which the current level of threat carries for us – the law enforcement community? Important in that context to remember that the threat of terrorism is not new to the UK and did not start on 11 September 2001. The UK has over 30 years of counter-terrorism experience to draw on.

However, 9/11 did change the way we think about it. It underlined the threat of multiple attacks by terrorists seeking to cause maximum destruction and harm irrespective of whether they live or die. In this new world any type of attack might be used including suicide bombs or the use of chemical, biological or radiological material. We know also that some of the terrorist groups we face do not have a traditional, hierarchical structure, which makes it harder to infiltrate them and disrupt their activities. These are the challenges we have had to respond to post 9/11 and why we have had to adapt our counter-terrorism strategy accordingly.
In particular, we have had to revisit well-established crisis response mechanisms to ensure that they are fit for purpose and able not only to respond to potentially catastrophic incidents but also to respond to their consequences were they ever to happen.
To do this the Government’s strategy, led by the Home Secretary, is based on:

• Prevention – addressing the underlying causes of terrorism here and overseas: that means, among other things, ensuring that our Muslim citizens enjoy the full protection of the law and are able to participate to the full in British society;

• Pursuit – using intelligence effectively to disrupt and apprehend the terrorists – we have increased joint working and intelligence sharing between governments and law enforcement agencies across the world. We are tightening our border security, making identity theft harder and bearing down on terrorist finance;

• Protection – ensuring reasonable security precautions are in place from physical measures such as increased checks at airports to Counter-Terrorism Security Advisors providing guidance on protective security to sites holding potentially dangerous CBRN materials; and

• Preparedness – making sure the people and resources are in place to effectively respond to the consequences of a terrorist attack. I will come onto this in more detail later on.

We have also recognised since 9/11 that we needed to broaden the range of stakeholders involved in counter-terrorism planning. Exercises are a good example. Previously counter-terrorist exercises tended to begin with hostage negotiation or a hijack and end with the deployment of special forces. We still exercise such scenarios but our national counter-terrorism exercise programme is now designed to test a much wider range of possible events including what would happen if bombs did go off; if they did contain chemical or radioactive material; if a biological substance was released; if it was carried across local, regional or even international borders. 3 live counter-terrorism exercises are held each year. These are supplemented by some 15 table-top exercises held around the UK. But that is only part of the picture. We are constantly testing specific elements of the response at a local and regional level.

The exercise at Bank station in London last September is a good example. It focussed on how the emergency services worked together and it specifically tested the new equipment for decontamination and the procedures that came with it. The most important outcome, as with all such exercises, were the lessons learned. In that instance the areas we identified that needed further development included:

- work to improve the ability of those wearing protective suits to be able to communicate under difficult conditions;

- Ambulance crews needing to be able to provide earlier assessment, care and delivery of specific antidotes to contaminated casualties; and

- not under-estimating the number of people and specialist equipment required to respond to such emergencies.

Let me turn now to what we have actually put in place to be able to respond to the consequences of a terrorist attack if, despite all our efforts at prevention, one were to occur.

Particularly want to focus on the work we have done to prepare for a CBRN attack. This does not mean that there is a specific or imminent threat from CBRN, but the measures we need to have in place cannot be introduced overnight. To meet this challenge the CBRN Resilience Programme was established in 2001.

The Programme consists of a structured series of projects designed to deliver the necessary equipment, training and information and to improve our resilience. A nominated department leads each individual project.

The programme is overseen by a Home Office led cross-government Programme Board, which includes senior representatives from the emergency services, the devolved administrations and local and regional government. The Board’s job is to keep the projects on track; to address risks to their delivery; and to enable myself and, ultimately Hazel Blears and the Home Secretary, to make sure the programme is delivered.

So what in practical terms, has the programme delivered? Let me take this under four headings.

First, training and Personal Protective Equipment.

We now have over 5,000 fully CBRN trained police officers compared to just the few specialist individuals we had on 9/11. So we are now very close to our 5% target and are working with the Police National CBRN Centre to reach this as soon as possible. The Centre also runs an annual programme of refresher training – something which I know is of concern to this audience.

At the same time we have also been concerned to meet the needs of the 95% of you in this audience who have not had specific CBRN training but who need to have some awareness of CBRN incidents and what they involve. That is why the Police National CBRN Centre and the Metropolitan Police Service have jointly produced and disseminated a CBRN awareness CD-ROM which has been distributed to all police forces. The Fire Service have a similar interactive CD-ROM and a version is to be made available to Ambulance staff shortly. We know that these CD-ROMS are being used and we have received some very positive feedback on them.

Second, decontamination equipment.

 In July 2003 the first mass decontamination equipment for the Fire Service began to be delivered. Since then we have provided through the New Dimension Programme 80 purpose built Incident Response Units equipped with mass decontamination equipment. In addition we have put into service 360 mobile decontamination units around the country for use by the Ambulance Service and hospital Accident & Emergency Departments. From a capability limited to occasional accidents requiring decontamination we now have the capability to decontaminate 200 people per hour at a major incident.

Third, detection equipment.

The Police and Fire Services now have more effective detection equipment available to them. After 9/11 we found that an increased number of ‘snake oil salesmen’ were approaching individual forces directly, trying to sell them detection equipment. In response to concerns from police forces that they had no way of telling which items of equipment did what they said on the box, we set up a programme to test this. We have now issued guidance on the results so that the emergency services can make an informed choice about what to buy. For the police this guidance is co-ordinated through the Police National CBRN Centre. This programme of testing is continuing and further guidance will be issued in the summer. At the same time we have been working with the emergency services to capture their own requirements for detection capabilities so that we can drive industry to develop new products that provide what we want rather than having to make do with what’s available.


Fourth, guidance.

In September 2001, planning and practising for the consequences of a CBRN terrorist attack was limited at best. Since then we have, in consultation with local authorities, the emergency services, the health service and across government, published guidance for the emergency services and local authorities on decontaminating people (published Feb 2003, revised May 2004); guidance on CBRN specifically for local authorities (published October 2001, revised August 2003); guidance on decontaminating the open environment (April 2004) and, most recently, guidance on decontaminating buildings and infrastructure (May 2004).

The purpose of the guidance is to assist planning for recovery from a CBRN attack and to encourage those responsible for planning and their partners to give us feedback on what does and does not work. The guidance can then be kept up-to-date and issues that you identify on the ground can be taken up and resolved as part of the continuing programme of work. All of this guidance is publicly available on the UK Resilience website [www.ukresilience.info].

CONCLUSION

Hope this helps to confirm that there is real substance behind the rhetoric. Of course, in one sense no amount of training, equipment or, indeed, money will ever be “enough”. Just as we can not guarantee to disrupt every terrorist plan that may conceivably exist, we can not guarantee either that we will in every conceivable circumstance; in every conceivable location or at any conceivable time of the day or night be able to mount a totally resilient response. But the fact is that we are now far better prepared than we were in the past both in terms of understanding the threat and dealing with it were it to materialise.

We are also extending our preparedness. Where we are today is not the end point. We are developing our capacity to respond to new and more severe eventualities, but always guided by the latest intelligence assessment of the threat we face. This is sensible prioritisation. It is too easy simply to invent a particularly lurid scenario and say we would struggle to contain it. The important thing is that we prioritise; that we identify the threats what we are most likely to face; and that, based on this, we deliver what is most needed in terms of people, equipment, training and funding. That is what we are doing.

This is not a job which any of us, in government, in the Police Forces or in local government can do alone. Much of what we have achieved has only been possible through joint working and we will only be able to continue to deliver by maintaining this relationship and the constructive dialogue we have established.

Thank you
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