Apparently Transport for London are to cut in half the grant that they pay to the London Safety Camera Partnership.  The budget will be cut from £5.9 million to £3 million.

The assumption seems to be that the Metropolitan Police will pick up any shortfall in funding – although there is no guarantee that this will be the case.

At present, the Partnership supports around 900 speed and red light cameras around London.  These enforcement cameras can only be located – under Department for Transport rules – in places where there have been at least three fatal casualties or serious incidents.  As a result, the cameras in London are said to have made a major contribution to the 27% reduction in death and injuries on the roads in recent years.

So what is behind this?  I hope it is not the Mayoral administration in London and the new leadership of Transport for London pandering to the car lobby and those who believe that they should be entitled to speed, drive dangerously and put other people as well as themselves at risk.

A row has broken out about the decision to cancel the July meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority.  The main item of business had been intended to be consideration of the MPA’s Race and Faith Inquiry, but that won’t be ready in time.

Some suspicious souls have suggested that the cancellation may have more to do with Mayor Boris Johnson’s diary (holidays?) or alternatively that of the Uber Vice Chairman, Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse.

Now Dee Doocey on behalf of all non-Conservative members of the London Assembly who sit on the Police Authority (and an independent member or two as well) has pointed out that it seems crazy for the Authority not to be meeting again until September.  There are important issues to discuss – not least the report of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary into the policing of the G20 protests.  In any event, is it really a sign of openness and accountability for the Commissioner not to have an opportunity to report to the full Authority for a three month period?

Steve O’Connell, who chaired the meeting at which the decision to cancel was taken, has said that he expected “the progressive alliance to kick up”.

So will “the non-progressive alliance” dig in and hold firm or will they concede and re-call the meeting?  Watch this space ….

I have been reading the report of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary on the policing of the G20 protest.

Much of the attention will be on the arguments in the report on the legal framework for the policing of such events.  The report stresses that freedom of assembly under Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights  is a qualified (rather than an absolute) right.  This leads to what the report describes as the “policing dilemma” -

“Balancing the rights of protesters and other citizens with the duty to protect people and property from the threat of harm or injury defines the policing dilemma in relation to public protest. In a democratic society policed by consent, planning and action at every level must be seen to reconcile all these factors, particularly when a minority of people may be determined to cause disorder or worse. Peaceful protest requires careful interpretation of the law. The law is an important consideration in public order events but as Lord Scarman pointed out in relation to maintaining “The Queen’s Peace”, “it is well recognised that successful policing depends on the exercise of discretion on how the law is enforced.””

 The report points out that “the discretionary landscape of public order policing has grown more complex and testing” particularly as “the majority of the public has limited tolerance for disruption caused by protest”.  This is a good articulation of the problems faced by the police in dealing with such protests, but of course does not take us much further forward as to how the “dilemma” should be resolved in practice.  I will be interested to see what the MPA colleagues on the new MPA Civil Liberties Panel will make of it all.

The Inspectorate report is also interesting in that large sections refer to the attitudes of the public – a full chapter is devoted to the topic and the Inspectorate commissioned a major survey from IPSOS Mori to inform its work.  Implicitly, the Inspectorate is saying that policing by consent requires this sort of approach to assess public attitudes as to what is or is not acceptable to the public at large (ie what form of policing will be “with consent”).  Is the implication of this that Chief Constables should spend much more on assessing public attitudes to various types of operation?  It is an interesting idea.  However, while I believe the cornerstone of British policing must be policing by consent, I am not sure how appropriate would be constant opinion sampling – although I am sure market research companies are salivating at the prospect.

Finally, the report comments on the use of “new media”, on “citizen journalists” and the implications of all of this for the police.  I believe that the police service has yet to come to terms with the massive impact all of this is going to have on their work and the way it is perceived.  It is worth quoting the report at length:

“Mobile telephones combined with cameras have had a fundamental effect on the news media, particularly the speed at which news can be received and then broadcast.  The public at any major event are now an important source – often the first – of video, still images, text messages and e-mails. This activity is known as citizen journalism, and the published product is known as user-generated content (UGC).”  …

“The emergence of new media has been described as “a potentially radical shift of who is in control of information, experience and resources.”  The evolution of communication technology used to record and access images of violent confrontations between the police and protesters influenced emerging views of the police operation on 1st April. The high volume of publicly sourced footage of the events of 1st April, including the events leading up to the death of Ian Tomlinson, has demonstrated the influence of ‘citizen journalists’ – members of the public who play an active role in collecting, analysing and distributing media themselves. Consequently, individual and collective police action is under enormous public scrutiny.” ….

