UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 117-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

Home Office's Response to Terrorist Attacks

Tuesday 8 December 2009

MR ANDY HAYMAN

SIR IAN BLAIR

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 96

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 8 December 2009

Members present

Keith Vaz, in the Chair

Tom Brake

Ms Karen Buck

Mrs Ann Cryer

David T C Davies

Mrs Janet Dean

Patrick Mercer

Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Martin Salter

Mr Gary Streeter

Mr David Winnick

________________

Witness: Mr Andy Hayman, Former Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, Metropolitan Police, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Can I refer all those present to the Register of Members' Interests. Good morning, Mr Hayman, I gather you had a little difficulty getting into the Palace.

Mr Hayman: Yes, I apologise for the delay.

Q2 Chairman: It is nice to see you, thank you very much for coming. The Committee is conducting an inquiry into counter-terrorism and obviously as the former head of counter-terrorism your thoughts on this issue are very important and very relevant, so we are very grateful to see you here today. You have written a book recently in which you have highlighted a number of criticisms that you have had about COBRA and the processes dealing with emergencies. You talk about political considerations being one of the issues and you said they tended to dominate considerations while COBRA was meeting. Can you expand on that and tell the Committee why you feel that?

Mr Hayman: From the outset I must stress the point that in no way do I think anyone who goes to COBRA, who either sits around the main table or who sits in the back room, is there other than to be very constructive and want to get things back on an even keel; therefore it is well-intended people from all different quarters of Whitehall and also the services. It is no one's fault that what you are doing is you are putting loads of different people into one room, while they all have different functions and roles. The politicians have got a very clear mandate - decision-making - the police and security agencies have an equally important clear role, and when the first time you ever come together is in the same room, there is a real potential - in fact I witnessed it - where those roles and the demarcation between those roles gets blurred. I am not saying it is anyone being mischievous or intending to do it, I just think the circumstances of bringing people together in that fashion creates that environment. I do not know whether anyone in this room has actually sat active in COBRA - has anyone?

Q3 Chairman: No, none of us has been the Home Secretary yet.

Mr Hayman: Or a minister. I will try and describe to you what happens for those who obviously have not seen it. What happens is a kind of default position sort of emerges really where I think people realise that is what is going on and that is the dynamics that are happening, so people come into what they call pre-meets.

Q4 Chairman: You went further in your article in The Times on 27 June, going by the headline in The Times, you said "Cobra: the UK emergency committee that makes chaos out of a crisis" and you suggested another approach which is a two-tier system.

Mr Hayman: Yes.

Q5 Chairman: Where the operational people get together and decide on the way forward and then options are presented to politicians.

Mr Hayman: That is exactly what happens; it is a default position when you are in live action. You have a forum where the operational colleagues sit together and thrash out what, from their professional experience, they believe to be the options, and then they come into the main COBRA and present that to ministers. I think that is a really good way of working because ministers then have got all the information at their fingertips, they are well informed and they can make a decision on the basis of that, an absolutely clear demarcation. What I thought was strange was that that was going on underneath everyone's noses but it was as if it was the unspoken word, no one talked about it, and I felt that was a bit disingenuous because how do you feel if you were not part of that group that met before? What was discussed there? All I am trying to do here is not to in any way be difficult, I am just trying to get out into the open what people find difficult to discuss.

Q6 Chairman: That is an absolute given but of course the Committee is keen to look at the current system and see how it can be improved. It is not any criticism of the overall strategy, your concern is to make it a streamlined process which would enable decisions to be made quickly and you actually talk about pulling people away from an event into a situation where they are basically sitting - Members of this Committee actually visited COBRA last week and we looked at the structure that had been set up. Your concern is about delayed decision-making, is it?

Mr Hayman: Yes, the structure is fine. You have got the back room team who are doing the research for you while you are sitting around the table, I just would not want people to get confused as to why they are there. When everyone really wants to be positive and constructive and get things on an even keel, people chip in from all angles - I put my hand up, I probably overstepped my mark and started getting involved in things that I should not get involved in. What would be helpful is if there was a two-tier system where ministers, who have got a very clear mandate, are allowed to be away from that. They have no fingerprints on the formation of the options and then when it comes into the main forum which is clearly their role they have all the information and there is better, informed decision-making.

Q7 Chairman: Is there another model somewhere else in the world that you think we should look at? For example, the United States and the National Security Council?

Mr Hayman: I am not briefed on that, Chairman. The one fear I have got - and this is the difficulty, this is the real frailty - is that people would argue there are minutes taken, but actually I have never seen them and I attended most meetings. There might be notes or bullet points which is fine, but let us just say something goes badly wrong and we crawl over the decision-making process. If we have not got records of meetings and we have a forum where people cannot remember what they said they were going to do, and indeed they overstep the mark inadvertently into a role and function that they are not either trained or experienced to do, or is not their remit, that is difficult territory.

Q8 Chairman: Is there not an action list that is written out as and when people say they are going to implement?

Mr Hayman: Yes, there is a bullet point action list but minutes need to be sensitively compiled. Is it not the case when we go back over on public inquiries that we look at not just the action list, we look at the decision-making process and the considerations that led to the action. What if that process and discussion is flawed? For others it needs to be objectively looked at in the cold light of day, who were not actually in the hot seat.

Chairman: Yes. Martin Salter.

Q9 Martin Salter: Mr Hayman, I along with other colleagues visited COBRA last week and I have to say your criticisms and your published criticisms came up. We were not talking to politicians, we were talking to senior operational personnel - the police and security services - and they absolutely rejected your criticisms, did not recognise your descriptions - we realise you have got a book to sell - and they did say ---

Mr Hayman: That is a little bit harsh, a bit harsh.

Q10 Martin Salter: I am sure you are not giving it away. They did say that COBRA is being used as a model for other jurisdictions facing terrorist threats to follow. If it is so dysfunctional, as you have described, why are the Australians, the Jordanians and others, people facing similar threats to ourselves, actually using our model in their jurisdictions?

