SMT Online Editor's View: Out with the old, in with the old

03 Feb 09

Was it just me, or did you too feel there was more than a whiff of inevitability about the winner in the two-horse race for the New Scotland Yard hot seat?

Boris Johnson can waffle on all he likes about “glutinous cross-party consensus” on the matter but, at the end of the day, Sir Paul Stephenson being given the nod was down to one individual’s say-so – that person being Jacqui Smith.

The same Jacqui Smith, in truth, who didn’t have the guts to relieve Sir Ian Blair of his post long before he single-handedly contrived to make a complete mockery of the Metropolitan Police Service’s reputation and his own highly privileged position as commissioner. A position that now appears to be something of a poisoned chalice.

Given that Sir Ian continually came across as being little more than a servile puppet for the Government, it’s no surprise that his deputy – and subsequent acting commissioner – Sir Paul Stephenson triumphed in the casual stampede towards the £250,000 post (and all the perks accompanying it).

Presumably – and despite all the Frank Sinatra-like spin of wanting to do things “my way” – Sir Paul is the neatest (and most acceptable) option for Smith and Prime Minister Brown. After all, he willingly followed the Blair doctrine with completely misguided loyalty.

Stephenson might have advised Sir Ian to consider shunning his bonus following the Stockwell shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, but he didn’t think to speak out over slightly more important matters (alleged institutional racism and sexism among them).

Like as not, Sir Paul will now glibly support the Smith doctrine, too. All chums together again. Say it with me, Sir Paul… “I’ll do it my way, but only after I’ve asked Jacqui.”

Nothing less than a travesty

In my view, this decision is an utter travesty. Sir Paul is spinning all the right sentiments, insisting he wishes to instil “pride in the uniform, the badge and the New Scotland Yard brand”, but these words emanate from the lips of a man who pushed the button on the scandalous arrest and reputational besmirching of Tory MP Damian Green.

Sir Paul later admitted in private that he’d had doubts over the whole Green fiasco, and yet he still gave the go-ahead for Bob Quick and Co to ransack with abandon the man’s home and Commons office.

Let’s hope the next decision Sir Paul has to take doesn’t centre on a potential terrorist attack within the Capital or we’re all in serious trouble.

In The London Evening Standard, Sir Paul recently referred to the Green debacle as being on “the tricky side of difficult”.

Personally, I’d just call it a shambles, and most certainly not the sound decision demanded of a man who’s touted as a ‘safe pair of hands’ and unlikely to become mired in politics. By association so shall they know you, Sir Paul.

I’m not questioning the fact that Stephenson has a very good career record. It’s there in black and white. From Lancashire to Merseyside and back again, Sir Paul has taken on – and succeeded in – some daunting challenges, but what worries me is that many of the rank and file Met bobbies (and detectives, too, it must be said) have apparently made it clear they favoured the appointment of the other ‘finalist’.

Then again, this Government doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to heeding what the public wants.

Sir Hugh Orde: an unblemished record

Sir Hugh Orde is an outstanding ‘copper’. The 50-year-old made his name policing in Northern Ireland, where he became chief constable in 2002.

In the Province, Sir Hugh was a senior member of staff in a panel that drew up the Stevens Report – the document, you’ll remember, that investigated Government collusion in Northern Ireland’s sectarian murders. Sir Hugh was also credited with modernising the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and rightly so.

Sir Hugh’s portfolio was one of the most difficult jobs in British policing, dealing with the ever-present threats of terrorism and organised crime which accompany the continued presence of paramilitary organisations.

He has also had to handle what must be the most politically difficult police authority in the United Kingdom, but never once lost sight of his desire to be a robust champion of what he truly believes in – that the police service must remain operationally independent.

Oh yes. Let’s not forget, either, that Sir Hugh succeeded in a long-running career with the Metropolitan Police Service itself, which he began way back in 1977. Among many other tasks, he played the fullest part in the latter stages of the infamous Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry.

