Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former Dame Eliza and Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), gave the Mile End lecture in the House of Lords a few hours ago.  Her topic was “Reflections on Intelligence” and I understand that the text of this will shortly be available on the Parliamentary web-site.

In the Q&A after the lecture one Jack Bauer enthusiast asked her about torture.  She was unequivocal in her reply:

“Nothing – even saving lives – justifies torture.”

She’d earlier made some comments about US “waterboarding” activities at Guantanamo Bay and she added the caustic comment:

“The sad thing is that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush watched “24″.”

The DCiC*, Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, has in a moment of emotional transparency told the readers of  the March issue of The Job (the Metropolitan Police in-house magazine for police officers) about his formative influences.  Lauding the Volunteer Police Cadets scheme and the Scouts Association, he says:

“It is exactly these types of organisations that deserve our support.  They build self-respect, character and a sense of duty to others – qualities we need more of in the capital.”

And then comes the self-revelatory bit:

“In fact, I was an enthusiastic young scout and air cadet and look at the direction my own life went in.”

At this very moment the Scouts Association is planning a new poster campaign:

JOIN THE SCOUTS AND YOU COULD GET TO BE LIKE ME

*Dog-Catcher-in-Chief

UPDATE:

The DCiC has been in touch.  He thinks I am being a tad unfair.  I’ve told him to blame the picture on the Evening Standard.  But it turns out that what he is really miffed about is that his self-deprecatory exclamation mark at the end of his comment “… and look at the direction my own life went in” was missed off by The Job.

I always knew that there was an irony bypass somewhere in New Scotland Yard so it was probably edited out.

The question is: will heads roll?

Scott Charney, the Microsoft Vice President in charge of Trustworthy Computing, is speaking today at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.  He is re-stating both Microsoft’s commitment to “End-to-End Trust” but also the need for business, government and the public to work together to ensure that those using the internet are safe and secure.

The message is an important one: responsibility for internet security has to be shared.  The House of Lords Committee on Personal Internet Security, on which I sat, reported nearly three years ago and used a road transport analogy to make the point: safe road use requires responsible behaviour by drivers and pedestrians, but cars need to have safety features embodied in them, roads themselves need to be well-maintained and properly lit, there need to be laws regulating safe behaviour on the roads (speed limits etc) and those laws need to be properly enforced.

If anything the message has become even more important since our Committee reported.  More and more commercial and personal interactions take place on line.  Social networking sites are booming and an increasing proportion of commerce is conducted via the internet.

The threats to security have also become more pronounced.  The threats are no longer from isolated individuals, but from organised crime and it is also becoming abundantly apparent that some nation states are operating in the same way to infiltrate commercial and government networks for their own purposes.

And the technology itself is developing.  Cloud computing is becoming the norm and this presents its own challenges.  Certainly, this has raised the issue of security for many people (although it is not automatically a given that the security of data held in a cloud is necessarily worse than if it is held on your own servers, particularly if it turns out that they are inadequately protected).

So how do we move forward?

Partnership is certainly essential.  Governments have to work together in setting an international framework for collaboration and for law enforcement.  And at a national level they must also work with IT service providers and with business in general.

But above all, the individual user must be at the heart of all this.  Sensible security arrangements that make sense to the individual have to be devised.  It needs to be acknowledged that most individual users of the internet, whether they are trying to do their weekly shopping or organise their social lives, are rushed and busy.  Moreover, they are not technological experts.  They have inadequate levels of knowledge, so an error message or system alert that makes sense to an IT professional will probably be gibberish to most of us.

And critical to all of this is the need for robust identity management.

Surely, it is not too much to ask that people can feel confident that their personal details are secure, that they can communicate with others secure in the knowledge that the person or organisation with which they are communicating is who it says it is, and that when they are asked to identify themselves they need reveal no more about themselves than is necessary for the transaction concerned.

If today’s discussions at the RSA Conference take us further towards those objectives, we will be making real progress and we can all feel more hopeful that a trusted and secure internet environment is being built.

