Downing Street Says

Asked if he could confirm claims that there were 900 terror suspects in the UK, the PMOS said that we never speculated on the precise numbers of suspects. All we had said was that there were many, but he didn’t want to get into the numbers game.

Asked if the Government still denied a link between home-grown terrorism and the war in Iraq, the PMOS said that the Intelligence and Security Committee report (ISC) did not say there was a direct link between the suicide bombers and Iraq. It talked in more general terms about a general rage against the west, but there was no direct link between the suicide bombers and Iraq. Talking about terrorism in general rather than the 7/7 bombers in particular, the Prime Minister’s view was that yes of course people would use Iraq as an excuse, just as they used Afghanistan as an excuse, and just as they used Western presence in Muslim countries as an excuse. But that was an overall world view which had to be challenged and the Prime Minister had set that out in the first of his foreign policy speeches.

Asked why the Government was resisting a public enquiry into the 7/7 bombings, the PMOS said that first of all he would like to say that those who survived 7/7 or who had relatives who were injured or killed in 7/7 obviously had very strong feelings about it. The work of the Government that had been headed up by Tessa Jowell had been designed to recognise that fact and John Reid would be saying more on this in his statement. He didn’t want to pre-empt that. In terms of an inquiry, in these circumstances you had to balance proper public scrutiny, as there had been through the ISC report released today, with the need not to distract from the ongoing work of the security services and agencies. We did still face a significant threat, there was still significant work to be done and therefore you had to bear in mind the balance between the need to allow security services to focus on the ongoing threat and the need for proper scrutiny.

Asked to expand on how a public inquiry would distract the security services from doing their work, the PMOS said that we only had a finite number of trained intelligence officers. If they had to spend their time examining their work retrospectively, rather than dealing with current threats, that was a drain on the resources we had. That was a practical reality. Put to him that that was an argument against all public inquiries, the PMOS said that in all these matters you had to take a rational balance in mind concerning the level of risk to ongoing operations, but also frankly in terms of your belief as to whether an inquiry would turn up new information. Give the amount of scrutiny there had been, not least the ISC report, that was the basis on which we took that balanced judgement.

Put to him that that was evidence that the Security Services needed more resources, the PMOS said that if people looked at the ISC report they would see that the Government had made more resources available to the Security Services. The Police security budget would have increased 4-fold by 2008 from 2002 levels. However there was an absorption factor here, a capacity building problem in that it took time to train intelligence officers. That process was underway before 7/7, but it was a reality that it did take time to build the capacity up because of the need to train people in intelligence matters, recruit them and get them in the right places. Asked if this was an acknowledgment of the strain that the security services were under, the PMOS said that he had made no secret at any stage that we believed there continued to be a significant threat. There was a need to focus on that significant threat. In this area, the intelligence services had foiled attacks before and since 7/7, but we didn’t talk about those successes for obvious reasons and that work continued.

Put it him that if the security services needed more resources perhaps there should be less spent on things like ID cards, biometrics and so forth, the PMOS said that it was not a question of either/or, we needed to employ a range of resources. Intelligence itself was not the only answer. Intelligence was fragmented and had to be pulled together into a picture. Intelligence relied on communities helping the intelligence services and also the communities themselves taking on extremism. Equally there needed to be the backup of the police facilities, which biometrics was part of, to track people. There needed to be a comprehensive approach. There was no single solution to terrorism, as we had seen elsewhere, there needed to be the full range of measures. Put to him that the 7/7 bombers would have had perfectly valid ID cards in this country, the PMOS said that, as we had always maintained, ID cards were a contribution to counter-terrorism, not a single solution. Equally however you had to ask yourself the reverse question of whether we were missing out on a possible tool in fighting terrorism if we didn’t develop biometrics. Given that countries right across the world were doing so, the answer to that had to be yes.

Asked to talk about what the Government had done in response to 7/7 in terms of engaging Islamic extremism, the PMOS said that it had always been the case that moderate Muslim opinion was strongly opposed to this extremist element. The overall difference between pre 7/7 and post 7/7 was that moderate Muslim opinion had moved from a more passive role to a more proactive role. The moderate Muslim community had realised that it needed to take on that extremist opinion. That was evidenced by the formation of groups like the National Forum Against Extremism, and the Board that was being set up to advise on mosques and Imams. These were initiatives being primarily driven from within the Muslim community. We also had several working groups set up by the Home Office which had made over 60 practical recommendations which were being carried through. There had been a series of ministerial visits, the Prime Minister meeting a wide range of people from the Muslim community, not least yesterday when he met 40 Muslim women from across the country. As he had said at Cabinet, his overall impression from that meeting was the determination of that moderate Muslim grouping to take on the arguments of extremism within the community here. That distinction was very important.

Asked for a response to indications that this report had been a whitewash, the PMOS said that frankly that was an insult to the members of the committee who had taken this matter very seriously. He felt that, as the committee had recognised, that we all had to be very careful about the wisdom of hindsight. The security services had to deal with the information they had at any one time. That was the nature of intelligence, it was not a perfect science and never would be, and never could be, but it was one we could keep improving.

Asked about compensation, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had given an indication of his view yesterday. John Reid would continue to work on that. He didn’t expect any sudden moves on that today but it was ongoing work which was being addressed urgently in the Home Office.

Asked about the possibility of appointing a Homeland Security minister, the PMOS said that we had to ask the question of whether the process of co-ordination within the system was working, and the overall answer we had to that was yes.

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» Thursday, May 11, 2006

Terror

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