Mr Hayman: I cannot comment for others that do not recognise what I am saying but what I do know is that that is my experience. Yes, I did choose to share that; indeed, I am aware having talking to former colleagues of a recent exercise where some of those things I described were played out again. If people choose not to want to talk about it that is fine; all I am saying is it was not to sell a book. This was an informed decision on my part to say other things in that book where I think if things are going really well we should comment on that, but if I felt from my perspective constructive observations would help the process then I have done that. If that gets ignored that is other people's decision; I just thought I wanted to do that.

Q11 Martin Salter: Do you think the Australians are wrong to follow?

Mr Hayman: No, no, I did not say that; I said look at the success we have had, it cannot be that bad. What I am saying is that if I lay out the fact that I was there, I experienced it, side meetings - would you be comfortable if you were part of a main group and you were aware that there were side meetings going on but you had no vision on that whatsoever?

Martin Salter: It happens all the time in the real world.

Chairman: That is very helpful. Bob Russell.

Q12 Bob Russell: Mr Hayman, in your detailed responses to the Chairman and then to Mr Salter and your book are there any other aspects of how you would improve on the system that you have not mentioned, either today or in the book?

Mr Hayman: No, I have covered most of it.

Q13 Bob Russell: When you served on the COBRA committee surely it must have proved useful as a forum - notwithstanding your criticism - to co-ordinate the governmental response and share information between separate bodies.

Mr Hayman: Absolutely, and that is a function it performs as well as it can do. What I am saying is that there are improvements. People might see those improvements as being marginal and probably insignificant, but I did not, that was not my experience. I felt that those improvements would be helpful.

Q14 Bob Russell: When you have your reunions with chums who were there with you, who may still be there, have they all indicated 100% support for the view you have taken?

Mr Hayman: It is for others to express that but I have not seen many dissenters privately. It is always difficult for people to speak publicly, is it not?

Chairman: It is; that is why we are very grateful to you for coming here. David Davies.

Q15 David Davies: Thank you, Mr Hayman; I thought it was a very good book actually. One of the other concerns that you had was over the impact of devolved parliaments on policing and on the ability of anti-terrorism police if you like to deal with Scotland and Wales. Would you have concerns, bearing in mind what you said about the Scottish Parliament, if the Welsh Assembly also got powers over policing?

Mr Hayman: The toing and froing that you are referring to there was over one particular operation and, as it turned out, some of those wrinkles were ironed out a bit.

Q16 David Davies: I felt they were ironed out mainly because of personal relationships; that seemed to be the case you were putting.

Mr Hayman: Absolutely. One of the reasons why up to now it has been difficult for me to come here is that the view that I was expressing was not necessarily totally shared by colleagues over the border. It is for others to decide whether or not they would be comfortable with devolved parliaments but I think there is a real comparison here to be held with police services. I have also made observations, and it may be something you want to hear about later, but when you look at the way we deal with serious crime on SOCA or the Border Agency with immigration, it seems to me it flies completely in the face that those two agencies have a national remit where they can travel across the country and not worry about force boundaries and not have this ridiculous situation where, on one operation we had, which was an armed operation, before we could go across each force boundary we had to get authority from the Chief Constable of that force to allow that to happen. That cannot be right and with terrorism being of international flavour and with a national or international footprint we should be breaking those barriers down. The reason I rehearsed that argument is that the same could be said for the political and parliamentary argument because, provided you have got good will and the personalities are right, it will work, but you cannot have a structure on that, can you?

Q17 David Davies: If, for example, you had a government of one political party in one place and of another in the Welsh Assembly or Scottish Parliament then that could cause problems for policing.

Mr Hayman: Yes, absolutely.

Q18 Ms Buck: Going back to your criticisms of COBRA, I am finding it a little bit hard to follow to what extent you are recommending that there should be structural change and to what extent it is to do with processes, clarity of information and clarification of roles because they are two quite fundamentally different approaches to the issue.

Mr Hayman: I am not going to come here and trash something; I do not think I trashed it in the book.

Q19 Ms Buck: It came over as trashed.

Mr Hayman: I wrote it as it is; sometimes that sticks in people's throats but that is the way it is. What I am saying is that what is going on informally should be formalised because why people might not recognise it is because actually they are making it work. I accept the point that in the real world, Mr Salter, there will be other meetings going on but this is not something that you can just put to one side as policy development; this is the real world where actually they will probably be making life and death decisions and it is absolutely right as a minister that you would want to know what the decision-making and discussion was that was going on in a meeting over there, that could lead to an operational deployment that actually you had not had full vision of and sight of. What I am saying is some of the things that are going on informally to make it work by the practitioners should just come out from underneath the carpet, let us just put it on the table and formalise it.

Q20 Ms Buck: It is not the structure that you are objecting to, you do not find that structure in which different meetings feed into the decision-making process is the problem, it is the fact that those processes are not properly minuted and the advice that they are giving is not laid out in such a way as to clarify decision-making.

Mr Hayman: I am accused of being two-faced over this but what I was writing in my account here was that we have got all these people in the same room, all vying for position, trying to do the best thing they possibly can which blurs things, so what happens is informally we have a structured forum and I think a really good model was when Dr John Reid was the Home Secretary and there was an operation involving Litvinenko. What he insisted on doing there was that he did not want to be involved in the development of operational options, he left that to MI5 and me to do, we came to him with those options and he made a ministerial decision. That is what goes on in part informally in COBRA and I think that is great. All I am simply saying is rather than play games about this why do we not do it, why do we not formalise that so that people know what is going on.

Q21 Ms Buck: Is it possible to carry that example forward into emergency planning in the same way that you might do when you are preparing an operation for which you have lead-in time?

