The latest journal from the Royal United Services Institute contains a perceptive article, entitled “Terrorism: The New Wave“, which was widely reported last Friday.

It follows concerns I raised in the House of Lords last month:

“Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, what is the rate of conversion to Islam within prisons and what steps are the Prison Service taking in terms of monitoring radicalisation and external speakers who come into prisons?

Lord McNally: I do not have precise figures on conversions, but I know the background to this question of whether or not there is radical Islamisation in prisons. The studies that I have been shown reveal no conclusive evidence of this, although there are examples which give rise to concern. The staff and the wider Prison Service keep a close eye on imams in prisons. Bringing them in to lecture, preach and minister within prisons has been one of the benefits, but we must make sure that it is a positive influence, as the noble Lord suggested.”

The RUSI study warns that one of the key threats from this next generation of terrorists comes from within the ranks of the 8,000 Muslims currently serving prison terms who are at risk of being converted to extremism by hardcore inmates jailed for terrorist offences.

The report cites estimates by prison probation officers that up to one in 10 Muslim inmates are being successfully targeted while inside jail, leading to the creation of a new generation of potential attackers who are due for release in the next decade and whose previous convictions do not relate to terrorism.

The report suggests that radicalisation is taking place in British prisons at a rapid rate, especially in the eight high-security establishments where most terrorism offenders are detained.

However, newspaper reports the study’s findings as being dismissed by the Coalition Government:

“The Ministry of Justice said it did not agree that radicalisation was widespread within the prison system. A spokesman said: “We run a dedicated expert unit to tackle the risk posed by those offenders with violent extremist views and those who may attempt to improperly influence others.”"

The response smacks of complacency.  I trust the complacency does not extend to one of the other major findings that large-scale and co-ordinated attacks such as the 7 July bombings are likely to be replaced with terrorist assaults by highly motivated but poorly trained lone individuals whose lack of connection with any major terrorist organisation will make them more difficult for police or MI5 to detect.

RUSI, which is very well-connected and whose reports are normally highly respected, has produced a timely and important contribution to the discussion of the terrorist threat faced by the UK.  Its conclusions should be taken seriously and not brushed aside by the Government.

Regular readers (you both know who you are) will be aware that I have from time to time been somewhat flippant about Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority (aka the Dog-Catcher-in -Chief). 

However, I am with him – and on occasions ahead of him – in the belief that more needs to be done about the growing problem of dangerous  bred/trained-for-attack dogs in London.  I therefore support the initiative that he is taking today petitioning the Government to take action to resolve the problem.

The GLA is calling for:

• an increase in the penalty for owning a banned breed, to bring it more inline with carrying an offensive weapon
• the extension of the law to include private land, particularly to protect people who have to visit other peoples homes as part of the work
• changes to the part of the law that allows well behaved banned breeds to remain with their owners, so that the process is much quicker, making it better for the dog and saving the police money.

Last time I asked there was little sign that the Coalition Government was planning to move on any of these points.  However, Kit Malthouse has (or at least he would like us to believe that he has) the ear of the Coalition Government.  No doubt, therefore, this initiative will  produce speedy action.  We’ll be waiting……

There is a very powerful post by PC Bloggs under the title “The Real Police Woman” on the death of PC Sharon Beshenivsky.  I hope it is widely read.

From 24th November 2009:

I spent a big chunk of yesterday visiting Broadmoor Special Hospital, in my capacity as Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody.  The visit was fascinating, staff were very generous with their time and I learned a lot.

I also enjoyed the security arrangements, which are rather more rigorous than most that I have encountered.  You need a photo-ID, you provide two fingerprints for matching on entering and leaving the hospital, most electronic items have to be left in lockers outside the hospital, and you need to go through a metal detector as well as being searched.  When all that is completed you are issued with a visitors’ identity badge, which carries your photograph, your name and job title or designation.

Presumably, when it came to a job title, only a certain number of characters could be entered on the badge and “Chair of the Independent Advisory Panel on Deaths in Custody (Ministry of Justice)” obviously didn’t fit.  I found myself bearing the label: “Lord Toby Harris, Minister of Death”.

Fortunately, the font size was quite small, so I think (hope?) that none of the patients could read it ….

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Iain Dale (and other Conservative commentators) are exulting that “the war on the motorist” is to end.  He has been whipped into a state of frothing excitement by the story on the front page of today’s Sunday Times (hidden behind a pay wall, but Iain Dale helpfully reproduces most of the article – so he will presumably be in Rupert Murdoch’s bad books now) that suggests that speed cameras are to be abolished.

40% of the budgets of local road safety partnerships are to be cut and all over the country speed cameras are going to be switched off as a result.

While this is joyful news for the likes of Iain Dale – who has, he admits, nine points on his driving licence for driving too fast (so one more contravention would mean that he would be disqualified from driving) – it must be much less welcome news for the families of the more than 2000 individuals who are killed or seriously injured on the roads each year.