“Social networking sites, such as Facebook, encourage links to groups as well as individuals, generating a ‘spider-web’ of connections between a diverse spectrum of communities.  Some social networking and video-sharing sites have the capability to be accessed on mobile phones. This allows the entire network to be updated, whether through text, photos or videos, instantly at any time and from any location. Technology has allowed for a more flexible and responsive protest community which is capable of advanced communication and immediate reaction to events on the ground.  The pace and sophistication of communication arguably left police, particularly officers on the ground, less well informed than protesters with high specification mobile phones, who could access or post on websites and get an overview of the situation. This reality is in stark contrast to reports from the police of inability at times to communicate using the police radio. The challenge for the police is to keep pace with a dynamic, IT intelligent protest community and the technology available for use.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8138956.stm

I have tabled a question for written answer on electromagnetic pulses and the National Security Strategy arising from the meeting I went to yesterday:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government:

 

“What consideration was given to the threat to the critical national infrastructure of a high intensity electromagnetic pulse, produced either by malign intent or as a result of solar activity, in preparing the National Security Strategy.”

I see the issue of some of the “enhancements” to the pay aof senior police officers is starting to become a live issue.  The Times picked up the issue yesterday, the Guardian does so today and the Local Government Chronicle follows suit.

I raised all this in the House of Lords two weeks ago - rather cheekily on the back of an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, which had only a tangential relevance to the subject, saying:

“I had assumed that this part of the Bill related to pay-offs for senior officers who were asked to go early. If that is the case, no doubt my noble friend will respond on that specific point. I should be grateful if he will also respond on the wider question of incentive payments to senior officers because it is my understanding that some police authorities make extremely generous payments outside the normal negotiating board arrangements, thereby distorting the payment arrangements for senior officers in different parts of the country. If that is the case, rather than narrowing the ambit of this clause, as the noble Baroness proposes, we might want to see it widened to cover those additional bonus payments that are, I think, made in some police authority areas.”

The Minister, Lord Alan West, – not surprisingly - had not been briefed on the subject, but did promise to look into the matter.  I am now writing to him to raise the matter in more detail.

My contention is not that Chief Constables are necessarily paid too much, but that there should be some transparency about what is happening.  Distortions that mean that the Chief Constable of Loamshire, who might expect to have a comparatively quiet life compared with a Chief Constable for one of the great conurbations (or an Assistant Commissioner at the Metropolitan Police), receives disproportionate and hidden supplements to his or her pay are not in the wider public interest and may make it less likely that the best senior police officers end up in the most challenging jobs.

Earlier today I went to a meeting (organised by the Henry Jackson Society) in one of the more remote Commons Committee Rooms chaired by James Arbuthnot MP, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Defence.  He began by intoning that we were all attending “the most important meeting you will ever go to”.  I am not sure about that, but it was undoubtedly one of the scariest I have ever attended.

It was addressed by Avi Schnurr, President of EMPACT (The EMP Awareness Coordination Taskforce) and concerned the threat of an electro-magnetic pulse that could permanently disable the electricity grid and most electrical systems.

In 1962, the United States conducted “Starfish Prime,” a nuclear weapon test over a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The test was successful, with one unexpected result: fifteen hundred kilometers away in Hawaii streetlights burned out, TV sets and radios failed and power lines fused. This was unexpected and demonstrated that a nuclear warhead set off above the atmosphere causes an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP. Unlike a ground burst, an EMP blast can mean (depending on how high in the atmosphere the explosion takes place) continent-wide catastrophe, a capability potentially in the hands of any rogue nation or terror organization that can acquire a single nuclear-tipped missile.

With some of the world’s most unstable regional powers acquiring or already in possession of nuclear weapons, the United States Congress established the Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Commission, tasked with evaluating this growing threat. The Commission, based on testimony from throughout the federal government, warned that America’s current vulnerability invites attack. They concluded, remarkably, that “EMP is capable of causing catastrophe for the nation,” as “one of a small number of threats that has the potential to hold our society seriously at risk, and might result in defeat of our military forces.”

During the Cold War, the USA and the USSR relied on deterrence, but because of the threat from EMP (which could have limited their capacity to respond after a first warhead had detonated) both would have responded to a single missile in flight by a full maximum response within minutes – hence the briefcase with the codes that still follows the US President.

