I am hearing rumours that the Coalition Government has ordered a 30% cut in the budget of the National Police e-Crime Unit in the current financial year.

If true, this will have a potentially devastating impact on the Police Service’s ability nationally to tackle the serious organised criminal gangs that are behind much e-crime in this country and to support initiatives to prevent and deter e-Crime.  

In any event, the Home Office support for the Unit was already small: only £3.5 million – so it will not even save very much.

This is in sharp contrast to the policy of the Conservatives before the General Election (when they pledged to “wage war on cyber-crime”) and the priority given to the issue by David Cameron.  It will also be a particular embarrassment to Baroness Neville-Jones, the Minister for National Security, who has taken a particular interest in cyber issues and was speaking at an event on the subject this morning.

I recently ventured into the vexed issue of the Dangerous Dogs Act, having been appalled by the cost of kennelling dogs seized in London under the terms of the Act  and the extraordinary time that it takes to process the dogs so seized to determine whether they should be destroyed.

My comments were intended to provoke a debate – and they certainly did that. I continue to think that it is ludicrous for the Metropolitan Police  to spend £10.6 million on kenneling dogs that have been seized. The processes for deciding what is to happen to the dogs concerned must be made much more speedy – in the interests of all concerned, especially the dogs that are being caged. I am also of the view that the Dangerous Dogs Act is a very poorly drafted piece of legislation – the emphasis should be on whether a particular animal is dangerous rather than whether it belongs to or resembles a specific breed. Those that breed and train dogs to attack and trade in such animals should also be the subject of much greater punishment than at present.

I have now tabled a question for oral answer in the House of Lords on Monday 21st June, as follows:

*Lord Harris of Haringey to ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to amend or to improve the operation of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991.

I will be interested to see what the Government has to say on the matter.

At the last meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, the ubiquitous Jenny Jones AM asked the Commissioner the following question:

“The new coalition government is planning to adopt the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database. What will this mean for the Met and how are you preparing the ground for the changes?”

The written answer has just been released and includes the following piece of information:

“In 2008/09, the ACPO Criminal Records Office found that 79 rape, murder or manslaughter cases in England and Wales were matched to the DNA database from DNA profiles that belonged to individuals who had been arrested but not convicted of any crime. Of that number, 36 cases were found to have had a direct and specific value to the investigation. If we were to have applied the Scottish model’s retention regime to this number and retained only those who were arrested but not convicted of a serious crime, then the number of potential detections would have reduced by almost 2/3 to just 13 detections. In short, 23 victims of the most serious crimes and their families could have been denied justice last year alone under the Scottish model.”

Maybe this is another area that the Coalition Government will have to start “reviewing”.

Oral Questions in the Lords highlighted the dilemmas being faced by the new Coalition Government in trying to reconcile their previous position – or rather positions (the LibDems don’t necessarily have the same view as the Tories) – and the reality of Government.

Baroness Neville-Jones, the Security Minister, was pressed repeatedly by Labour Peeers (including me) on the problems they face following the decision by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission that two individuals pose a “severe threat” to national security but cannot be deported to their country of origin.

Previously firm commitments have now become “reviews” and subject o indeterminate timescales 0r – in the case of the intention to repeal the Human Rights Act airbrushed from history:

“Question

11.35 am

Asked By Lord Corbett of Castle Vale

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why they decided not to contest the judgment of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission on 18 May that two men considered a “serious threat” to national security could not be deported to Pakistan.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Neville-Jones): My Lords, to appeal further there must be present an arguable material error of law in the judgment. The decision of the Special Immigration Appeals Commission was studied closely by officials and the Queen’s Counsel and no such error was found. Consequently, there were no grounds on which to contest the decision. However, departments—including, notably, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—continue to pursue the circumstances in which it would be possible to return these men to Pakistan.

Lord Corbett of Castle Vale: My Lords, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission decided that these two terrorist suspects—they were never charged—could not be deported to Pakistan because of that country’s abuse of legal and human rights. Does that not reinforce what was said to be the Government’s determination to repeal the Human Rights Act? If that is the case, does it have the enthusiastic support of the Liberal Democrats?

Baroness Neville-Jones: I can recognise wedge-driving when I see it. I do not think that there is a commitment on the part of the coalition to repeal the Human Rights Act. We are certainly going to look at the possibility of a Bill of Rights which is in conformity with the obligations that we have under the Human Rights Act.

