Terrorism: Emergency Communications

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Harris, for introducing this very important subject and echo what we have just heard about the compliments about his service.

I accept that my experience is, or was, in Northern Ireland and that that time has passed. However, we may not have had all the technology, but a lot of the same principles exist today. There were occasions when I was on duty in an ops room when there were more than two bomb incidents going on at the same time, so I fully appreciate what happens with communications when a lot of people want to be on them about one subject. It makes a lot of systems very vulnerable—therefore, we have to have the best.

The first and most important principle is that there must be efficient command and control as soon as possible after an incident, and this can be achieved only with the use of communications technology and the complete inclusion within it all of the responding agencies. That is called interoperability, which is defined by the joint emergency services as the extent to which organisations can work coherently as a matter of course. That is very difficult to practise because, as a matter of course, they are dealing with everyday minor events, and we are talking about exceptional events. The foundation stone of all that has to be communications. Luckily, because so much has been said by the noble Lord, I can leave out stretches of my speech—so it will not be quite as joined-up as it might have been.

After Hillsborough, it is very significant that Lord Taylor said that,

“so many previous reports and guidelines must indicate that the lessons of past disasters and the recommendations following them had not been taken sufficiently to heart”.

There is no point in holding inquiries or publishing guidance unless the recommendations are followed diligently. That must be the first lesson. Many of us would feel that that is still going on today. Reviews come out with sensible answers and suggestions, and what happens? They disappear into desks in Whitehall, or elsewhere, and we definitely do not see the results on the ground.

I was going to talk about other communications, but that has been done. One thing was that, of course, they are not always capable. In Manchester, the casualty bureau was seriously hampered by a complete failure of the National Mutual Aid Telephony system provided by Vodafone. What is the future of this means of communication for that service? Again, with the overload of mobiles in mind, we have exactly the questions that were asked previously.

One of the other strategic issues, apart from communications directly, is doctrine. Doctrine involves communications because anything that goes on involves them. Can the Minister tell the House whether there is a common doctrine throughout the UK for reacting to major emergencies? Does he not agree that this is of the utmost importance regardless of the individuality of emergency agencies in different areas? We all feel that there is a bit of empire building and that this is difficult. For instance, some ambulance services have HART—hazardous area response teams, which are allowed to operate in hot areas or warm areas. However, not everywhere has such teams. We have had sad occurrences in Manchester and London, but they are centres of population and thus centres for emergency services. If we get something in more rural areas, the local services will have to be supported by others. I am not sure that I am confident that having reached the area, they will be able to integrate properly. This is about the human side rather the technology aspect. We really should do something about having a national doctrine to cover many of the things that happen.

The police, with their gold, silver and bronze commanders, are not always co-located with their equivalents in other agencies. In Manchester, the fire and rescue service was outside the loop by not being present at the strategic gold command location. That was an example of poor communication and procedures. We simply have to eliminate what are quite clearly errors in human planning, otherwise we cannot rely on our technology. It cannot work if the people are not there. Communication involves people and face-to-face contact as well as what we have been talking about.

The fact that a plan had been practised in Manchester really showed, and Manchester did not go badly; there were just ways of improving it. Another strategic issue is training, which is always difficult because it costs a lot of money. Police forces do not have a lot of money to do realistic training. Coming from Northern Ireland and all the problems and issues we faced over 40 years, I am amazed by and greatly admire the initial responders to terrorist events that we have had in London. They are fabulous and we should give them credit for that. They took out the threat, albeit sadly with civilian casualties, without—touch wood—collateral damage. Having lived in Northern Ireland for so long, I would not have believed that the length of training and preparedness the police officers have had for those events could produce such an effect. Not only are they to be congratulated, but again, it is utterly amazing.

My second issue concerns communications, about which I feel very strongly indeed. Are we briefing the media too much and are they debriefing the terrorists? I have three straightforward examples of this. Around 10 years ago, explosives or terrorist equipment was found in a garage located either in London or the Midlands; I cannot remember the details. The next day, a diagram of where the surveillance cameras and sensors were, along with an account of how the garage was found. In Northern Ireland, down to the lowest rank of policeman and serviceman, there was absolute confidentiality. Instead, they would have said something like: “Three or four children were playing football and one of them hit the ball at the door. It came up, and do you know what was inside?” What the media did in publishing that information and what the emergency services did was to let everything down because it begs the question: how did we know? That gives terrorists an opportunity. Why do we allow that?

The next incident was the tube bombings. One of the terrorists did not blow himself up and went to Italy, where he was captured. Two days later he was captured with mobile phone technology. It was remarkable: an off-duty policeman went on holiday in Italy and, lo and behold, he saw a face that he knew. We cannot afford to be like this—that is the honest truth.

More recently, for the bomb on the tube that did not go off properly, we knew within 24 hours why it had not gone off. That is ridiculous, because a bomb has to be put together with many things. I got into trouble in the ops room in Belfast because an ATO came in one day and he told us why a bomb had not worked. I put it on the nightly report in code; it was secure. It was something to do with silicon over bared wires. I leave the rest to noble Lords’ imagination. I was seriously reprimanded for doing that, even though it was secure.

We must be confident. There must be a good cordon and it must be secure. This chatter must stop. They are getting full details of the incident when we say that the bomb partially exploded. We are informing them of what went wrong. We are saying where the emergency service response came from and how. It is potential identification of intelligence. We have to get away from that—it is seriously not good at all.

Why do we not adopt the Northern Ireland policy to provide a watered-down version of events? Conceal methodology and make up a device. Do not release in detail why it failed to go off. Most importantly, we should develop a code of conduct with the media. We have to do this. We have to get out of our boxes and do it, because we cannot put up with things as they are. This would save lives. If you have a bomb, you set it and you do not know why it has not gone off—it takes an awful lot of rebuilding and trying to find out why it did not. If all you have to do is go to the TPU—time power units—you will have the answer and someone will die the next time round. We need that absolute confidentiality. This is about communication. I realise that that is not quite what the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was talking about, but it is very important, if not vital.