Fanatical followers of this blog (and you both know who you are) will be aware that – as is my habit – I posted a short tongue-in-cheek piece from the Metropolitan Police Authority meeting at 11.06 on Thursday 25th February.

This poked gentle fun at the man I call the DCiC (Dog-Catcher-in-Chief), Kit Malthouse, and his sensitivity about the nit-picking from the Green’s Jenny Jones at his attendance record.  I referred to his boast that he had attended 46 meetings since the last session of the MPA and this Stakhanovite work-rate was even more impressive given that he had been on holiday for a week of that time.  I also mentioned his nickname: “HoT” – a reference to his Hand on Tiller fixation.

Sometimes I think my sense of humour is rather esoteric and unlikely to be shared by anyone else, so it was gratifying to learn that some three hours later at 2.02 Ross Lydall posted his own thoughts on the same subject on the Evening Standard web-site.  He even has his own nickname for Kit – he calls him “The Tillerman” and he linked to the same article as I did to illustrate the nitpicking.

My cup runneth over – I am not alone.

We clearly are thinking the same.

Ross Lydall, under the headline

Met chairman Kit Malthouse: Tea for the ‘Tillerman’ at so many meetings

said:

“Kit Malthouse began his first meeting as chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority by revealing he had attended or chaired 46 meetings since the MPA last met (on January 28). What’s more, he had squeezed in a week’s holiday to boot.

Why this inconsequential start to proceedings? Because the Greens made quite a fusson the eve of his confirmation hearing as MPA chair (he succeeds the fleeing Boris, who has obviously realised what hard work it is) by revealing that Kit had failed to ever attend all three key MPA sub-committees of which he is a member in the 18 months since the Tory takeover of City Hall.”

And I said (just three hours earlier):

“The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and the DCiC*, Deputy Mayor Kit “HoT”** Malthouse AM is in the Chair.

And the DCiC was showing his sensitive side.  He has clearly been hurt by the criticism that he is too busy to fulfil the role of MPA Chair and the nit-picking about his attendance record at MPA Committee meetings.  So the item on the agenda for his oral report consisted merely of him telling the Authority that he had had 46 meetings in the last month – and as he was away or one of the weeks concerned that works out as a productivity rate of around 3 per working day.

He promises to keep us informed of his work rate at future meetings, but that will not satisfy Jenny Jones AM.  She wants an indicator measuring the “quality” of the meetings.  No doubt those meeting HoT in future will be asked to fill in a form afterwards asking “how was it for them?”

However, HoT is clearly alive to this danger: he assured the Authority that he prefers what he calls “action” to meetings.”

Now isn’t that nice ….

The Metropolitan Police Authority is in session and the DCiC*, Deputy Mayor Kit “HoT”** Malthouse AM is in the Chair.

And the DCiC was showing his sensitive side.  He has clearly been hurt by the criticism that he is too busy to fulfil the role of MPA Chair and the nit-picking about his attendance record at MPA Committee meetings.  So the item on the agenda for his oral report consisted merely of him telling the Authority that he had had 46 meetings in the last month – and as he was away or one of the weeks concerned that works out as a productivity rate of around 3 per working day.

He promises to keep us informed of his work rate at future meetings, but that will not satisfy Jenny Jones AM.  She wants an indicator measuring the “quality” of the meetings.  No doubt those meeting HoT in future will be asked to fill in a form afterwards asking “how was it for them?”

However, HoT is clearly alive to this danger: he assured the Authority that he prefers what he calls “action” to meetings.

But the DCiC was also in magnanimous mood.  He recommended that his Conservative colleague, Tony Arbour AM, should be appointed to the MPA’s Strategic and Operational Policing Committee (despite two years of efforts by the Conservative Group on the London Assembly to keep Tony Arbour off the MPA itself and strenuous efforts at previous meetings to resist extra members being appointed to the Strategic and Operational Policing Committee).  It was mischievously suggested instead he should go on the under-subscribed Finance and Resources Committee.  However, this was squashed firmly when Tony Arbour told the Authority “You should never trust me with money” – a reassuring remark to the residents of Richmond-upon-Thames where he used to be Council Leader.