Mr Hayman: I reckon if you sat in the room at the time of the recent dreadful floods up North, I bet you at a similar but much lower level the Chief Constable would have said what the aim is, which is let us get things back to normality and save and preserve life. Then he would deploy other people to develop the operational decisions and take options as a result of it. That is no different to what I think we are saying here and we could say in any other emergency.

Q22 Patrick Mercer: Mr Hayman, you have called for the creation of a national terrorism agency or something of that ilk; what would that give us that the relatively new Counter-Terrorism Units (CTUs and CTIUs) do not?

Mr Hayman: Just so colleagues are aware of my stake in this, I was at the helm when we introduced those, so for me it was a middle ground between carrying on with 43 forces, some of which are not viable in this territory of operations, and going into something that was national. Going back to the point that Mr Davies was making earlier, even with that structure the Chief Constable has the ace card in his or her pack so if my successor, if it was reliant on personalities - and it is reliant on personalities - came across an obstructive, difficult, Chief Constable colleague who could actually play the ace card, there is not an awful lot left that that person can do. The Met constitutionally has got the lead on investigating terrorism and I just think that constitutionally that is difficult, if you are relying on something that is just reliant potentially on relationships. Also, whilst those resources located around the country can be marshalled anywhere within the country, you are actually operating a pseudo-national outfit anyway. It goes back to my earlier point, what we are doing in practice is we seem to be skirting around the uncomfortable constitutional discussion which puts people's hairs on their neck up because they can see, maybe, fiefdoms being threatened. It is actually an informal working practice that I am arguing should be more formal.

Q23 Patrick Mercer: If you equate, rightly or wrongly, the three regions in Northern Ireland with small to medium sized constabularies, with one guiding organisation above them and in the regions what used to be called TCGs, task and control groups, which roughly equate to the regional counter-terrorism units, is that not the model we should be looking at?

Mr Hayman: Yes.

Q24 Patrick Mercer: Has nobody opened their history books and looked at how long it took us to establish that?

Mr Hayman: I am absolutely with you, it makes complete sense. I just think it is really significant - and I mention this just as a matter of interest - I am aware that my successor is now instigating a review, being conducted by the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, Dr Tim Brain, who is absolutely going through with a fine toothcomb the structures that are now being put into place for policing, working with other agencies to deal with counter-terrorism. I have met with the guys who are doing that and I do not think if they were sitting here that they would dismiss me as being completely crazy and off my head.

Chairman: We have some quick supplementaries on this theme. Gary Streeter.

Q25 Mr Streeter: I certainly do not think you are crazy and off your head and I have got a lot of sympathy with the points that you are making, particularly on a national terrorism agency or something like it. Why stop there, why not go the whole hog and have a single police force for the entire country? What about that idea?

Mr Hayman: I have nailed my colours to the mast in the past and I just think there has been a really uncomfortable history here in recent times where previous Home Secretaries have tried to not go the whole hog but have tried to come back to a merger. Look what happened there, that all ended in tears and because it was seen as a battle and those scars are still painful in some people's minds, there is a natural resistance now to even go there let alone try and move forward. It probably needs a completely fresh set of eyes to look at it, someone who is seen as having no baggage at all, to look at it more objectively and independently.

Q26 Gwyn Prosser: Mr Hayman, can you just give us an idea of how much time COBRA meetings actually absorb in the course of a major exercise such as 7 July. All we hear is that COBRA met this morning; does it take a long time or a short time?

Mr Hayman: I will answer that question but there is a little health warning: I do not think we should draw any conclusions from how long a meeting is or the frequency. Sometimes when things are so fast-moving it is actually healthier to get together and make you sure you have got information exchange. An initial meeting is actually relatively short, that could be within an hour, once the chair has set the strategic direction and tasked people to go away and get on with it. Then you are normally on a battle rhythm of two hours because you need that kind of time to actually achieve something. There is a danger and I find myself criticising having to attend loads of meetings, but actually that creates a whole machinery below you because when you have been to a meeting you have to come back and create your own cycle of meetings and before you know it, if you are not careful - and I do not think it ever got to this stage - all you are doing is running around servicing meetings but you are not actually achieving anything.

Q27 Tom Brake: I just want to come back to something you said earlier, Mr Hayman. You talked about people playing games in relation to meetings taking place elsewhere that perhaps key players were not aware of. Do you have anyone specific in mind when you say people are playing games?

Mr Hayman: I am not going to sit here and say that. It is my judgment and that is not fair on other people. What I see is that there is posturing and I do see that inevitably - and I am not naïve in saying this - people will be jostling for position from wherever they sit around that table. It takes a good strong chair to ensure that they see through that and chair the meeting appropriately. It just seems to me that if all we could just do is make sure that we are focused in one direction, and that is to make sure that we are getting things back on an even keel to make sure there is no loss of life and that if there is a threat to this country, whatever it might be, that is being managed. I am asking that maybe all we should do is make sure we are all focused in that way.

Q28 Tom Brake: Are you saying that the posturing as you describe it is something which is delaying or endangering the operational response?

Mr Hayman: No, that would be overstating it. Again, you know, going back to the point that was made by a colleague observing, this is in the real world and posturing and playing games is in the real world. I just think you have to manage that.

Q29 Tom Brake: Can I just come back to the issue of the national terrorism agency and indeed a national police force. How would you ensure, if there was a national agency, that the priorities or the flavours of local communities would actually be understood by a national agency?

