MR KEN JONES

11 DECEMBER 2007

  Q120  Mr Clappison: I appreciate that. We find ourselves debating the same given set of circumstances over and over again, but to debate a particular set of circumstances and scrutinise a particular set of circumstances we need to be able to look at the facts, and you are telling us that the police would be constrained on the facts that could be supplied to us to enable us to do that.

  Mr Jones: If there was a matter that was exercising a section of the community, that might be a proper element of the operation that could be discussed in a political sense.

  Q121  Mr Winnick: Of course, Mr Jones, it is a matter for Parliament to decide on all these matters, including procedure. While, as you say, you are not a Parliamentarian, do you recognise the difficulties that Parliamentarians would have in deciding whether to approve or reject an order when there is so little information for Parliament to act on? For the reasons you have stated, the details are hardly likely to be given to us except in the barest outline.

  Mr Jones: I could envisage scenarios where that would be viable, but I could also think of ones where it would be very difficult. I can see two ends of the spectrum: one, there is a massive public concern and interest around things which are on the periphery of an operation where, quite properly, Parliament may have a discussion, but I could also see other operations, which are more covert, where actually signalling their existence might be difficult for us.

  Q122  Mr Winnick: Is there not a danger of justice being defeated and, indeed, terrorism winning a victory that if a prosecution does take place after a debate in Parliament, defence counsel will say, in effect, to the judge what one would expect him to say, namely, that since this has been debated and details given, how can the defendant have a fair trial?

  Mr Jones: Which is, I think, an issue for the way that the House conducts its business so that it actually does not put itself in the way of us trying to get justice for people. I think it is one for Parliamentarians, Mr Winnick.

  Q123  Mr Winnick: Yes, but you do accept there is a dilemma for Parliamentarians?

  Mr Jones: I do sense the dilemma that is there for you, but I also sense that this is going some way towards a civil contingencies doctrine which, for us, immediately presents this difficulty of an affirmative resolution in both Houses within seven days. That legislation was designed for other areas, but I think there is an attempt to try and embrace some of that here, although that is not how it was explained to me.

  Q124  Gwyn Prosser: Mr Jones, what is your view and the view of your fellow chief police officers to widening the scope of post-charge questioning?

  Mr Jones: I think there is a lot of misunderstanding out there about post-charge questioning. It is already allowed under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act "to minimise harm or loss, to clear up ambiguities". It is rarely used but it is, in fact, permissible and has been for some decades. So for us the only additional change that makes sense would be for an adverse inference to be drawn if the suspect (he or she) decided not to answer questions. If that individual had not answered questions in the run-up to the charge and then refused, there is a difficulty, I think, in terms of having two bites at the same cherry, as it were. There is a bit of misunderstanding around it, and it may be part of this process to get some fresh air on that and to indicate that post-charge questioning is permissible. However, I will close on saying this: the vast majority of people in this situation do not answer questions anyway. It is a bit like the intercept. I have been involved in counter-terrorist policing since 1998, and I was Chair of TAM for a couple of years. I have heard lots and lots of content from intercept and I have to tell you that the challenges of putting that before juries are going to be massive if we move in that direction. You do not get a conversation between Smith and Jones about "We're going to go to lunch (?) and set off a bomb"; it does not work like that. So there are a lot of expectations around that as well. Both issues have become rather confused.

  Q125  Gwyn Prosser: However, you support the widening of the use of post-charge—

  Mr Jones: As I say, for us, the only difference we can bring to bear is adverse inference, and then we would need to be very careful about drawing two lots of adverse inference, if you like, from a suspect who had not answered questions previous to charge and then refused to answer questions post-charge.

  Q126  Gwyn Prosser: Lord Carlile's cautions—the discussion with the Home Secretary?

  Mr Jones: Yes, I share those.

  Q127  Gwyn Prosser: Do you agree with those?

  Mr Jones: Yes. I do not think they are insurmountable. There is not a tradition in this country of post-charge questioning, but it has been permissible under PACE for some time.

  Q128  Patrick Mercer: Mr Jones, I do agree we have got to keep post-charge questioning and intercept in proportion. They are only details—useful details but only details. You have covered most of what I was going to ask but how long would it take, do you think (you probably cannot answer this precisely) to train officers in the changes to post-charge questioning?

  Mr Jones: They are already trained in the basic techniques. As I say, there is not a tradition of us actually using them. I think it could be done fairly quickly in a general sense, but in relation to counter-terror investigations you are talking about a very small number of people, and it could be done very, very quickly indeed. I would not want to raise the Committee's expectations about the product that might be forthcoming from that. I think it is necessary, but we need to not overbuild expectations about what comes from it.