*    Dog-Catcher-in-Chief

**  Hand-on-Tiller

When I posted yesterday on the subject of dangerous dogs, I didn’t know that just a short time before there had been a serious incident in which a police officer had been attacked in South London.

The subsequent Metropolitan Police statement was as follows:

“Shortly before 12.00 noon on Tuesday 23 February, a 57 year old male police officer, was attacked and bitten by two pit-bull dogs in the back garden of a residential property in Sladedale Road SE18.

Officers were attending the address to arrest the occupant for non-payment of a £1500 fine.

One PC placed himself in the garden of the neighbouring property in case the suspect tried to make off from his address.

This officer was attacked as the dogs subsequently jumped from the suspect’s garden over the fence to reach him.

A specialist dog section was called to subdue the dogs but due to their violent behaviour armed officers were called to the scene and the dogs were destroyed.

The injured officer was taken to a south London hospital suffering from approx 15 bites to his chest, face and arms. He has now been discharged but remains placed sick at present.

A 55-year-old man was arrested for non-payment of the £1500 fine, and was also arrested under the Dangerous Dog Act and on suspicion of assault on a police officer. He is currently in custody at a south London Police station.

He was also arrested on suspicion of assault GBH in relation to an incident in 2008 where a woman was attacked by two large brown pit-bull type dogs on Roydene Road SE18.

She sustained significant injuries to her body from the attack.

DI Bruce Galbraith, from Greenwich CID said: “This was an extremely distressing experience for this officer who was violently attacked by these dogs. We would like to ask the public to come forward and let us know if there have been any other incidents with these dogs or any information that may assist us with our investigation.”"

I understand that a man has been charged under the Dangerous Dogs Act and will appear in Court tomorrow.

A timely reminder that the concerns expressed by MPA members were absolutely right.

But an even more salutary reminder of the risks faced by police officers every day.

I spoke at a conference this morning, grandly entitled “The Policing and Crime Act: Putting People First” and I found myself in the rather unexpected and unusual position of defending the Dog-Catcher-in-Chief (DCiC) himself, Deputy Mayor Kit “Hand on Tiller” (HoT) Malthouse AM.

I was talking about the inter-action between politicians and the police service and made the point that one of the functions of a police authority is to help sensitise police chiefs to the issues that matter to the communities they both serve.  We ended up discussing as an example the issue of dangerous “attack” dogs.

This is a topic which led the Metropolitan Police to brief the press about their exasperation (“he’s on the phone every day”)  over the vigour with which the DCiC was pursuing the matter.  I pointed out that the Metropolitan Police Authority – in particular, Cindy Butts – had been raising concerns about the increasing prevalence of such dogs in London and the extent to which they were used to intimidate and threaten people.  In my local park you routinely see youths training their dogs to hang from tree branches by their jaws and most big-city dwellers will have similar stories.  The DCiC picked up on these concerns and pressed the Metropolitan Police to take the issues more seriously.  This they have now done.

This is not about interfering with the operational independence of chief constables.  It is about highlighting legitimate public concern and encouraging the police service to respond operationally in a proportionate and appropriate fashion.

I am sure that, even without the DCiC’s pressure and that of MPA colleagues, the Metropolitan Police would eventually have taken action.  But police authority intervention hastened that action by highlighting public concern.  And I rather think that most Londoners welcomed that.

It is a bit like what Winston Churchill is alleged to have said about the United States “The Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”  For Americans read the Metropolitan Police, although I am not sure who the Churchill-equivalent would be in this case.

Last Sunday’s revelations in The Sunday Times that the National Police Improvement Agency has spent £750,000 on repairing an ornamental bridge (overlooked by the grace-and-favour flat provided to the NPIA’s Chief Executive, Peter Neyroud) come at a bad time for the Agency.  I am told that patience is rapidly running out with the failures of the NPIA to deliver the improvements promised by its own name.

Senior police officers apparently never have a good word to say about the Agency and civil servants roll their eyes when its name is mentioned.

The Conservative Party – after a flurry of Freedom of Information Act requests about the costs of the NPIA – have put it on their A-list of candidates for the Quango-cull in the (remote) event of their being in Government after the General Election.