Lord Howarth of Newport: What will the coalition do about control orders, of which the Conservative Party, the Liberal Democrat Party and the judges were so critical in recent years? Now that it has responsibility for the lives and safety of the people of this country, what will it do when there is the apprehension of individuals who there is good reason to believe are terrorists; who cannot be deported because of our adherence to the European convention; and against whom the evidence to secure a conviction cannot be produced in court for good reasons of national security?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, there are two parts to that question. In the particular case we are looking at, I can assure the House that appropriate safety measures have been taken in respect of the individuals concerned. As for control orders, the House may be aware that the coalition has a commitment to review their use. I cannot go further on what the outcome of that review will be until such time as we have conducted it. However, it is clear that we would like to reduce our reliance on such measures as is consistent with the security of this nation.

Lord Dubs: Would not one way of reducing dependence on control orders be to look again at the question of intercept evidence? Will the Minister indicate whether the coalition is looking at the possibility that intercept evidence might be used in our courts?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, as the House will be aware, the Chilcot commission is conducting its work but has not yet finished it. I have had discussions on this and I am quite satisfied that the serious work being done by the Chilcot commission needs to be concluded. As the noble Lord knows, we would like to be able to introduce intercept evidence but we have to await the outcome of that work. We will come back to the House.

Lord Avebury: In the SIAC judgment to which the Question refers, was there not a substantial discussion of the risk that these two people, if sent back to Pakistan, would be subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment and that therefore it would have been a breach of the ECHR? However, did not SIAC also add that if the two people who went back voluntarily were not subjected to treatment of that kind, the question of whether the two individuals the subject of the Question might be deported could be revisited?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, the individuals who returned voluntarily did so many months ago, before the hearing. That fact is relevant to the subsequent consideration of the individuals referred to in the Question. The fact that they returned and were not ill treated was one of the reasons for the Government considering that Nasser and Khan would not be ill treated on return. However, the court took the view that this was not sufficiently reliable in their case. The ability to return the two men can be revisited if circumstances change, and we are working on creating the circumstances in which that might be possible.

Lord Harris of Haringey: My Lords, does not the issue whether these two individuals should be deported raise a number of fundamental questions about the way in which national security is to be pursued? First, had intercept been available as evidence, would it have provided a different route for dealing with the individuals? Secondly, do the costs associated with the regime being put around the individuals represent the most efficient way of managing individuals who are considered a severe threat to the UK?

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, those are very good questions. I shall not trespass on the hypothetical question of whether it would have been different had we had intercept as evidence. It is clearly a relevant issue, which is one of the reasons why we want to explore its availability. As for control orders, cost is clearly one element in considering what we need to do to keep the people of this country safe. The efficiency of the regime is also an element. We are considering precisely those issues in our review of control orders.

Lord West of Spithead: My Lords, I had not intended to speak, but the Minister’s answer raises a number of questions. First, when will the control order study be finished? Are we looking at something that is fairly rapid? The next relates to the resources being used to look at subjects of interest. There is a difficult balance to be struck between the cost of control orders and the cost of doing it in other ways. I am concerned that, as the CSR comes galloping down the track towards us, we can ensure that we have the money required for surveillance of the subjects of interest. As the Minister well knows, it is a very close-run thing. I want to be sure that that money will be protected.

Baroness Neville-Jones: My Lords, the Government will not—I repeat not—put the safety of this country at risk. As for the noble Lord’s question on the review of control orders, I can tell your Lordships’ House that we are looking at it now; it is an issue for the present. I cannot tell your Lordships exactly when the review will be completed. It is more important that it is done properly than that it is done very quickly.”

It was noticeable that there was no string of Coalition-supporting Peers offering helpful or supportive supplementary questions.

This afternoon Downing Street announced the appointment of 55 new Peers, which when added to the three new Peers appointed by David Cameron as Government Ministers, makes a total of 58.  When they all take their seats (plus the two newly “elected” hereditary Peers), there will be 767 members of the House of Lords.

The announcement today is in fact an amalgam of three lists:

• a list of “working” Peers, nominated by the political parties, that has been working its way through the system for some time.  This comprises sixteen Labour; ten Conservatives (including one of the new Ministers); and six Liberal Democrats.  This list was completed well before the General Election and should have emerged months ago.
• a list of ex-MPs who were not standing in the General Election – the “dissolution” list, which traditionally appoints former senior Ministers and leading Parliamentarians to the Lords.  This comprises thirteen Labour; six Conservatives; three Liberal Democrats (one of whom – Richard Allan – retired five years ago and now works for Facebook); and one Democratic Unionist (Ian Paisley).
• one individual appointed as a Cross-bencher in recognition of having held a significant post in public life (Ian Blair).