On top of that, Sir Hugh commands a huge amount of respect among senior security professionals – a respect amply evidenced when he addressed the great and the good at the Association of Security Consultants’ 2008 Annual Luncheon.

If my first choice for Met Commissioner – Merseyside’s excellent chief constable Bernard Hogan-Howe – wasn’t to be successful, then Sir Hugh was the main man for the job.

Not fit for operational purpose

As things stand, I would suggest that, in many ways, the Metropolitan Police Service is not fit for purpose. Blunkett started the rot with his unhealthy obsession over PCSOs, and almost constant desire to beat up (then Sir) John Stevens in relation to arrest figures.

Since that era, there has been a clamour to fill said Government quotas. Policing in the Capital (and in most other areas, to be frank) has turned into a numbers game where the Boys in Blue must cut the mustard according to Labour’s targets or else the cash flow dries up.

What this situation desperately demanded was a new broom who’d come in and root out the institutional malaise – much of it engendered by the Government – that has bedevilled the Met these past few years. Someone with great charisma who can raise morale for the tough tasks ahead, at the same time evicting all skeletons from Scotland Yard’s untidy closet.

Former London Mayor Ken Livingstone was worried Johnson and Smith would appoint an individual “out of touch with what London’s policing really needs”. There’s not been much evidence that Sir Paul’s in touch, has there?

The Damian Green episode alone would suggest the polar opposite. Like Sir Ian before him, Stephenson managed to wriggle his way out of a tight political situation and utterly convince the Home Secretary his hands were clean.

One suspects it wouldn’t have taken much doing. I would strongly suggest that policing in the Capital and across every one of the 43 forces is in urgent need of de-politicisation.

What’s undoubtedly true is that the fear of crime in London remains a massive problem, despite what the latest massaged figures might suggest (more of them anon). The point is that Londoners don’t feel safe.

As Simon Jenkins so eloquently wrote in last week’s London Evening Standard: “The Police Federation insists on officers patrolling in pairs, thus doubling the cost. Covered in weapons and toting stab vests, they wander even the safest shopping streets two-by-two, chatting to each other and therefore ignoring the public, shopkeepers and any passing crook”. Got it in one, Simon.

What Londoners want… and deserve

Londoners want police officers who are not only visible in the community but also known, knowledgeable of and at one with that community. They ought to be a focus, if you like, for community discipline.

At present, for every single Met officer on the beat there are ten stuck back at base filling in paperwork. Doesn’t that tell you everything?

One of the Met’s biggest problems is that there’s no sense of cohesion. Among others, I give you the counter-terrorism division, the drug squad, the close protection boys and the anti-fraudsters.

It’s a disparate collective of seemingly independent units. That structure, of course, assists the Government’s desire to conveniently box up its bogus figures in bite-size chunks for a (mostly) gullible public, but does little or nothing for force unity.

The process of selecting Sir Ian Blair’s replacement was originally expected to last much longer, but instead was rushed through amid heightened concerns about the leadership crisis that enveloped New Scotland Yard towards the end of last year.

A leadership crisis very much of its own making. You know what they say… Marry in haste, repent at leisure.

Lies, damn lies… and yet more ‘suspect’ crime figures

The Home Office’s statistical bulletin on crime for the period covering July to September last year makes for pretty gruesome reading. Domestic burglaries up 4%. Fraud and forgery up a hefty 16%.

The number of robberies involving knives has shot up by nearly one fifth since last summer. Oh yes… Drug-related offences have risen too, this time around by 9%.

Conveniently, the Government is able to pinpoint a causal link between all of this nastiness and rising unemployment, not to mention the economic squeeze being placed on families during this most horrendous of global financial crises.

That’ll be the economic squeeze brought about – at least in part – by crass monetary policies realised in Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street.

It’s particularly alarming that robberies involving knives have soared, and that fatal stabbings are now at an all-time high. The Government’s complacency in this area is clearly coming home to roost.

The number of robberies with knives recorded by police in England and Wales has risen by 18% (from 3,951 to 4,207). Murders and other homicides involving knives are up by 10%, and attempted murders by 8%.