Mr Hayman: That is the strongest objection from those who do not see it as I do and it plays out also in reducing the number of forces - how could you have a headquarters, let us say where I have come from, Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex, how could a headquarters in Norfolk ever relate to the southern parts of Suffolk? I do not buy into that because, actually, those who are at a senior level could be sitting anywhere and they actually have no contact really with what is going on on the ground. I went to West Midlands - and I would really advocate anyone who has got a spare half day to go there - and I have actually commentated on it; they have a fantastic initiative there. What they are doing is they have got counter-terrorism officers that are branded that, in uniform, working alongside their neighbourhood policing colleagues. They are unashamedly saying to the neighbourhoods and the communities that they are policing "This is what I represent. I am not hiding it, I am not trying to be something I am not" and therefore they are developing trust and confidence which we all know is the toughest challenge at the moment. That person, who I sat down and had a cup of tea with, chatted to, is a very bright officer, two years service or so. She does not actually relate to what is going on well up here, she just knows what the brief is, and the brief is to make sure that she could develop the trust and confidence of the people she is policing in that neighbourhood. So I do not buy the argument that suddenly if you get big and you are looking at a national footprint you are going to lose that contact. As a matter of fact I do not buy the argument that by having fewer larger forces you are going to lose the same cohesion.

Q30 Chairman: Thank you. Actually what you are saying is not that radical, is it? You are saying that the strategy is working, the practical implication has to change slightly, but what you are suggesting is that at the moment we have four different types of agencies where people meet together. You have got the Home Secretary's weekly security meeting - presumably you attended that.

Mr Hayman: Yes, I did.

Q31 Chairman: Did you do that on invitation or did you regularly attend?

Mr Hayman: The Home Secretary introduced that, gave mandatory seats, so you dare not not go to it.

Q32 Chairman: You are there every week. You then have the ministerial committee on national security which is another group that meets, presumably ministers only though, others are invited, then you have the police service and the gold command at an event and finally you have COBRA. What you are actually suggesting is it should not be necessarily preventative, it should meet perhaps in a non-emergency as well. What concerns members of this Committee is that COBRA only tends to get going, like the situation room in the West Wing - if we can put it like that for those of us who watch Channel 4 - after there is an emergency, and what you need is a group meeting together with everyone on a regular basis to make sure all that information is around and then operationally you will put options before ministers.

Mr Hayman: Absolutely, and the other spin-off from that is would you want to go and play in a cup final when you have never played with the players in the team?

Q33 Chairman: Yes.

Mr Hayman: You would want to know how people operate, their strengths and their weaknesses, you would want a relationship with them over and above what you see on a day to day basis, so that actually you are a well co-ordinated, oiled machine.

Q34 Chairman: How important is the personality of the Home Secretary? You have been particularly praiseworthy of John Reid and the way in which he took decisions; is that role extremely important, the personality of the person who is doing that job?

Mr Hayman: I used that former Home Secretary to illustrate that point; I would not in any way single anyone out as better or weaker.

Q35 Chairman: Should they have more training before they do this job?

Mr Hayman: Jacqui Smith actually said publicly that she felt she was going into a role where she was basically running a billion-pound agency and had not got the background to do it. That is obviously her choice to make that comment. When you are looking at what the minister is supposed to be doing, they come to the party with absolutely the public mandate, it will not be a walk in the park for anyone but they come there with the experience. What they want is to be informed by the operational options which have been blessed by the operational experience.

Q36 Chairman: But on appointment should ministers also be given the opportunity of more training in the situation room, in the COBRA room?

Mr Hayman: There are training exercises but they are only once a year I guess.

Chairman: Thank you. Mr Davies has a question.

Q37 David Davies: You made a very interesting anecdote in your book about a professional assassin who landed in London and was deported by you to a friendly country. You do not want to tell us where he came from do you?

Mr Hayman: I cannot do that.

Q38 Martin Salter: It was not Wales!

Mr Hayman: That would not be very impressive, would it?

Q39 David Davies: The continent?

Mr Hayman: I cannot say.

Chairman: We will have to wait for the film, Mr Hayman. Mr Salter has the final question.

Q40 Martin Salter: Mr Hayman, can I say how much I agree with you on the merging of forces, we do need to.

Mr Hayman: There is some common ground.

Bob Russell: It is not the unanimous view of the Committee.

Q41 Martin Salter: It never is. My question is - it is a nice sound bite, the FA Cup analogy, you have not played with the players, but when we went to COBRA again we were impressed at the programme of exercises that take place to ensure that people are familiarised with themselves. Did that not happen under you then?

Mr Hayman: All I would ask you to do, in addition to looking at the programme, look at the attending list and not only look at the attending list but look at how long people stay for. It is one thing to have an operation or a training exercise going, it is another to have the right people there. Just have a look at the exercise that was framed a couple of weeks ago and ask yourself the question how many people who attended that exercise would be the main players should an operation start off? I think there would be a dubious number that should have been there were not there.

Q42 Martin Salter: You could still have ministers there.

Mr Hayman: And.

Q43 Chairman: Mr Hayman, thank you very much indeed for coming here and I am sorry you had difficulties getting into the Palace but it might be easier on your way out. Thank you very much indeed.

Mr Hayman: Thank you.

Chairman: Could I call to the dais Sir Ian Blair, the former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police .

Witness: Sir Ian Blair, Former Commissioner, Metropolitan Police, gave evidence.

Q44 Chairman: Sir Ian, good morning, thank you very much for coming to give evidence to our inquiry on the Government's counter-terrorism strategy. We are specifically concerned, as you heard in our exchanges with Mr Hayman, about your experience as Commissioner as far as the response of the Metropolitan Police to a suspected terrorist incident is concerned. Could you tell us something about how the process works as soon as you have an incident of that kind?

