Daily Mail, 18 April 2005

Are we seeing double? For it appears that there isn’t just one Blair making Labour’s case in this general election campaign, but two.

On BBC TV’s Breakfast with Frost programme yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said that in the wake of last week’s conviction of Kamel Bourgass for trying to make poisons, there should be new measures to combat terrorism such as identity cards and a new legal offence of ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’.

This was an astonishing intervention. For the Labour party manifesto contains proposals for precisely such an offence and the re-introduction of the ID cards bill, the policy that was dropped because the government could not get it through Parliament before the election.

Labour had already challenged the Tories, who had been divided on ID cards before abstaining and thus blocking the measure in Parliament, on whether they would now support them. Then up popped Sir Ian to throw the ostensible weight of the police behind Labour’s position.

Not surprisingly, ministers spent yesterday falling over themselves to climb onto the bandwagon that Sir Ian had so obligingly parked for their convenience outside their campaign headquarters.

Both Alan Milburn and John Reid leapt aboard to twist the political knife and accuse the Tories of being soft on terrorism — an accusation now given apparently lethal authority by the backing of the Metropolitan Police commissioner.

With stomach-churning cynicism Mr Milburn wrapped himself in the borrowed mantle of Sir Ian’s professionalism to claim — while proceeding to taunt the Tories — that ID cards were ‘not an issue to play politics with’.

Since the most senior police officer in the country knew more than anyone about terrorism, he said, he should obviously be backed in saying that ID cards were needed.

On the contrary — the most senior police officer in the country should surely have known better. For it is simply disgraceful that Sir Ian should have allowed himself to be used as a partisan in this election campaign. Whatever his opinions, the middle of an election is not the time for a police commissioner to air them — especially if they mirror a party’s policies.

There was a time when it would have been unthinkable for a senior police officer to get involved in party politics, particularly during a general election. It would never have needed to be said that public servants should scrupulously avoid making any statements that might imply favouring one political party over another.

Nowhere is this more important than in the police, whose political impartiality and independence from politics is absolutely essential if the country is to avoid literally turning into a police state.

By dropping these remarks into the election campaign Sir Ian has compromised his position and, at a time when the whole of the public service has been politicised by the Labour government, placed an especially worrying question mark over the independence of the police.

What’s more, the issue of ID cards is being used to divert attention from a series of policy and operational failures in fighting both illegal immigration and terrorism.

Bourgass, a failed asylum-seeker, had only been able to set up his poisons factory and murder DC Stephen Oake because of the shambles of asylum policy. After the trial the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, tried to cover up this egregious policy failure by claiming that ID cards would help strengthen the fight against terrorism.

The fact is, however, that ID cards — which in any event would not become fully operational for about ten years — would have been irrelevant in this case since they would not apply to failed asylum-seekers. In addition, there would be no requirement to carry an ID card or produce it to a police officer on demand.

Spanish ID cards did not stop the Madrid train bombings last year — because identification is not the major issue in preventing terrorism. In the past, the police have said they have had no problem identifying terror suspects.

The difficulty lies either in finding evidence that can be put before a court, in summoning the political will to arrest such people or deport them, or in carrying out effective policing operations.

The proposal for a new offence of ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’ is a rather better suggestion, since the conspiracy laws make it difficult to prove there was an agreement to commit a crime, especially if some of the alleged conspirators are abroad.

Nevertheless, Sir Ian’s call to add yet another offence to the police armoury also has the whiff of a diversionary tactic about it. For the ricin investigation developed in part into a policing shambles which cost the life of a brave officer.

Although Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism squad appears to have destroyed a particular terrorist cell of which Bourgass was a member, the operation which netted him by Manchester police, in which Bourgass managed to kill DC Oake, was a sorry saga of eye-watering incompetence.

Advance surveillance of a flat which was thought to house a terrorism suspect failed to uncover the fact that Bourgass was there too. The pre-operation briefing, which was in many respects utterly inadequate, took place in a noisy police station garage so that at least one officer had difficulty hearing.

The police team did not take specialist arrest kits. Officers found that their mobile phones would not work. None of the officers was wearing body armour, and Bourgass was not handcuffed.

The officer in charge of this debacle has reportedly been disciplined – but is still employed somewhere in the police service. In other words, no-one has taken responsibility for a display of professional incompetence which left an officer dead.

Faced with a potential terrorist plot which made the police and security world believe that they were in a race against time to prevent a terror attack using unconventional weapons, the police responded like the Keystone Cops.

One has to ask, therefore, what is the point in providing more and increasingly draconian laws when the present ones are being so inadequately applied.

At a time when the threat of terrorism requires the highest standards of professionalism, the police and security services are displaying unacceptable levels of incompetence — not least because they are increasingly politicised and paralysed by political correctness.

Even before he assumed his current role, Sir Ian Blair was famous for putting the PC into policing. One of his first actions as Commissioner was to change the Met's logo partly because it was in joined-up handwriting and thus 'discriminated against short-sighted people'.

And barely had he got his feet under the table than he was peppering the newspapers with highly opinionated remarks — including the observation that the police, like ‘all organisations’, was ‘institutionally racist’.

This acceptance of institutional racism is not only a baseless smear. It has left the police so terrified of upsetting ethic minorities that they are forced to tread eggshells when dealing with the Muslim community, thus significantly hampering their effectiveness against terrorism.

For Sir Ian to enter the election arena is not only an abuse of his office. It also provides both police and politicians with the means to divert attention from the immigration and terrorism fiascos and from the urgent need to address professional incompetence which, in the fight against terror, is surely the weakest link of all.

Posted by melanie at April 18, 2005