Despite massive evidence to the contrary, The Home Office is still in denial about what’s happening in the real world and suggests that the general crime picture is stable, with the overall level of recorded crime apparently down 3% on the previous year. Overall violent crime, New Labour trumpets, is down by 6%.

How can we be expected to believe this when it has just emerged that 18 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales have supposedly been under-recording serious violent crime for anything up to a decade?

As well as New Scotland Yard, those involved are said to be the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cleveland, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Humberside, Kent, Lancashire, Norfolk, North Wales, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk and Thames Valley forces.

The Home Secretary’s response? An emergency ‘Burglary Summit’ convened in an attempt to halt and reverse the substantial rise in house break-ins.

Indeed, Jacqui Smith’s top civil servant at the Home Office has been quick off the mark and e-mailed the police and crime divisions of the department to tell them that they must improve their performances.

They’re not the only ones who need to do a little bit better are they, Home Secretary?

If we’re going to keep on being fed these crime figures, let’s at least have some that tell the real story.

How much do you reveal in cyberspace?

Now that I’ve taken SMT into cyberspace, I’m busy building what we in the information dissemination game call a ‘digital footprint in the social media space’.

In essence, this involves blogging, tweeting (via Twitter), setting up or ‘finessing’ (as marketing folk like to say) sites such as MySpace and Facebook and making an impression with the security leaders already hooked up to LinkedIn.

In this day and age wherein identity theft is rife, the $64,000 question is: how much detail do you reveal about yourself, your job, your whereabouts, etc?

Those who like to ‘push the envelope’ and have plotted every path of their life’s course on the web will surely be reeling at the moment, given the news that the personal details of millions of job seekers have just been stolen in what is being badged as the largest data theft in Britain.

It has emerged that committed hackers recently gained access to confidential details provided by no less than 4.5 million people registered with www.monster.co.uk, the popular online recruitment site.

Names, passwords, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, dates of birth, gender and ethnicity data… All were stolen.

It is the most extensive breach of confidential data since HM Revenue and Customs infamously lost the details of 25 million child benefit recipients in 2007.

The victims are mainly professionals seeking work in the economic downturn. Not surprisingly, registrations at the site – which allows employers to browse thousands of CVs online – have soared as redundancies have risen.

It’s thought that the personal details of millions of people can be downloaded in under an hour once a hacker has gained access.

The data from this site could, for example, be used by organised gangs to open fake bank accounts or take out loans in the names of unsuspecting customers.

Same password for multiple sites

It’s a known fact that four out of every ten people use the same password to access multiple web sites.

That being the case, the criminals could use the www.monster.co.uk data to obtain more sensitive information, accessing personal e-mails and, potentially, bank account details.

Worryingly for any security managers looking for work at the moment, this is the third time in two years that security at the world’s largest recruitment site has been breached.

Back in August 2007, www.monster.co.uk’s database was infected by a virus in the name of infostealer.monstres, which siphoned off more than 1.6 million records (predominantly those belonging to customers based in the States).

Monster.com has assured users that the stolen data didn’t contain details of CVs or financial information, and that “appropriate law enforcement action” is being taken.

It must be said that www.monster.co.uk is a very credible site, as is The Ladders (the new home for job seekers looking to earn in excess of £50,000 per annum), but how many of us really know who has access to our personal data online?

More importantly, how can we really be sure they have sufficient security measures in place to protect it? If this kind of incident can happen to www.monster.co.uk, then it can happen to any web service provider.

The message is quite clear. Be careful about how much you reveal online.

Could The Lawmen be upon you?

Last Monday, an excellent and regular contributor to the pages of Security Management Today (and now SMT Online) – namely David Cresswell, the managing director at ARC Training – contacted me with an interesting question: “Can people be sued for not having adequate security?”

My immediate response was: “I certainly hope so” because far too many companies in this country are not paying anything like enough attention to that most important of disciplines.