Sir Ian Blair: It is possibly wise, Chairman, if I say a couple of preliminary remarks first. Obviously I can only talk about the period of time while I was the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner and that ended a year and a bit ago, so I am not familiar with any changes that have taken place since. Secondly, I do not think it is necessarily seemly for previous police officers to disagree about opinions and all the rest of it. Mr Hayman has clearly got his opinions of his experience and I have got my opinions of my experience. The difference between the two of us is that Andy would go almost to every COBRA that was called, unless it was flooding or natural disaster which is not necessarily the place for an anti-terrorist chief, whereas my experience of COBRA was perhaps the four big ones 9/11, 7/7, 21/7 and the Glasgow bombings, the Prime Minister in the chair. It is a very different experience from some of the things that Andy was expressing. My position is that in those kinds of meetings I believe COBRA is extremely effective because that is bringing the full Cabinet together with a national disaster pending and there is a very clear distinction, it seemed to me in those meetings, between operational responsibility for the police and security services and the political dynamic that was also having to be dealt with in that room and the communications with the public and so on. I do not feel the same kind of disquiet about COBRA in my experience in those circumstances as Mr Hayman has obviously reported, both here and in his book

Q45 Chairman: We will come on to some specific points that he has made because they illustrate a number of issues concerning the structure but do you think that the Government's counter-terrorism strategy can be improved in any way, either in terms of the overall vision or the specifics of structure or process? Some have said, for example, that the difficulty with COBRA is that it meets after an event and with so many other committees also meeting at the same time - presumably you were there on a Thursday morning at the Home Secretary's weekly meeting.

Sir Ian Blair: No, that would be the counter-terrorism chief and specialist operations.

Q46 Chairman: Did you attend the ministerial meeting?

Sir Ian Blair: No.

Q47 Chairman: But you could if you wanted to.

Sir Ian Blair: I could if I was invited and from time to time I would imagine the Commissioner would be invited.

Q48 Chairman: Is there a case for COBRA meeting outside the emergency situation, that there should be one co-ordinating body that meets on a regular basis, people can stand down or be added to that meeting as and when it is appropriate.

Sir Ian Blair: I am not sure I would agree with that process. COBRA seems to me to be about response to either a pending or an actual emergency of a major category. I do agree with the issue about training and what Mr Hayman just said about the attendance of ministers and permanent secretaries is very important. The position of Jacqui Smith is slightly unusual in so far as she was appointed as the Home Secretary at about eight o'clock at night and bombs went off at six o'clock the next morning; it is a little difficult to get the training in in between, but I do think it is right that we should be insisting that senior officials and ministers do attend the training. There are, as I understand it, three counter-terrorist exercises a year of which only one involves ministers and I am not sure, in the present circumstances, that that is enough.

Q49 Chairman: Obviously you do not know who the Prime Minister is going to appoint as Home Secretary.

Sir Ian Blair: No.

Q50 Chairman: It may be more appropriate to make that a wider invitation so that other ministers could attend such training.

Sir Ian Blair: I am sure that is right.

Q51 Mr Winnick: In a piece in today's paper, Sir Ian, you again argued that there should be 90 days pre-charge detention. You lobbied for that amongst politicians at the time some four years ago.

Sir Ian Blair: Two things: at no stage did I or any other senior police officer lobby for 90 days. What we actually said was we wished to see an extension of pre-trial detention in a series of seven-day periods and there had to be an outer limit somewhere and the outer limit was 90 days. I have explained this many times, Mr Winnick; it was the police service who came up with the idea of extending detention, there was a whole series of reasons why we believed it was appropriate and it would have been, in my view, very odd - in the same way if you had an avian flu threat and you did not hear from the chief veterinary officer - in the circumstances of an unparalleled threat to the United Kingdom since the Cold War that you did not hear from the police service about what they believed they needed.

Q52 Mr Winnick: How do you explain, Sir Ian, that whilst you held and continue to hold that view, because you argue the point as I have said in today's newspaper, that one of your predecessors who was the Police Commissioner from 1993 to 2000, now in the House of Lords, Paul Condon, was very much not only opposed to 90 days but 42 days and in the recent debate in the Lords argued that even 42 days was discounted and quite wrong, so clearly there is not a unanimous view among those who have held senior police positions.

Sir Ian Blair: There are two things. The 90 days is an outer limit, an outer limit beyond which you are moving in my view, and many other people's view, towards internment; that is not a good plan. You cannot just have an empty space out there, which is of course the European process as we have just seen in the trial of the people who murdered Kercher. That is investigative detention which is for as long a period as the magistrates decide it should be. In the United States were that situation to arise an individual can only be held by the police for about 48 hours, after that he or she would be declared a "material witness" and bail would be set at such a level that he or she could never step outside the jail. Every country deals with this in a different way. In terms of Lord Condon of course I respect his opinion but, to be fair, he was not Commissioner during the unique period after the fall of the twin towers to the present day, with a threat of a very, very different nature than the one that the Provisional IRA posed.

Q53 Mr Winnick: Parliament rejected that view.

Sir Ian Blair: I know they did.

Q54 Mr Winnick: And so did a number of your predecessors and also of course the former Chief Constable of the West Midlands force over the policy.

Sir Ian Blair: I understand that.

Q55 Mr Winnick: Do you find it surprising that you were under fire for the plan then and you gave the impression when you were Commissioner that you were lobbying actively amongst Members of Parliament?

Sir Ian Blair: I do not think that is true, Mr Winnick, you are actually mixing up some things here. I make this clear - I am sorry to mention the book so often but it is clear in my book - that I believe that the lobbying that was initiated by the Association of Chief Police Officers was in itself a mistake, it was wrong, but for those people charged with counter-terrorism responsibilities, which includes the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations and the national counter-terrorism chief, it is legitimate for those officers to say "We have a view and this is the reason why we have that view."

Q56 Martin Salter: Sir Ian, do you not think it is a bit unseemly for people like yourself and Andy Hayman, who were in senior positions, responsible for important parts of our national security, privy to national security secrets and operations, to actually be allowed to write books so soon after they leave office, which are - let us be honest - written for personal gain as well as public interest?

Sir Ian Blair: I used the word unseemly about disagreeing in public but, on the other hand, many people write books about their experiences and one of the things that I said and did was to place the relevant pages of my book in front of the Cabinet Office and ensure that what I was writing was consonant with maintaining national security.

