Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-153)
Chief Constable Peter Neyroud, Assistant Chief Constable
Nick Gargan and Deputy Chief Constable Graeme Gerrard
16 JANUARY 2008
Q140 Baroness O'Cathain: Can you
chuck them all into the box?
Assistant Chief Constable Gargan: Yes.
Q141 Lord Morris of Aberavon: Are
there inherent dangers in combining these various bodies? We would
all be in favour of reducing bureaucracy and saving money or whatever.
Is not the advantage of having different persons making the reports
that one or other might be more radical in their suggestions?
I am currently reading The Life of Sir Robert Peel, which
may encourage you. There always has been an argument against a
national police force. That is a simple argument I suppose for
combining each of these three independent bodies.
Assistant Chief Constable Gargan: They
may be more radical the one and the other. They certainly, as
I have tried to get across this morning, do approach these issues
from different perspectives already.
Q142 Lord Lyell of Markyate: ACPO
suggests that citizens could benefit if the Investigatory Powers
Tribunal were better marketed and understood. I suspect most citizens
have never heard of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Can you
explain a little bit how citizens might benefit and what happens?
Assistant Chief Constable Gargan: It
is important to repeat the point—and I apologise for doing
so—that these techniques are vital to the Police. Covert
techniques are fundamental to what we do. We know that in order
for us to be able to continue to use these techniques, we need
to prove ourselves trustworthy. Therefore, we seek opportunities
to show that we apply the highest professional standards and that
we deserve the trust that the community places in us to carry
out covert investigative techniques. Anything that is out there
that will assist in demonstrating our transparency, that will
assist in demonstrating our integrity, the integrity of our systems,
and that will offer a redress to those who feel that they have
been wrongly treated by what we do or may have been wrongly treated,
anything that addresses those three themes along with the theme
of compliance with human rights and with the legislation, is very
welcome. If you have something that is expressly designed to do
that and provide that reassurance and yet very few people know
about it, it seems to represent a missed opportunity. Several
Police forces contributed to this submission which I have edited
on behalf of ACPO, and more than one made the point that we would
be very happy to encourage that greater scrutiny.
Q143 Lord Lyell of Markyate: How
many cases a year come before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal?
Assistant Chief Constable Gargan: I do
not know. I was speaking to the Serious and Organised Crime Agency
the other day and apparently what happens is that when somebody
writes in to the tribunal that they suspect they may be the subject
of surveillance, the tribunal will send out to organisations to
ask who may or may not be active against a particular individual.
There are two particular categories of people of whom we are quite
wary. One is the criminal who might want to know whether they
are being surveilled by the police, and there is a potential usefulness
to them in knowing that. The second is some people who are potentially
mentally disordered and they feel that they perceive things that
the rest of us would perhaps not perceive, and that is not limited
to police surveillance but alien surveillance and other categories
too. In terms of the work out of the tribunal, I am not aware
but I believe that there has only ever been one publication of
a tribunal finding since its inception, and I cannot even give
you a memorable name, I think it is the case of C.
Q144 Lord Lyell of Markyate: Why
do you say it should be better marketed? It sounds as though there
is nothing to market?
Assistant Chief Constable Gargan: Perhaps
the issue is that the Tribunal ought to be encouraged to be a
more publicly visible facility both in terms of encouraging people
to use it and, where meaningful claims have been made, to actually
publicise those findings so as to reassure the community that
they are being protected and we are using our powers responsibly.
Q145 Lord Rowlands: If we can turn
to CCTV. Before I ask a question about the National CCTV Strategy,
could you perhaps clarify exactly where we are on the effectiveness
of CCTV? I ask that because I do not know if you have had a chance
to read any of the previous evidence given to us, this is Professor
Norris and co., who in a series of exchanges said that the Gill
study said in 2004 that CCTV had very limited impact in reducing
fear of crime and quotes another one, the Ditton team in Glasgow,
who found crime increased when CCTV was introduced, and then Farrington
and Walsh said it would be better spent on more street lighting.