Anyway, David suggested that what he’d just written in his regular blog might be of interest to SMT Online’s readers, and perhaps stimulate debate in relation to the proposed licensing of security consultants by the Security Industry Authority. What follows is David’s take on the matter.

“Can people be sued for not having adequate security? The general assumption would be no, unless there is a statutory or legal requirement to do so.

“However, lawyers representing the parents of a young man shot dead as he was closing a restaurant at a US retail and leisure complex last year think differently. They’ve filed a lawsuit alleging security negligence against the complex’s owners.

“The owners have responded with plans to upgrade the on-site cameras to allow facial recording systems and Automatic Number Plate Recognition.

“This case raises some interesting issues for security professionals. Prior to the incident, was the complex the subject of a security review, and was this carried out by a qualified (in other words certified) security professional?

“The security profession is awash with individuals offering such services, but precious few are formally qualified to conduct this kind of work.

“In the case of litigation, where does the buck stop? With an establishment that contracts-in an unqualified consultant to carry out a security review? Or with the consultant himself – or herself – in promoting professional services without professional certification?”

David concludes: “Here in the UK, many leading security consultancy companies have foreseen this litigation exposure, and are busy making sure that their consultants are professionally ‘credentialed’ by asking them to undertake either the ASIS International CPP or PSP certifications.”

The Panorama episode showed us all that, as things stand, anyone can call themselves a security consultant and begin working as one.

It’s a farcical situation, and one that must no longer be allowed to persist. We need a formal, recognised qualification for consultants, and we need it now. Those same consultants most certainly must be open to scrutiny.

End users should demand – and expect – a security consultant that’s trained, qualified to practice and subjected to regular validation by the Government or an appointed agent of Westminster.

The UK is now awash with ‘consultants’, many of whom merely turn up on an unsuspecting client’s doorstep after a 30-year stint with the police service in the firm belief that they’ve a God-given right to do the job (without having undertaken any form of study or conversion course).

Well they haven’t and, what’s more, they never did have.

Details on parade: not once but twice

David wasn’t the only one to contact me last week. Also in touch was Gerry Williams (from the Port Solent Security Team at Interserve FM, based in Portsmouth), who wanted to air his views on licensing and the Security Industry Authority (SIA).

Like many others, when Gerry attended the inaugural gathering of the new SIA and a largely receptive security industry back in April 2003, he was fully supportive of the licensing regime’s stated aims.

As Gerry explained to me: “It was high time the industry be swept clean of the cowboys.”

The stated aims of the licensing process, of course, were: [a] to raise standards in the security industry by ensuring that security personnel completed suitable training in core competencies before a licence was issued; and [b] to establish the identity of the licence holder and give security companies – and members of the public – confidence that the licence holder was of good character.

Quite clearly, although much excellent progress has been made there’s still a good deal of work to be done in terms of training in core competencies.

A brief scan down the list of revoked licences on the SIA’s web site is ample demonstration of that fact, most particularly when you consider the door supervisor sector. However, I digress. That wasn’t the major focus of Gerry’s critique.

Trying to establish one’s identity

In the application process for an SIA licence, the individual is required to provide a plethora of personal information in order to establish their identity.

Necessary documents include passports, birth certificates, a driving licence and utility bills, etc in addition to personal and professional references.

“It’s to be assumed,” urged Gerry, “that the SIA diligently checks the information provided against various databases and other sources until it’s satisfied that the applicant is who he or she says they are.

“Only after this ‘due diligence’ process has been completed will a licence be issued – a process that can take several weeks to complete.”

Here’s the fulcrum of Gerry’s angst. “Having established beyond any reasonable doubt the identity of the licence holder and issued them with a photographic licence, can anybody give me a good reason as to why all the information previously mentioned is required again by security companies when recruiting security officers?” Good question, Gerry.

“In the course of the last eight months,” he continued, “the assignment on which my team and I are currently engaged has been TUPE’d [Transfer of Undertakings, Protection of Employment] over on two occasions. That is, the company administering the contract has changed twice.