Q57 Martin Salter: Thank you. Moving on to the practice of COBRA, as we understood it from our visit there the other day COBRA really came into existence post the 1972 Munich outrage and has developed ever since. I got the impression that it had been developed by operational practitioners to ensure that it was as effective as possible and it was difficult for us not to come away feeling that it was a relatively impressive operation and it was as co-ordinated as you are likely to get for the purpose that it was set up to do. In what ways do you think it could be improved and do you share - I am going to invite you to disagree with Mr Hayman again - or recognise Mr Hayman's criticisms of it?

Sir Ian Blair: As I said in my opening remarks to the Chairman I do not in the sense that the meetings that I attended were at the highest possible level of significance and everybody in that room was very conscious that things were happening which were endangering the United Kingdom, whether that was the fall of the twin towers or the bombs of July 2005, so I do not feel that. If I have got any criticisms of it then one of them is something that Mr Hayman did mention which is we need to be clear about the frequency of the meetings. I would be suggesting that that is a standard arrangement so that it is the event plus two hours, then four hours after that or whatever so that the other meetings can take place. Everybody sitting in that room, particularly the operational staff, need to go back and do things, they need to have structures that they can do things with and if the recalling of COBRA is at the whim of the chair as it were as opposed to a fairly structured process everybody accepts, then that is unfortunate. There is the occasional danger, particularly in London, of operational drift upwards. I remember, I think on 21/7, an earnest discussion going on as to whether the buses should be allowed to run again and myself and the Transport Commissioner had already authorised that, and if people had looked up on the screen they would have seen the buses moving - it was that sort of day. The area I would like to expand on, which is in the wide brief that you gave me, Chairman, about the future of counter-terrorist strategy ---

Q58 Chairman: Do not expand on it too much because we have a number of other questions on that area.

Sir Ian Blair: What I meant was in terms of overall strategy it comes back to this discussion about a national terrorist agency.

Q59 Chairman: We will come on to that in a minute.

Sir Ian Blair: What it means is that in terms of COBRA the question is who is representing the police at COBRA.

Chairman: We are coming on to that as well. Tom Brake.

Q60 Tom Brake: One point that you have mentioned, Sir Ian, that you think could be improved on is the issue of training, and I am wondering if you could elaborate what sort of training do you mean? Clearly it is very difficult for anyone to be trained for an event like 7/7 so what picture have you got of the training programme you advise?

Sir Ian Blair: Actually, Mr Brake, I do not think it is very difficult because the training process currently, the national counter-terrorism programme, is a set of huge exercises, each one of which usually lasts from two to three days, so in the end the pressure of that place becomes almost real to the people who are taking part in it. It is actually going through a scenario in which the individual minister or permanent secretary does not know what is going to happen next. It takes quite a long time to set these things up and it is disappointing if the top players do not come.

Q61 Tom Brake: Can I just ask, are you advocating for instance that as part of the Home Secretary's induction plan within the first fortnight of being in office they should be conducting or taking part in an exercise of that kind?

Sir Ian Blair: I do not think that can be done in that way because it takes months to set one of these things up.

Q62 Chairman: Months to set what up?

Sir Ian Blair: These training exercises.

Q63 Chairman: Not months to get COBRA together.

Sir Ian Blair: No, not months to get COBRA together, COBRA is called in half an hour.

Q64 Chairman: That is the point that Mr Brake is making, the simulated emergency situation, how soon after a Home Secretary is appointed can you give them a bit of simulation?

Sir Ian Blair: I do not think I am the expert to answer that. In fact I was an exercise director of one of these big exercises many years ago but it is going to take a matter of some days and weeks at least to do that, to make it real enough that somebody is not going to sit here and say "I am wasting my time".

Chairman: Thank you. Gwyn Prosser.

Q65 Gwyn Prosser: Sir Ian, you have told us that your experience of COBRA was a very clear separation if you like between the operational issues and then the input from the politicians, from the minister or the Home Secretary. During those different times did you ever feel that the ministers or the politicians were actually compromising your operations?

Sir Ian Blair: No, I did not, but they would ask questions which were very natural. I remember the Transport Secretary at the time asking me at what stage the Tube was going to be able to run again through Russell Square and I just looked at him and said "It is a crime scene; it is days and days." If people are expressing their genuine ministerial responsibilities it does not mean that they override the operations, because that cannot happen.

Q66 Gwyn Prosser: In terms of the length of the meetings would there be times when you would feel "I want out" if you like and to be commanding operations rather than talking?

Sir Ian Blair: Yes, and that is almost this bit about structure again, so it is the structure and the timing so that we know how much time we have got afterwards before we have to come back. In general, as I say, at the top level, for the most serious emergencies, this is the best system imaginable with just one or two tweaks.

Q67 Chairman: And you would rather be sitting in that room with the top guys or girls than be in absolute constant contact with the Gold Commander at the scene.

Sir Ian Blair: You have to have a measure of both and that is why I think the meetings could be shorter, as Mr Prosser has said. The one issue I have not raised is that after 7/7 and particularly after 22/7 with the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Met re-examined its own process, which is the Met's management board meeting in emergency measure, and developed a new briefing system. One of the things that does happen in COBRA is the chair will ask for what is happening and everybody around the room says what is happening but we have no method of knowing necessarily whether that is actually true so we developed a thing called the knowledge management centre, which I am sure the present Commissioner would be happy to share, which is a single briefing officer giving a single briefing to the meeting on what is known, what is believed, what is possible.

Q68 Mrs Cryer: When you are attending these COBRA meetings what sort of notice did you get, half an hour or an hour?

Sir Ian Blair: Half an hour for the first one and then a time would be set for the second and the third one. But when the bombs have gone off, the call comes in to say "Please be in COBRA at half past ten, the Prime Minister in the chair".

Q69 Mrs Cryer: For 7/7 how many meetings did you go to?

Sir Ian Blair: On 7/7 I went to three, I think.

Q70 Mrs Cryer: Did you always feel that your presence was essential or did you sometimes feel a bit superfluous?

Sir Ian Blair: With an incident of that scale the Prime Minister will want to look across the table - admittedly he was in Gleneagles so it was the Home Secretary on the first occasion - he is going to want to look across the table at the man or woman in charge and not somebody else.

