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Crime, Security and Civil Liberties
In this essay, I am keen to address the issues of security in London.
Combating crime - particularly terrorism - requires sophisticated intelligence
gathering; high calibre law-enforcement professionals, who are put in
positions that require them to make life and death decisions; and a highly
efficient and fair judicial system. Britain has barely achieved C minus in any
of these areas over the last four years. In this essay I will highlight:
• The fundamentals of the threat to London's security
• The importance of improving Police intelligence gathering
• The need for higher standards of policing procedure within existing laws
• The need for Londoners to be vigilant against creeping infringements of
civil liberties.
The fundamentals of the threat to London's security
London faces significant threats to its security. The criminal threat to property
- houses and cars - in London is high, with burglaries and opportunistic breakins
an ever present spectre haunting London citizens. It is widely accepted
that a major motivator to petty crime is drugs: addiction-related crime is a
menace to London living.
However, it is terrorism that has clearly dominated most of the discussions on
security over the last 18 months, even though other threats have been equally
insidious.
As Mayor of London I will not be diverted by one or other threat - I see them
all as a gangrenous horror, eating away at the quality of London life. Some
may consider my lack of populist prioritization of the terrorist threat as
surprising. My reasons for not pandering do not show a lack of current
awareness - I hold this view because common to the rooting out and the
fighting of all crime is the application of three fundamental processes:
• Police and criminal intelligence gathering
• Police methods and techniques
• A fair and efficient judicial system
If our police and law enforcement services perform well in all three of these,
crime of any sort - street-level, organized, drug-related and terrorism - can be
controlled and reduced. Over the last 12 months we have not seen these
three processes performed as well as they should have been in any area of
crime-fighting.
The importance of improving Police intelligence gathering
Britain's intelligence community have had a bad couple of years, largely
coloured by the fiasco of WMD in Iraq. At home, their track record has not
exactly helped them redeem themselves.
Intelligence was the basis for recent dramatic Police action, such as we saw
with the shooting of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes; the east London
raid in Forest Gate, which resulted in an innocent man being shot; and the
arrest in August 2006 of 25 people in the airline terror plot, none of whom has
been convicted.
Ultimately, public confidence in the competence of our Police and security
services in such actions is determined by successful conviction of suspects.
And this whole process is utterly dependent - throughout - on Police
intelligence.
If dramatic gung ho raids are mounted and, subsequently, there proves to be
no substance to the action, the Police and our system of law starts to look
incompetent or, worse, ridiculous. Accumulatively, they could begin to
undermine the public's confidence in the Police. And then, when the Police
call for more legislative powers to deal with threats identified by their
intelligence, the public can hardly be criticised for being unpersuaded.
As a citizen of London, I do not want the Police to be held in anything other
than the highest possible regard. One of the principal obligations I will create
for myself as Mayor of London is to ensure that Police intelligence gathering
techniques are as efficient and infallible as they possibly can be. After the
less-than-impressive recent performances, I believe a review of them to be of
paramount importance.
In fulfilling this obligation I will undertake - as I am in each of my policy
announcements - to appoint the best brains available in the world to assess
these activities and listen to any improvements they recommend in how to
serve and protect Londoners more effectively.
The need for higher standards of policing procedure within our existing
laws
Not only do intelligence failures undermine Police credibility when they call for
more stringent legal powers, but obvious failures to exercise the powers they
already have don't help them much either.
As one example, the pro-hunt lobby's breach of Palace of Westminster
security - when some of its members intruded onto the floor of the Chamber of
the House of Commons - was an extraordinary indication of how poorly
existing security powers are exercised. Existing legislation was plenty
powerful to prevent that embarrassment to the security and Police service.
Another example was the astonishingly lax vetting and reference checks that
allowed a Daily Mirror journalist to be employed by Buckingham Palace; this
also showed how poorly existing police and security powers are implemented:
the exploitation of such laxity by real malcontents would hardly bear thinking
about.
Another example, in the highly sensitive area of airport security, was the
teenager who managed to reach a seat on an airliner whilst in possession of
no relevant travel documentation or ID - again, what an astonishing example
of how existing powers and procedures are not being properly applied.
And in administration - crucially important in the processing, cross-referencing
and optimization of intelligence information - there have been two recent
debacles. One was the release of over 1,000 convicted foreign prisoners that
were not considered for deportation; and the second, only very recently, was
the extraordinary ineptitude of the Home Office in not registering details of
people convicted of crimes committed abroad.
What these examples highlight is the urgent need to ensure that Police
procedures and administration are exercised with enough diligence. In the
meantime, I am keen that such lapses are well and truly ironed out before the
Police and the Home Secretary call for yet more legislation.
The need for Londoners to be vigilant against creeping infringements of Civil Liberties
I am a total believer in the need for and the role of the Police in Britain and I
fully accept that they are trying to perform an extraordinarily difficult task. But
that does not mean that they should be considered infallible or that they
should be above constructive criticism.
When there is clear deficit between the powers the Police have been granted
and the way they are deployed, I feel unnerved when the Police's answer is
more legislation - particularly when any reluctance to support such legislation
is pilloried as weakness in combating terror.
The question I will never shy away from asking is: Are we absolutely sure that
the Police and security services are exercising their existing powers to the
maximum possible effect? If we believe they are, then the call for extra
powers is worthy of consideration. Currently, I do not believe that the Police
and security services have proved this yet and so I remain unconvinced.
Nevertheless, however strong the Police's call for additional powers, I am
most concerned when proposed legislation encroaches on, if not breaches,
some of the fundamental tenets of our system of government, such as the
presumption of innocence, the holding of people without charge and - the
most offensive - the holding of someone without even disclosing the reason
they are being held. This is a violation of Habeas Corpus.
Philosophically, for British citizens to be held for considerable periods of time
without being told why is, for me, a troubling development - particularly when
we think that the concept of Habeas Corpus has been the absolute dividing
line between freedom and tyranny since Magna Carta no less than 792 years
ago.
Practically, it is no less troubling when we think that people are being held like
this on the back of an intelligence gathering system that since the lack of
WMD in Iraq has prompted a series of questions over its validity.
In any event, whether from a philosophical or a practical perspective, as
Mayor of London I pledge myself unequivocally to pushing for higher
standards of intelligence gathering and policing procedures within existing
laws.
Until the population is broadly convinced that the Police are operating to their
absolute maximum efficiency within the substantial powers they have already
- until they are, in the Home Secretary's own words, truly "fit for purpose" - I
will challenge calls for any additional restrictions on our citizens' civil liberties.
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