British Transport Police Federation

ANNUAL CONFERENCE
BRITISH TRANSPORT POLICE FEDERATION
SPEECH BY CHAIRMAN: MR ALEX ROBERTSON
ON WEDNESDAY 3 MARCH 2010 AT THE
PARK INN HOTEL, YORK

Last night at the Bravery Awards we had the opportunity to publicly acknowledge the courage of our colleagues. I would like to thank you once again Lord Faulkner for assisting us in making the Awards such a celebrated occasion and to thank them for doing so much to uphold the professional reputation of the British Transport Police.

We meet at a time of potentially tremendous change. This is a period of nervous economic and political uncertainty. Within the next three months there will be general election: that may bring a new government or, if not a new party of government, probably a change of ministerial teams and departmental responsibilities. As a Federation we will look forward to that more settled time, not because of any political views but because policing matters are best decided when the political parameters are firmly re-established.

Policing may be an exciting career but clearly nothing compares to the political helter-skelter at Westminster of the last 12 months.

The British Transport Police has also seen some change over the past six months.

We have a new Chief Constable, Mr Andrew Trotter, a new Deputy Chief Constable in Mr Paul Crowther and a new and for the first time. in Ms Ellie Bird, a female Area Commander for Scotland In other circumstances so many changes in personnel would be unsettling for a police service. That threat of any operational hiccup luckily does not apply to the BTP. Firstly, our previous Chief Constable, Sir Ian Johnston, left us in good shape. He deserves tremendous credit for his success in bringing out the professionalism of the BTP so that this Police Force can more than hold its own in comparison to any other UK force.

Indeed, in the words of the Chairman of the British Transport Police Authority, Millie Banerjee, we have become "a trendsetter for railway security operations worldwide".

Secondly, our new leadership team is, if I may use the term, home-grown. They richly deserve their promotions. The learning curve has been minimal because as well as their outside experience they have served in the ranks of the BTP and are already fully aware of the issues facing us.

For example the decision to permit the carrying of tasers on trains was the right one and showed their proper regard for officer and public safety.

It is ironic that we find ourselves occasionally operating in trains travelling through jurisdictions which do not have the same understanding of how their officers should be protected. And what of the issues?

Let's start with the budget. Over the last five years our revenue budget has gone up by 37 per cent. That investment has paid off in the gains in professionalism and modernisation of the BTP and there have been tangible results in reduced crime and increased detection rates.

But these gains, these improvements in performance are what the public are entitled to see.

More importantly they can only be maintained if the investment is continued at the necessary level.

Any financial fall-off will have consequences and will almost certainly lead to a deterioration in the standard of service which the public has rightly come to expect.

You will understand Lord Faulkner, that the Federation is anxious that our budget for next year envisages only a 1.3 per cent increase. This is less than half the current rate of inflation of 3.5 per cent and is therefore a cut in real terms.

The Federation is entirely aware of the pressures on the overall Government budget. That is only too clear from the present police pay awards.

However, we are where we are, and I can only make an argument to you as to how the police budget should be spent if it cannot be further increased.

First, I think the Government should recognise that for the public one of the leading considerations for judging their quality of life is how safe they feel or how vulnerable they feel to crime.

To put it another way: how visible are the police on the streets and specifically in our case, have we the necessary visibility on the trains, on the underground or in the railway stations to give public the confidence they should have in the police.

To put it boldly: investment in policing has always been popular with the voters as well as the police.

Second, I emphasise the need for policing to be visible. But looks should never deceive. The public expect that a person dressed like a police officer should be just that and not a stand-in police community support officer. Now I am not denying that PCSOs have a role in the overall law enforcement mix. They do. But what I am saying is that if there is to be a reduced budget then the cuts should fall on the PCSOs.

The establishment level of regular officers should and must be protected if the standard of service to the public is to be maintained. Cutting the numbers of regular officers would undoubtedly not be a cost-effective measure.

And it becomes more obviously false economy when we consider that the level of threat against the UK has been officially upgraded from 'substantial' to 'severe'.

In announcing this fresh assessment of threat the Home Secretary, Alan Johnston, sought to reassure the public said that there is no intelligence to suggest that an attack is 'imminent'... his words... but only that one is highly likely.

As a police officer I find the view that an attack is not imminent but highly likely to be extremely worrying. For what that means is our intelligence on the terrorists is deficient. It is not sufficiently specific for us to target our resources on a few immediately dangerous people.

Instead we need to be on a more general alert and that means spreading all our resources across the entire UK rail network. That in itself requires that we need all the resources we can get.

The railway infrastructure, especially in London and our other major cities remains a prime, prestigious target for terrorists. That's why Madrid and Mumbai were hit. Maximum damage to a high profile target brings maximum publicity. We need therefore to have the resources to be sufficiently vigilant to deter terrorists.

And we need to pay heed of the warning from the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee.

In a report last month they accused Whitehall officials of settling for second best by resisting reforms necessary to improve the nation's response to terrorism. This kind of institutional inertia is also revealed in the mindset of our legal system, through a collective inability to see the threat from terrorism.