Q71 Mrs Cryer: For every COBRA meeting did you always feel then that it was necessary not only for you to be there but for there to be a police presence? I am not sure how many officers would be there.

Sir Ian Blair: Probably two.

Q72 Mrs Cryer: It was always essential for those COBRA meetings.

Sir Ian Blair: The ones I went to, yes. There were many COBRA meetings that I did not go to but the ones that I went to, yes, I do believe it was essential that I was there.

Q73 Bob Russell: I suppose the pertinent question is why is the Civil Contingent Committee called COBRA?

Sir Ian Blair: Because it is the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A.

Q74 Bob Russell: Thank you for that. Sir Ian, why did it take until 2006 for regional counter-terrorism units to be set up?

Sir Ian Blair: This is actually to me the main question that I would hope the Committee would consider, which is have we got a fit for purpose anti-terrorist structure, and there is no question I believe that these hubs are very, very effective in the sense of a middle round as to what needs to be done. They are centred in the places where there is most concern about terrorist activity beginning and they bring into play the smaller forces around, but in a sense this is a continuous compromise because I do not agree with a national terrorist agency. What I do agree with is that the primacy of the Metropolitan Police should be established in statute.

Q75 Bob Russell: Is it a practical evolution from the incidents that you were responding to?

Sir Ian Blair: It is, but we are still in the position that if we take the raid at Forest Gate where the devices which were suspected were not found and a person was shot, which you will remember, that was in the Metropolitan Police district under the command of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Had that been in Wiltshire, as an example, and a lot of furore had then started about who was actually responsible, you would have seen some very, very difficult issues. What I look for is not a separate agency - because the experience of the United States with its Department of Homeland Security and its division between that and the FBI and policing is very unhappy - but a situation in which the primacy of the Metropolitan Police is established in statute so that at the moment that the national co-ordinator declares for executive action then there is no doubt that he and, through the chain of command, the Metropolitan Police are responsible and the local Chief Constable is not.

Q76 Bob Russell: That would be the outcome of a fictional case in Wiltshire.

Sir Ian Blair: That is not what would happen now because at the moment now although there is a gentleman's agreement with the Chief Constable of Wiltshire there would be, in my view, a considerable chance of a lot of infighting afterwards as to who was responsible for something going wrong.

Q77 Bob Russell: Sir Ian, can I just pursue that point because there is a very serious point. What would be your resolution then to the fictional Wiltshire Police incident?

Sir Ian Blair: The resolution is that in statute the national co-ordinator for terrorism investigations works to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and that at a certain point, which is when executive action is declared, that is the chain of command and the Chief Constable for the local area is acting in assistance.

Q78 Bob Russell: At the moment we could have confusion.

Sir Ian Blair: You will not have confusion on the ground as it is happening, my concern is that you will have an awful lot of confusion on the ground if it has gone wrong.

Q79 Chairman: Thank you, Mr Russell. I just have a quick question, why did it take five years to set these organisations up?

Sir Ian Blair: Partly because it was quite a big thing to do; secondly, there was an awful lot of money to be found to do it; thirdly, there were long and difficult arguments inside ACPO and in my view insufficient political will to drive the solution that I have just suggested which is a statutory position for the Metropolitan Police with primacy for counter-terrorism.

Q80 David Davies: Sir Ian, you may have heard me put this question to Andy Hayman but I want to put it to you as well because one of the points that you appear to agree upon in your separate books is what were the problems caused by devolved Parliament in Scotland with control over policing. Do you recognise that if the Welsh Assembly therefore got control over policing the same sorts of problems could arise?

Sir Ian Blair: The way that the Scottish position was dealt with actually worked quite well, which was that policing was a devolved activity in Scotland and counter-terrorism was not.

Q81 David Davies: It seemed from reading your book that the personal relationships also played their part and that at some point you had to stamp your feet a bit to insist that you got in there. I felt that the problem came from the politicians and not from the police.

Sir Ian Blair: That is correct, but after that a clear protocol was developed between the Scottish Executive and London, so I do not think there is a problem provided that there are protocols and provided that the politicians follow the police view that in a counter-terrorism engagement the whole of Great Britain is a single crime scene and you do need single investigators.

Q82 David Davies: To paraphrase that - and I have a special interest in this - it would be fine for the Welsh Assembly to have powers over policing provided they recognise that ultimately in some areas the Metropolitan Police will be in charge - and I would tend to agree, by the way, with that viewpoint.

Sir Ian Blair: I would tend to agree with you except that I am not the expert to say whether or not policing powers should be devolved to the Welsh Assembly.

Q83 David Davies: I am and I say no, but just in case they were.

Sir Ian Blair: If they were then we would have to keep counter-terrorism with Met primacy.

Q84 Mr Streeter: Sir Ian, I want to ask you a couple of questions on funding in a second but may I first take you back to the point you made about the Metropolitan Police having responsibility for counter-terrorism outside London and the area of primacy law. I represent part of Plymouth and we have some very sensitive assets - Plymouth dockyard, the naval base and so on. If, God forbid, there were a terrorist incident at the moment the Metropolitan Police is four hours away so who in practice would be in charge of the initial response?

Sir Ian Blair: What happens is that the local police force would - and of course you have then got the Ministry of Defence police fitting into that as well. If we take the concept of a geographically distant force exactly the same would happen as happened in Glasgow, that the local force, the Strathclyde force, takes command but within minutes the phone call is into the counter-terrorism command in Scotland Yard and within half an hour a group of Scotland Yard detectives are on their way to Glasgow or to Portsmouth because they have the information and the contacts about whether this is a one-off or this is connected to a series of events. In Glasgow it was very quickly apparent that that was connected to Haymarket, so it was one crime.

Q85 Mr Streeter: The situation is fine you think, but it could be improved by making it clear in law that the Metropolitan Police have the ownership.