The Coalition Government is, of course, ignoring the evidence that this expenditure saves lives, such as the paper in the British Medical Journal which concluded:

“Existing research consistently shows that speed cameras are an effective intervention in reducing road traffic collisions and related casualties.”

It is also ignoring the local campaigns of its own Ministers, like the ubiquitous Lynne Featherstone MP who is campaigning for a 20mph zone throughout her constituency, who writes in her blog (quite sensibly for once, despite the italics):

“Last year there were six deaths in Haringey – as well as injuries. One little girl, for example, had both legs broken and will never be able to do sport or such like again – in her life.

From evidence elsewhere, 20mph saves lives, reduces seriousness of injuries and cuts pollution. 20mph as a pan borough speed limit has the downside of being a blanket policy – but the big upside of being simple, uniform policy. It’s a common complaint of motorists that rules are too complicated and are enforced wrongly.”

And then she adds:

“There would clearly be a need for enforcement to make sure that there was a penalty to not observing the limit.”

So how might this enforcement be managed efficiently?  Speed cameras, of course.  Which her Government now wants to stop using.

I have already explained that I really don’t mind.

However, just in case you really really want to cast your vote for this blog in the Total Politics annual beauty parade, this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……

Earlier this evening I heard Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, deliver the Police Foundation Annual Lecture (given each year in memory of Lord John Harris – no relation).

Sir Paul’s lecture, entitled “Fighting Organised Crime in an Era of Financial Austerity”, was insightful and thought-provoking.

And the thought it provoked in me was how does tackling serious crime fit into the Coalition Government’s agenda?

The answer, if you listen to Sir Paul (although he was much too polite to say it so explicitly), was that it doesn’t.

The lecture spelt out the impact that serious organised crime has directly and indirectly on communities and its financial and economic cost to the country.  And Sir Paul then pointed out that, despite the significant improvements in recent years:

“The specialist resources devoted by the police service to addressing the threat from organised crime remains uncoordinated.  ….  the  service has no organised crime strategy, no established national tasking process and no meaningful performance measures.”

He didn’t say – although he could have done – that the Coalition’s Programme for Government doesn’t mention serious organised crime in the chapter on “Crime and Policing” and the closest it gets to a mention anywhere in the document is in the chapter on “Immigration” which promises to:

“create a dedicated Border Police Force, as part of a refocused Serious Organised Crime Agency, to enhance national security, improve immigration controls and crack down on the trafficking of people, weapons and drugs. We will work with police forces to strengthen arrangements to deal with serious crime and other cross-boundary policing challenges, and extend collaboration between forces to deliver better value for money.”

Refocussing SOCA on immigration hardly solves the problem Sir Paul was describing.

He did, however, reveal that the Government is now drafting a paper on organised crime – so I suppose that must be progress.  However, before we get our expectations too high, he warns that this:

“must not be a collection of fine words and generic statements.”

…. perhaps he’s seen the draft.

And he concluded with a stark warning:

“I wonder how many Chief Constables across the country are going to be able and willing to balance the very proper desire and requirement for local community policing, with the challenge of maintaining at least existing capability to deal with the high end but often less obvious demands of serious organised crime.  And is the situation about to get even more complex?  Will the new accountability and governance model for police forces, incorporating directly elected local individuals, lead to the unintended consequence of further eroding existing limited organised crime capability?”

And, if the Coalition omits tackling serious organised crime from its programme for crime and policing, what will happen with directly elected police chiefs?

I hope we don’t have to wait for a Sicilian-style breakdown of civic authority before tackling organised crime reappears on the Coalition’s priority list.

There were a series of exchanges this afternoon in House of Lords Question Time on the sequence of events in Northumberland following the release from prison of Raoul Moat on 1st July.

Baroness Patricia Scotland, the Shadow Attorney General, had tabled the follwoing “topical” question:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps were taken by Northumbria Police when the recent warning from HM Prison Durham was received; and whether a multi-agency risk assessment conference was called to assess the risk faced by Samantha Stobbart.”

This elicited the following answer from Baroness Neville-Jones, the Home Office Minister of State:

“My Lords, Northumbria Police received information on Friday 2 July from Durham prison that Mr Moat had threatened to cause Ms Stobbart serious harm. The chief constable referred the handling of the information to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which will conduct an independent investigation to determine whether Northumbria Police responded adequately. I also understand that Northumbria Police did not conduct a multi-agency risk assessment conference to assess the risk faced by Ms Stobbart.”