It would help enormously if we did not attempt to deal with the terrorists with a legal arm tied behind our corporate back.

At the beginning of the year the High Court ruled that two suspected terrorist supporters could sue for compensation on the grounds that restrictions imposed on their movements were unlawful. Not only are we not allowed to have proper control over suspected terrorists but we are going to reward them for harbouring hostility against us.

To crown matters the European Court has also ruled against the routine use of stop and search powers as an infringement of human rights. It does not seem to be appreciated that the power to stop and search deters criminals and terrorists from assuming that they can move dangerous materials and weapons with impunity. At least it did, until that European Court ruling.

People have the right to be deemed innocent until proven guilty by due lawful process.

People have the right to walk the streets without their privacy being violated. However, the Federation cannot accept that all human rights are equal and absolute and cannot, with good reason be compromised.

But somewhere along the line commonsense seems to have gone out the court room window. We have to respect the rights of individuals.

At the same time we have a duty of care to the millions of ordinary citizens who look to the State and all its legal enforcement apparatus to protect them from terrorist outrage.

We will fail our fellow citizens if we do not take a robust approach to enforcing a legal system which does more to protect the majority even if a few feel that their rights are infringed temporarily.

The British Transport Police is at the forefront of our defence against terrorism because of our responsibility for our railway infrastructure. We have a shared task with the UK Border Police in that we are focussed on the movement of people within this jurisdiction. In their case they deal with people trying to get into the UK illegally or with illegal intent.

That similarity of dealing with the movement of people has caused some to suggest that the BTP and the Border Agency should be merged.

Indeed, some have suggested that a single Force should have policing and security responsibility for all passenger movement on our roads, airport and railway infrastructure.

You will forgive me Lord Faulkner if I and my colleagues in this room have a very definite sense of d�j� vu with that idea. We have resisted merger in the past because there has been no evidence to suggest that it would bring a step change in efficiency or in policing or security standards.

I cannot emphasis too much just how distracting the regular musings of whether BTP should be merged with the Met, the Border Agency or even dispersed among the county forces can be. The BTP is successful because it is well led, it is focussed on a very specific role of safeguarding our railways and the people who travel on them or work there - and like the officers and staff of the BTP the Federation members are committed to providing the best possible service.

Successive Departmental reports have confirmed that we should be kept as a separate policing entity.

We have no ambition to lose our distinctive specialist role but clearly as upholders of the law we will abide by what Parliament might ultimately decide as to how the UK police service should be configured.

There is a question that needs to be answered about the BTP but it is in relation to how we are funded. For many years now it has been a frequent theme of this conference that funding through the train operating companies is both flawed in principle and unsatisfactory in execution.

In practice the train operating companies have not wanted to part with revenue for a service which they deem an overhead.

They have been reluctant to see that their investment in the BTP has been significant in boost in passenger confidence in their safety on the railways and passenger numbers have soared in recent years.

In practice as well, too much BTP effort has had to be expended in getting certain TOCs to pay their share of the BTP costs, resulting in an unnecessary and embarrassing waste of BTP management time.

The Federation has always rejected the Government view that the TOCs paying for the BTP was a straightforward application of the 'user pays' principle.

We have always seen a bigger picture here than the Department. The wider public also benefit if the nation's railway infrastructure and the passengers who make 1.9 billion journeys made each year can be kept safe.

Further evidence of the unsatisfactory nature of the funding arrangements comes with the recent judicial review which ruled against the Police Authority in its attempt to amend the Train Operating Companies' contracts.

It is certainly the Federation's view that the time is now right for the Government to accept its responsibility to wholly fund the BTP as a national asset. I have never thought it sensible that commercial bodies which are profit driven should have to foot a public cost.

The Government in recent months has already made some interesting statements about the train operating companies: from taking National Express East Coast back into public ownership to possibly extending rail franchises by up to 22 years the Government is seeking to put a nation-wide railway network onto a sound basis - one which is commercially attractive for long term investment.

We urge the Government to be similarly radical and to remove the BTP from the financial equation so that TOCs can deal with purely commercial considerations.

The BTP is still vital for our railways to operate successfully but it is not vital that we should be funded by the railway companies or any other commercial partners.

But if we must have a commercial approach a more imaginative and equitable way would be to introduce a levy on the passenger ticket so that the Train Operating Companies are paying for the BTP only in direct proportion to the passenger revenue.

Lastly, Lord Faulkner, I turn without joy and indeed more in exasperation to the Department's annual failure to address the long standing issue of pension transfer between police services. Although I'm sure the Department's file is a couple of inches thick on this subject, the Department seems unable to amend the pension regulations so that officers joining the BTP are not financially penalised through the recently reformed pension arrangements.

The net effect is that we are deterring officers from joining or leaving the BTP.

This is unhealthy as it closes the Force down to new ideas and experience and deprives other Forces of the benefit of our expertise. It is not a good policy for enhancing the skills and capability of BTP officers.

In the run up to an election I have no doubt nothing will be done but I sincerely hope action on BTP pension transfers will be sitting at the top of the incoming Minister's in-tray. Whether it's your colleagues or someone from a different party, for us the debate will continue to be pursued vigorously.