Sir Ian Blair: Yes. There is a very convoluted way of establishing that under one of the police acts, the Home Secretary can require a Chief Constable to give assistance to any other Chief Constable. I do not think that is the right way to do it.

Q86 Mr Streeter: On funding, there has been a 30% increase in counter-terrorism budgets since 2005; do you think that money has been spent wisely?

Sir Ian Blair: As far as I know, yes. It has mostly been spent on people, which is very important. The hubs seem to me to be a great success. There was a problem as to how the funding was allocated in that it was actually allocated to ACPO itself and ACPO itself is not a body that can deal with that kind of funding in terms of auditing, but that has been changed so that it now goes to the Metropolitan Police Authority acting on behalf of the Association of Police Authorities, so yes.

Q87 Mr Streeter: Who actually then provides oversight of that spending?

Sir Ian Blair: There is - or there was in my time - a committee of the Association of Police Authorities and the chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority in those days chaired that and then reported to the Home Secretary.

Q88 Chairman: Sir Ian, your book of course deals with a number of other issues and you mentioned today the de Menezes case; do you think there is now closure on that issue and that there is nothing further that can be done in respect of compensating the family or dealing with any of the implications of what happened to this particular gentleman?

Sir Ian Blair: I would have to go back to my original statement that issues about what is currently happening in terms of compensation or anything else is not a matter for me.

Q89 Chairman: What about the statements of Sir Hugh Orde because you were on BBC Breakfast last week when you were talking about the policing controversy, that there is a feeling that policing has become even more politicised and Sir Hugh of course has particularly talked about the idea of the election of police chiefs. You had some views to express about that; can you help the Committee because we are also looking at that?

Sir Ian Blair: I certainly can, Chairman, but I do want to make clear that this is not a political statement by me. I actually believe that the concept of a single elected person on a large public mandate to deal with policing is historically ignorant and ill thought out because it completely destabilises the balance of power that has been established over 150 years. In terms of the concept of operational independence of the police it becomes really very difficult to imagine how that can be sustained where you have got a one-on-one relationship. I am very proud of the Metropolitan Police and one of the things that I am very proud of is that we were able to investigate cash for honours. It would be not a comfortable feeling were there a single relationship between the Commissioner and somebody or the Chief Constable of so-and-so and somebody with a power of hire and fire with no particular reason.

Q90 Chairman: Some would argue that the Met is actually too big and structurally it should really be a number of forces. Do you think that it has probably reached saturation point?

Sir Ian Blair: The Met is too big but it has got a reason for being too big, Chairman, which is because London is too big, and the idea of splitting it up North and South or East and West is a recipe for confusion and I would not agree with it at all.

Q91 Tom Brake: Could you elaborate further on what you think might be the operational implications for the police in having a single person elected?

Sir Ian Blair: The concept has been that the chief officer of police is operationally independent, is not independent of explanation, is not independent of reasonableness but if you are in a position in which the phrase hire and fire is just used as some kind of shorthand, that a police chief can be dismissed in effect at a whim, then you are going to replace independence with acquiescence over a period of years. It is as a simple as that. You cannot be absolutely independent if one person can just fire you at will.

Q92 Tom Brake: Do you support the view that has been expressed that this might be a resignation matter for some senior police officers?

Sir Ian Blair: I think that it is a bit unfair for the person who has crossed over to the other side of the fence to start calling for resignations of people with mortgages! However, I do think it is a very serious constitutional issue: so serious that, as you may be aware in my book, along with some other things, I actually believe the Police Service has reached the moment when a further Royal Commission is required. There is not only this; it is the structure of policing which you have already talked about, in terms of the number of forces, the different agencies and, my particular issue, it is the cost of policing and the way in which the workforce is currently constituted. All of those are issues which politicians, for various reasons, would find it very difficult to deal with on a single party line - because the other parties would attack.

Q93 Mr Winnick: Sir Ian, anyone who wanted to see the Met carry out their duties at all levels without prejudice would say that you started off and continued, in all fairness, along the lines to make that a reality. That is highly commendable, but do you feel on reflection that you made a number of statements over the time you were Commissioner - not one or two but a number - that simply gave ammunition to your critics, who perhaps did not quite want the kind of Met that you wanted?

Sir Ian Blair: I am sure that, in your no doubt careful reading of my book, Mr Winnick, you will note that I do say that, yes, I did make some mistakes. I also say that whoever does not make mistakes does not make anything. I was also the first Commissioner to operate in a global, 24-hour news media. We were also dealing with the biggest story in the world at the time. That does create pressures, and I did not get everything right - no.

Q94 Mr Winnick: When the Mayor of London indicated that he did not want you to continue, presumably that did not come as a particular surprise?

Sir Ian Blair: Yes, it actually did come as a major surprise. It came as a major surprise because I believe that constitutionally what he was doing was just wrong. It was inappropriate for a senior police officer to be placed in the position that resignation was almost inevitable, without an explanation being provided.

Q95 Mr Winnick: Did you point that out to him?

Sir Ian Blair: I pointed out a number of things to him, which are recorded in my book very carefully. You did say was it a surprise. If it is a surprise, you do not always remember what you should say; therefore you do not always work out what you should say in that particular moment. However, my view remains the same: that it was an inappropriate thing to do.

Q96 Mr Winnick: Did you consider standing your ground and saying that you were not willing to accept?

Sir Ian Blair: Mr Winnick, I very much did but, as I said in my resignation statement, that would have placed the Metropolitan Police in a very hostile position with its authority. I was the steward of the office to which I was appointed and, if it was necessary to protect the organisation for the steward to step aside, then that is what I would do.

Chairman: Thank you very much for that and thank you for allowing us to move on. Incidentally, this Committee has recommended in our report Policing in the 21^st Century the creation of a Royal Commission to look at the very issues that you have mentioned in your book. Thank you for coming to give evidence to us.