However, if one postulates a rogue state or a rogue group having access to a quite small nuclear device and a rocket powerful enough to send it into the upper atmosphere above the target nation or nations (perhaps launched from a boat), deterrence is no longer the answer.  The attraction for a North Korea or an Iran (and in both countries there is evidence according to Avi Schnurr that the military elites are not only aware of the potential of EMP attack but have also actively discussed it) is the comparative simplicity of delivering such an attack that would disable the United States or Europe and that it could be done stealthily.  The same attraction would also be there for terrorist groups.

And there is no question that the effect of an EMP attack could be devastating.  Electricity grids would be destroyed as transformers burnt out (and although these could be replaced the process would take years and again according to Avi Schnurr there is only one company in the world that makes the transformers on which the US electricity grid relies).  Control systems for parts of the critical infrastructure (eg the water supply) and even for vehicles would be destroyed by an EMP attack.  For a significant period the infrastructure could not function, distribution systems (eg for food) would not function, and the internet would not work.  Given the nature of modern society, social structures would break down very rapidly.

And as if the threat from a rogue state or terrorists was not enough, electromagnetic pulses can occur naturally as part of solar activity. Avi Schnurr quoted the US National Academy of Sciences as warning that solar activity can produce effects of equivalent magnitude and does so approximately every hundred years or so.  The last such massive solar surge was in 1859 and shorted out telegraph wires and caused widespread fires.  The next occasion when there might be such a surge is 2012 (although it might not be the big one, but that is when the next peak of solar activity is anticipated).

I will have to check but I don’t remember any of this being mentioned in last month’s National Security Strategy.  I can feel some Parliamentary Questions coming on …

In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s “The World This Weekend” Peter Clarke who was the National Coordinator for Terrorist Investigations until about 18 months ago has suggested that the current rules on contempt of court may hinder counter-terrorist work and certainly make it harder for the public to understand what is going on.  (I am not sure what was gained in public understanding by recording the first part of the interview in the street outside the Old Bailey, but then I’m just a listener, so what do I know … )

Peter Clarke was supported by former Attorney-General, Lord Peter Goldsmith, who said reviewing the legislation would be timely, while recognising the importance of ensuring that those arrested could get a fair trial.

There are real issues at the moment in terms of how public confidence in police actions in addressing terrorism may be maintained, if no public explanation of why a high-profile raid has taken place until all relevant Court proceedings have concluded possibly as much as three or for years later.

This was one of the issues that emerged in the major consultation exercise that I led on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Authority three years ago and which culminated in the publication of  “Counter Terrorism: The London Debate“.

The report concluded:

 

“It is critically important that the MPS continues

in relation to its counter-terrorist work to find

innovative ways to communicate important

factual information to the public before an

incident, as an incident unfolds, and afterwards.

In the absence of official information, rumour

will always thrive. Maximum safe information

must therefore be communicated by the police

to scotch such rumour, and thereby to limit

misunderstanding. Only in possession of the key

facts can the public make up its own mind in an

informed way as to whether a particular police

action is appropriate and proportionate.

Improved arrangements for the disclosure of

information on counter-terrorism matters by the

police to the public through the press are

urgently required. Current legal constraints

around pre-trial reporting prevent the police

from issuing information at their disposal,

thereby creating an information vacuum, which

is invariably filled by unsubstantiated public

accounts, resulting in damaging scepticism of

counter-terrorism operations within

communities. It is therefore time to revisit the

law on sub judice (matters under trial or being

considered by a judge or court). Whilst the legal

system must protect the rights of all individuals

to a fair trial, the police need to command

public confidence in order to do their difficult

counter-terrorist work, and this is made much

more difficult by restrictions imposed upon their

ability to share information with the public

about that work.”

The Daily Mail has published a nonsense article about former Speaker Martin and his so-called secret investiture.  Members of the House of Lords do not attend an investiture at the palace to “receive” their peerage.  A peerage is created when the Queen signs the relevant peer’s “Letters Patent” and the individual becomes a member of the House of Lords when they are introduced into the Chamber and their Letters Patent are read, they present their Writ of Summons, swear (or affirm) their loyalty to the Queen and sign the Roll.

It is not therefore a surprise – let alone sinister – that former Speaker Martin is not on the list of those expected to attend the forthcoming investitures at Buckingham Palace.