I am told that the out-going Prime Minister had been sitting on the list of “working” peers for some time, along with the nomination of Sir Ian Blair, who was sacked by Mayor Boris Johnson/resigned the Metropolitan Police Commissionership to pursue other opportunities in October 2009.

Still to come is the normal “resignation” list of nominees by the outgoing Prime Minister (Tony Blair’s list is also still outstanding) and a list of peerages for any senior ex-Ministers or Parliamentarians defeated in the General Election.

This, of course, also excludes the “gerrymander” list of 100-200 new Peers that the Coalition has promised itself to avoid any risk of being voted down in the House of Lords.

Despite the extra Peers announced today, the Coalition’s case for bolstering its position remains extremely weak.

When the new Peers are in place the make-up of the House will be:

• 204 Conservatives
• 239 Labour
• 80 Liberal Democrat
• 218 Cross-bench and others
• 26 Archbishops and Bishops.

The coalition will have 284 members of the House out of a total of 767.  This is 37% of the House and is in practice a working majority as the Crossbenchers and the Bishops do not vote in a bloc (usually splitting on either side of the argument) and in practice they do not attend and vote as frequently as the Party representatives.

The outgoing Labour Government never had more than 30% of the membership of the House and was virtually always defeated if the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats voted together.

And the accepted principle had been that the Government of the day should not have a working majority in the House of Lords.

There is, of course, another reason why there should be no more Peers appointed for a while after the announcement today.  The House is now bursting at the seams.  In the Chamber it is frequently now standing room only and the Liberal Democrats have encroached onto the Bishops’ benches (encircling any Bishop present).  A note has gone round to many Peers telling them that they can’t have both a desk and a locker.  And it won’t be long before Peers have to share coathooks.

A constitutional outrage by trying to gerrymander the second Chamber is one thing; sharing coathooks is quite a different kettle of fish.

Michael Caine’s immortal line in “The Italian Job” was, of course:

“You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

According to the BBC, it appears that bank robbers still need to remember the lesson:

“Suspected robbers in Germany appear to have miscalculated the quantity of explosives needed to blow their way into a rural bank.

The building housing the bank in the northern village of Malliss was largely destroyed by an overnight explosion.

The bank’s cash machine survived intact and the suspected thieves are not thought to have made away with any money.”

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

And the SDEI was in teasing mood, like a fading diva flashing a bit of leg to raise the flagging interest of her devotees, offering a few hints of how he would like the new governance arrangements for the Metropolitan Police to change when the Coalition Government gets its way on Police Authorities.

The Coalition has said:

“We will introduce measures to make the
police more accountable through oversight
by a directly elected individual, who will be
subject to strict checks and balances by locally
elected representatives.”

And the SDEI told the Authority that during the Election campaign a document may or may not have been published which set out the views of the Mayor’s Office on how these arrangements would operate in London and he also said he would shortly be making public his detailed views when he responded to the Association of Police Authorities’ consultation on the subject (although he had told the APA Board that he disagreed with the Association’s general line and was not consulted on the content of their recent newspaper letter).  He also said that he had met new Home Office Ministers to discuss it.

So what was he recommending?

The SDEI remained rather vague – presumably just in case the final outcome is not quite the same as his recommendations – and acknowledged he was not clear on the timetable.

What was clear was that he envisaged the Mayor (whoever that might be – because if the timetable extends beyond 2012, Mayor Boris Johnson is likely to have stepped down by then to pursue his national ambitions) being the “Directly Elected Individual” for London’s police (??? will this include the City of London Police???).  And that the Mayor will then appoint a Board to oversee the Metropolitan Police with the scrutiny function being provided by the London Assembly.

So who would sit on the Board?  The members would be Mayoral appointments (and might include some elected politicians, such as Borough Leaders or Assembly Members).

So how would this differ from the existing independent members of the MPA?  Ah well, said the SDEI, these would be individuals with high levels of relevant external experience and rather than use the outmoded system of public advertisement and interviews to select members (as happens with the existing MPA independent members) it “would be possible to go out and look for particular skills”.

So that made eleven members of the MPA feel properly valued.

*DCiC = Dog Catcher in Chief

**SDEI = Shadow Directly Elected Individual

Yesterday, The Times reported concerns about the safety of David Cameron:

“David Cameron is rejecting the advice of top security officials by insisting on walking around Whitehall, refusing police motorcycle escorts and demanding to be allowed to keep his BlackBerry smartphone.”

The risk has been denied by Downing Street who call the concerns “ridiculous”.

Now I can applaud the decision of public figures not to want a fuss every time they want to do something that everyone else takes for granted – like walking down the street.  I can understand the desire not to be seen to be having special privileges, such as having the traffic stopped so that their cars do not get stuck in traffic jams.  I would like to be in a world where senior politicians are readily approachable by the public they serve.