  Q129  Patrick Mercer: A final, very brief question on intercept. Understanding the use of intercept, often, is more useful because it leads to gathering of further information about specific intelligence (?). If there is too much emphasis on the use of intercept in court as evidence, might that hamper the gathering of further intelligence?

  Mr Jones: Yes. There is no doubt, as I indicated earlier in terms of encryption, that if it was generally signalled that intercept would be available to prosecutors it would affect the behaviour of people that we are trying to confront, and that will have to be factored into the decision.

  Q130  Chairman: Who is the lead officer on ACPO for race relations?

  Mr Jones: Currently, it would be Peter Fahy, who is the Chief Constable of Cheshire.

  Q131  Chairman: The impact of these proposals to increase it to 42 days is going to have an effect on race relations, is it not, because the vast majority of the people kept in detention are Muslims?

  Mr Jones: Yes. We are only talking about a handful of people but that is the right conclusion to draw and it is something we are very concerned about. It is, also, I think, very important for me to sit here today to tell you that we do not want to keep anyone for a day longer than necessary—a minute longer than necessary—and our only objective is to do justice for people and to keep people safe. In these technical discussions and arguments that we have we lose sight of that. That is the only reason I am here.

  Q132  Chairman: That is right, but the fact is, even if you hold one person for a long period, it does have an effect on the community. There are community networks that operate in a particular way.

  Mr Jones: Yes. Which is why the involvement of the Chief Constable of the area concerned is key to that because he or she has an accountability for his or her community. So if we are looking at an operation that might be spread across the UK that is going to be a tough call for someone to make.

  Q133  Chairman: Has your colleague made any representations to you, or has there been a discussion in ACPO?

  Mr Jones: Yes, there has been a—

  Q134  Chairman: Before you decided on your submission.

  Mr Jones: Yes.

  Q135  Margaret Moran: I have heard from my own constituency and have some evidence that the trail of communication, if you like, from grass roots community through the police and to the intelligence service is, perhaps, not as good as it could be in terms of both information about what is happening in localities and the other way round—feedback and confidence-building, I suppose, within communities. What would your response be to that?

  Mr Jones: My response would be to say that it is getting better and better all the time because it has allowed us to interdict some plots. I can say here with confidence that lives have been saved as a consequence of that. The other thing is that the renaissance of local policing, that we all cherish and treasure, is also starting to have an impact in that local teams of police officers and police staff now feel much more connected to the national picture, much more able to channel information right the way through a police force, Special Branch, right through to security service and back. So it is getting better and better. We are not as insular as we used to be. I think 9/11 changed our world and everybody's world forever, and that was one of the consequences. So the tightly-bound police service of that era, those days are over and it is getting better and better, but I accept the challenge that you have made.

  Q136  Mr Winnick: No one, Mr Jones, questions for one moment that the commitment of the police is to secure as far as is possible the security and safety of our country. We have divided opinion, inevitably, in Parliament about 28 days or otherwise, but everyone recognises the genuine terrorist danger, even if 7/7 had not existed.

  Mr Jones: Thank you.

  Q137  Mr Winnick: The slaughter of 52 people and others paralysed for life. We were, some of us, at least, particularly impressed by the evidence of the Director of Public Prosecutions when he said: "If a person had been held for, say, 25 or 26 days, and no charge or reasonable suspicion had been made, it may well be very difficult to mount a successful prosecution." Inevitably, the question then arises: say a person has been held (if these proposals were to be accepted by Parliament) for up to 42 days and no such charge has been made. What do you say to that, Mr Jones?

  Mr Jones: I would say that he is right to indicate that that is a risk, and then we need to go back to my earlier argument about: are the safeguards sufficient? I know the Lord Chief Justice has talked about a different degree of scrutiny from specialist judges, for example. I think the public are much more assured if they feel that the judicial scrutiny is up to the mark. So I would say that one of the ways of balancing Sir Ken's concerns there would be a more intense judicial scrutiny. I think we need to learn from some other jurisdictions here where they are able to conduct these sorts of investigations without the public sensitivity that we are currently having.

  Q138  Chairman: Mr Jones, thank you very much for coming in. We only agreed that you gave evidence yesterday. This concludes all the evidence sessions on counter-terrorism. We will be publishing our report very shortly, and we will have a session next week on the issue of police pay.

  Mr Jones: Thank you very much.

  Chairman: Thank you very much