“Each time, the incoming service provider has demanded that our team submit reams of personal information ‘in order to establish our identities and our right to work’. For what purpose, when our identities have already been established by a ‘higher authority’ in the shape of the SIA?”

Speeding up or slowing down?

In Gerry’s eyes, all that should be necessary for a security company to reasonably require in this area is the name, date of birth and SIA licence number of each individual concerned in order to ascertain that any applicant is entitled to carry out security duties.

A quick check via the SIA’s web site will establish this without the need for continually demanding authenticating documentation that slows down the recruitment and placement process.

Of course, there may be an alternative explanation. Could it be that many security companies are of the opinion that the checks carried out by the SIA are insufficiently robust?

Could it be that contractors suspect licences are being issued to personnel who are not entitled to hold them, either due to an absence of training in core competencies or because the personal information checks are not sufficiently stringent to guarantee that any applicant really is who they say they are?

In conclusion, Gerry said to me: “I seem to remember that, during the inaugural SIA presentation, there was discussion focusing on how licensing would actually speed up the recruitment process, but this quite obviously isn’t the case.”

Does anyone have the answers to these questions? Are there actually any answers? Gerry and I – and a fair few others besides – would be extremely interested in finding out.

Calling for transparency from the Regulator

Speaking of the SIA, security guarding web site Infologue.com’s Editor Bobby Logue has called upon the Regulator to issue its independent delivery review in full for public consumption.

Regular readers will know that Bobby frequently combines with SMT Online in organising editorial campaigns (including the hugely successful Four Issues, One Voice and Make The Change).

Bobby tells me that he received “high levels of interest” in the comments made within the Infologue.com Annual Review 2008 regarding the SIA’s unwillingness to release the full independent delivery review that scrutinises its leadership and management.

Not wishing to let the matter rest, Infologue.com has now applied to the SIA for a copy of the review under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

“Brian, the industry has a right to know what’s contained in the independent delivery review,” insists Logue.

From Bobby’s perspective, it’s inconceivable that, in this age of purportedly transparent governance, a large Stakeholder in the SIA – the security industry itself, no less – isn’t privy to this report.

A report that’s a significant indicator on the performance of the leadership of the SIA. A leadership in which that same industry has invested substantial resources.

Independent, transparent, unbiased, accountable

The report certainly wasn’t mentioned in ‘The SIA in 2008: an overview’, as submiited by the Regulator and published exclusively by SMT Online.

Logue asserts: “In the Regulator’s own document, the SIA Stakeholder Engagement Plan: April 2008–March 2009, it claims that its values are all about the organisation being ‘Independent, transparent, unbiased and accountable, having integrity’.

“By failing to publish the delivery review, Infologue.com believes the SIA is not being transparent, nor unbiased or accountable.”

In conclusion, Bobby states: “The SIA needs to come clean on this review. Failure to do so will create mistrust and, Infologue.com believes, represents a breach of its own commitment to Stakeholders.

“We have to ask the question: ‘What’s contained in this review that the SIA doesn’t want the industry to see?’”

By not letting the industry view this report, the Regulator is probably doing itself some unnecessary damage. People will put two and two together and make nine, because that’s what they do. Unfettered suspicion will likely spread.

Putting that notion to one side for a moment, though, surely the companies who are paying pretty handsomely to licence their officers and become ACS registered deserve to be kept in the loop on a matter of such importance?

Is there such a thing as bad publicity?

Sometimes, saying nothing says it all. In my view, even if news of any kind isn’t that positive, it’s better out in the open. Look at the mess this Government has left us in thanks to its cloak-and-dagger approach to economic management.

David Robinson – the former managing director of Securitas in the UK – once told me he didn’t believe there was any such thing as bad publicity.

At first I was rather reticent to accept that statement – Gerald Ratner, anyone? – but, two years on, I’m a little more inclined to agree with him.

If this Government has taught us anything it’s surely that being minimal with the truth is a disaster waiting to happen.

Until next time.

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