Baroness Patricia Scotland tried again (and widened the question into the wider issue of whether the Coalition Government will continue to give the same priority as the previous Labour Government to protecting women at risk of serious domestic violence):

“My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer, but can I ask her why they did not? Bearing in mind that these events demonstrate clearly the need for a risk assessment in such circumstances, what steps will be put in place to make sure that multi-agency risk assessments are made? Can she give us an assurance that the Government will maintain the commitment made by the previous Government to hold the 80 remaining multi-agency risk assessment conferences, which are necessary to cover the whole of the country? They are the best way of saving lives and money.”

The Minister responded but was clearly vague on the wider issues:

“My Lords, we certainly agree that the multi-agency risk assessment process is valuable. I have not heard anything from my colleagues that would suggest that we have any intention of doing away with them. There are clearly a number of actions that the police could have taken. One of the reasons why the chief constable referred the actions of her force to the IPCC was to discover what appropriate action could have been taken.”

Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner and former Northumberland Chief Constable reminded the House that there was an active police operation currently under way, which quite properly should not be underminded, and this produced the following exchanges:

“Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington: My Lords, I declare an interest as a former chief constable of Northumbria. Would the Minister not agree that this is a time for supporting Northumbria Police in a most dangerous and difficult situation? This is not a time for apportioning blame in any way, shape or form. Would she also not agree that this will be fully investigated by an independent authority? Let us support the police in their difficult task.

Baroness Neville-Jones: I am sure the whole House, including me, share the sentiments that have just been expressed.

Lord Elystan-Morgan: Was the threat that was made of such a nature that it could have been interpreted as a threat to kill? Does the noble Baroness appreciate that, under the Criminal Law Act 1977, the threat to kill is a very serious offence that is punishable by 10 years’ imprisonment? Was any thought given to arresting this man before he left prison and with a view to prosecution, thus avoiding the possibility of further offences?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, it is absolutely right to say that such a threat would be very serious. My understanding is that the police force was not informed that there was such a threat to life.”

Labour’s Baroness Liz Symons then reverted to the failure to carry out a risk assessment and again the Minister couldn’t really answer:

“Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, will the Minister address the very specific Question put by my noble and learned friend Lady Scotland—why was a multi-agency risk assessment not held?

Baroness Neville-Jones: Let me give the House the timelines. The prisoner was released on 1 July, the information about this man’s statements was given to the force on 2 July and the chief constable learnt of that information only on 4 July. She referred the matter to the IPCC the following morning; clearly she felt there was a need to do so. I cannot go beyond that at the moment because this matter is under investigation, so I cannot help the House further.”

Lord Brian Mackenzie and I then widened the issues by probing the impact of the Coalition’s policies on opposing police force mergers, on cuts in the policing and prison budgets and on the plans not to proceed with prison sentences of less than six months:

“Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate: My Lords, does the noble Baroness think that there is now a powerful case for looking at the size and number of police forces?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, the Northumbria Police are receiving mutual aid. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary has been in touch with the force. If it needs any further assistance, it will certainly be given it. As for the noble Lord’s basic question of whether it is a good idea for forces to help each other, we as a party are in favour of forces joining together, or indeed merging if they wish, provided there is local support for such a move.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, while I am mindful of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, given that there has been newspaper criticism of the efficiency of the Prison Service in issuing a warning and whatever response there may have been by Northumbria Police, what safety guarantees can the noble Baroness give on behalf of the coalition Government that in a few years’ time, with 25 per cent fewer prison officers and a 25 per cent reduction in police grant, which will no doubt impact disproportionately on specialist resources, this sort of event will not recur, or is the answer that Raoul Moat would not have been in prison at all because his sentence was only 18 weeks and, as far as the coalition is concerned, people like him should roam the country freely?

Baroness Neville-Jones: This individual was in for a short custodial sentence. Under the regime that prevails at the moment, half that sentence was served. As things stand, under legislation that was not passed by this Government, the governor has no discretion to do anything other than release the individual. He performed a duty in warning the police.”

This prompted a Tory backbencher to intervene – clearly unhappy with Coalition policy on not imprisoning people for less than six months:

“Lord Elton: My Lords, does the Minister understand the concern in this House about the release of potentially dangerous prisoners? Will she use this opportunity to revise, review, and preferably improve the method of screening prisoners before they are released in order to protect the public?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, my noble friend raises a very important issue. I understand that the IPCC will follow the investigation trail, so I think that we will get help in the form of its view about what happened immediately before the release. However, the issue that is raised is important and no doubt we will have to follow it.”

Not really surprising that the Minister looked so relieved that Question Time had finished.

I am not looking for any recognition, as you know these things don’t matter to me at all and I am profoundly disinterested in where this blog comes in the annual Total Politics ranking of political blogs, so I really am not asking for you to vote for me or my blog ……..

but ……..

should you be so inclined (and I repeat I really, really don’t mind one way or the other), this is what you have to do:

The rules are:
1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and rank them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name.
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.

So I’m not asking you to do it, but I really won’t mind if you do……