And my spies tell me that current Home Office Ministers have signaled their limited confidence in the Chair of the Agency, Peter Holland (a failed candidate for Chair of the Association of Police Authorities) and “Chief Constable” Neyroud (who distinguished himself at a Home Office Christmas Party two years ago by being the only police officer to turn up in uniform) by only renewing their contracts of appointment for a short period.

The problem that no-one has yet solved is what is to be done – in the event of the NPIA’s demise – about the important functions that it is supposed to carry out.  After all, somebody does need to get a strategic grip of national police technology procurement and the training of senior police officers cannot be left to chance ….

The Daily Telegraph seems to be running a campaign to dilute the accountability of the police to police authorities on the back of the Ali Dizaei case.  Yesterday, they ran a story headlined:

Commissioner must appoint senior officers following ‘disastrous’ Ali Dizaei case

and this was followed up this morning by:

Metropolitan Police chief set to pick own team under Tories

The main thrust of this is rather undermined by a letter – also in today’s Telegraph – from Len Duvall AM, my successor as Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority from 2004 until the advent of Mayor Boris Johnson, which points out that the present Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, had sat (as Deputy Commissioner – the then Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, having given him a hospital pass/decided not to sit on the Panel himself) on the Panel that had appointed Ali Dizaei as a Commander and as Len puts it:

“The Met already has a significant say in the appointment of their senior officers. The police role on interview panels is clear. They can and do give their professional opinion on the suitability of candidates. This was no different for the appointment of Ali Dizaei, and the record of his interview will confirm that he was certainly not appointed against the Met’s wishes.”

It is certainly ironic that the issue of who should appoint senior police officers has suddenly become so prominent again.

I know that Sir Paul has strong feelings on these matters.  He is entitled to his views, but the Dizaei case does not strengthen his argument.

Indeed, the Metropolitan Police’s record (largely before Sir Paul’s time) over Ali Dizaei is rather a strange one and certainly does not suggest that the judgement of senior Police officers over the years has been either consistent or a model of exemplary soundness.  There was, of course, the botched Operation Helios investigation.  But even furthur back, there was the decision to accept Ali Dizaei’s transfer into the Metropolitan Police.  I am told that the officers who interviewed him recommended that he should not be accepted into the Metropolitan Police, but that this was over-turned against their advice by a more senior officer.

Len Duvall’s letter also points out:

“…. in the time I chaired the Metropolitan Police Authority, the resistance I encountered when trying to deal with controversial officers invariably came from the Met itself; not politicians or other MPA members.”

And my memory is that on all the senior police appointments panels that I have sat on there was no occasion in which the panel failed to act on clear advice from the Commissioner (or his representative) that an individual should not be appointed.

More significantly, I also remember (occasional) instances where a previous Commissioner pressed very hard for  particular candidates to be appointed and that this swayed what would have otherwise have been the judgement of the Police Authority members in favour of those individuals.  Some of the appointments made as a result of such pressure have been notably less than successful.

Parliamentary privilege is precisely that – a privilege.  It was intended to ensure that Members of Parliament (of both Houses) should be able to speak freely in Parliament without the threat of litigation related to what they might say.  It did not – quite rightly – exempt Parliamentarians from the criminal law.

However, listening to the howls of outrage about the attack on Parliamentary privilege from Conservatives when an investigation into alleged breaches of the Official Secrets Act – an investigation that the Police had little choice about having to conduct – led to Damian Green MP, you would have thought that the Conservative Party wanted to adopt the Russian mode of Parliamentary privilege where members of the Russian mafia get themselves elected to the Russian Duma to avoid criminal charges.

Now – suddenly – the Tory Party position has changed – at least it is in a sensible direction this time.  David Cameron has now adopted the Labour Party position articulated by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, who made it clear yesterday, in relation to the MPs and the Conservative Peer charged over their expenses, that people wanted to see MPs treated like everyone else:

“They are entitled to a fair trial and the public… would be aghast if they thought there was some special get out of jail card for Parliamentarians.”