However, the attitude displayed by the Prime Minister is an irresponsible one.

There are threats to his security.  They are real and genuine.  They come not just from organised terrorist groups, but from lone free-lancers.  And then there are the fixated crazies ….

To have our Prime Minister assassinated or attacked in the street would never be in the national interest.  His safety therefore matters to every one of us, whether we agree with his policies or not.

And it is not just his safety that is at risk.

Those around him – accompanying him or protecting him – or simply passing by – are put at risk by a suicide bomber or an armed individual seeing an opportunity to get at him.

And consider the job of those protecting him, having to make a split-second decision if someone comes too close, perhaps when that person reaches into their pocket or under their clothing.  We don’t want innocent passers-by wrestled to the ground or worse still shot because of a misinterpreted gesture.  But equally, not reacting to that gesture could have appalling consequences.

Mr Cameron needs to reconsider.  To do so would not be a sign of weakness, nor a sign that the job has gone to his head, but it would be a sign that he is acquiring the maturity to be Prime Minister.

A quiet – bordering on the boring – meeting of the Strategic and Operational Policing Committee of the Metropolitan Police Authority suddenly burst into life this afternoon when it was asked to authorise £10.6 million to provide kennelling for another 400 dogs seized under the Dangerous Dogs Act.

I growled that it would be a lot cheaper just to shoot the dogs rather than cage them (which in itself is fairly cruel for large dogs) for six months or more while the legal processes following their seizure grind through the courts.  Much to my surprise, the sentiment attracted unanimous support from other Committee members – even the saintlier-than-thou Jenny Jones AM admitted that she didn’t like attack dogs.

It was agreed that the DCiC*, Deputy Mayor Kit Malthouse AM, Chair of the MPA, who has been making his name tackling the issue of dangerous dogs in London, should write to the new Home Secretary, Theresa May, asking her to agree fast-track culling powers for the Police in relation to the animals.

However, even though everyone knows that the new Con/Lib Coalition** Government walks on water, it was decided to authorise the money just in case the new powers take a bit of time to come through.

*     Dog-Catcher-in-Chief

**  aka “the mongrel” – copyright Mayor Boris Johnson

The recent General Election means that I have only just spotted an item that was in the Daily Mail a week or so back.  This reports that:

“A routine traffic-stop in Switzerland has allegedly thwarted eco-terrorists from blowing up the site of the £55million nano-technology HQ of IBM in Europe.

The three members – two men and a woman – of the Italian terrorist group Il Silvestre were stopped just a few miles from their target with their explosive device primed and ready to go.

Italians Costantino Ragusa and Silvia Guerini, together with Italian-Swiss Luca Bernasconi, were arrested and jailed after a search of their vehicle revealed the bomb.

Guerini and Constantino – the 33-year-old leader of Il Silvestre – already have convictions for eco-terrorism offences and have served jail terms. 

The group describes itself as anarchist and is opposed to all forms of micro-technology as well as nuclear power and weapons.

Swiss police said today that their car was halted on the night of April 15 at Langnau en-route to the technology centre at Rueschlikon, near Zurich. 

The site is due to be opened next year and already has some of the most complex and advanced computer equipment in the world installed in it.

‘A large quantity of explosives was found,’ said a police spokesman.”

The report continues:

“The IBM facility that the Il Silvestre group was targeting is still under construction.  When finished, it will contain the most state-of-the-art facilities in Europe for nano-and-bio-technological research, with the probability of billions of pounds in profit for IBM.

Investigators are quizzing the suspects on whether the planned attack is part of a new co-ordinated wave of terror against such facilities on the continent.

Swiss media reported that the intended bombing was planned to coincide with a secret meeting of European anarchists on April 16 and 17 in the Swiss town of Winterthur.

Some newspapers speculated it was being planned to bring attention to the imprisonment of Il Silvestre member Marco Camenisch, currently in jail for the murder of a Swiss border guard.  Guerini and Constantino were in jail with him in 2006 and joined in a hunger strike.

Il Silvestre was spawned in the Tuscan countryside and is now considered to be one of the rising terror groups in Europe with a rigid cell structure, access to explosives and a membership that has no qualms about killing to achieve its goals.

It is considered as one of the successor groups to the lethal Red Brigades that scorched Italy in 70’s and 80’s.”

This is a timely reminder that – as I have repeatedly argued – the focus of counter-terrorist work must not just be on al Qaeda inspired groups.  There is a need to think outside the box and be aware of a much wider range of potential threats.