Where do you stand on the assessment of the effectiveness of CCTV?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: It depends
how you define the word "effective". Certainly a lot
of the academic research would tend to suggest that in relation
to reducing crime then it has mixed results. It certainly has
mixed results in terms of town centres where a lot of the crime
is alcohol related. Before CCTV can effectively deter people (a)
they need to know that the cameras are there, (b) they have got
to be thinking rationally and about the consequences of their
behaviour, and (c), the CCTV needs to be able to summon an appropriate
response because if it does not then it is a little bit like somebody
stood on a street corner watching you but doing nothing about
it and in the long-term it might not deter behaviour. The evidence
and academic research that I have seen says it is very effective
in places like car parks where offenders are going out specifically
to break into cars and are thinking rationally and about the way
they are going to do it, but in terms of our town centres, where
a lot of the behaviour is violent or disorderly behaviour, often
fuelled by alcohol, people are not thinking rationally, they get
angry and the CCTV camera is the last thing they think about and
even the presence of police officers does not deter them from
fighting and being disorderly in the streets, so cameras are not
likely to. In terms of reducing crime there are mixed results
and I fully accept that. The research in terms of reducing the
fear of crime, if you look at Professor Martin Gill's research
study from the Home Office, he said there was some quite good
indication that it reduces the public's fear of crime. If you
look at where most of the pressure is for CCTV in the community,
the vast majority of it comes from the public who actually want
it within their local communities. It is certainly not being driven
by the Police Service, it is actually being driven by the local
communities. I think some of them then get disappointed when the
CCTV goes in, and Martin Gill's research tends to suggest that,
because they have high hopes for it and because it does not deter
as much crime as they thought it was going to do—
Q146 Lord Rowlands: Do you think
the public can sometimes get misled on the benefits of CCTV?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: I think
the public may have a different expectation in terms of the amount
of crime that CCTV might prevent.[1]
The principal measure of effectiveness as far as the Police Service
is concerned is in relation to the support of the investigative
process. When a crime has occurred CCTV is a vital element of
the investigative process. It is not an understatement to say
now that the first piece of evidence that an investigating officer
will go looking for is the CCTV evidence. The first investigative
action very often is secure all available CCTV evidence. Interestingly,
there is very little academic research on the effectiveness and
usefulness of CCTV in the investigation of crime, most of it is
focused on does it reduce crime, not what is the impact of it
in terms of investigating crime. You only need to watch the television
on a daily basis and to read the media on a daily basis to see
how many crimes are detected, or certainly the investigation greatly
assisted, as a result of CCTV evidence.
Q147 Lord Rowlands: I was interested
because it was implied in part of your evidence that you do not
collect evidence of how CCTV is being used in the investigation
of crime in a thorough and comprehensive way whereas I noticed
the Chief Constable on DNA said that you measure success rates
by the use of data. If that is the basis of the case for putting
so much investment into CCTV, why are you not collecting what
would be obvious evidence?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: We are
in the process of doing that. We were required through Her Majesty's
Inspector of Constabulary and the Police Standards Unit to justify
the expenditure around DNA fingerprints and in order to do that
we are required to record the amount of crimes that are detected,
both primary detections and secondary detections, offences taken
into consideration, that come from both fingerprint and DNA. There
has been no requirement on the Police Service to do that in relation
to CCTV.
Q148 Lord Rowlands: There has been
large investment.
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: The investment,
interestingly, has not been made by the Police Service. If it
had been made by the Police Service I suspect Her Majesty's Inspector
of Constabulary would be asking what we had done with the money.
The vast majority of public space CCTV is owned, monitored and
run by local authorities. They are, understandably so, crying
out for some information that supports the effectiveness of it
and I would dearly like to provide that to them, and one of the
recommendations within the National Strategy is that the Police
Service do exactly that. My view is that we are unlikely to persuade
government to invest further in CCTV if we cannot show the effectiveness
of CCTV. The Martin Gill research study that the Home Office sponsored
was an attempt to do that but it did not ask the right questions.
All it did ask was ask "how much crime does CCTV reduce or
prevent" rather than "how effective is CCTV in the investigation
of crime". It is very difficult to put a cost on it but several
years ago London was suffering from a nail bombing campaign by
an individual by the name of Copeland and his avowed intention
was to start a race war. He was targeting specific parts of London
with his nail bombs and there were extremist groups claiming responsibility
for the actions. That event was entirely supported by CCTV evidence
in terms of actually detecting that crime. What value do you put
on the price of that detection? How do you start to value those
sorts of things?
Q149 Lord Rowlands: You are doing
it in the case of DNA so presumably there is a methodology you
can apply.
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: There
is a methodology in terms of counting the detections. We had the
same issue with the recent situation in terms of the bombings
of London, what value does society put on those detections, and
that is an issue right across the board in terms of detecting
crime. We are in the process of developing our system of counting
the number of detections where CCTV assists. I am of the view,
and from limited research we have done in my own force area, we
get more detections from CCTV or CCTV assisting in the detection
of crime than we do from fingerprints and DNA combined.
Q150 Lord Rowlands: You did mention
the National CCTV Strategy and there are 44 recommendations in
that Strategy. Can you give us some order of priority and how
are you going to carry it forward?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: As a
co-author I think all 44 are very important, but I would say that,
wouldn't I? The Strategy was written as a result of a concern
that I had, that I expressed through ACPO that then went on to
the Home Office, that we have probably the most extensive public
CCTV surveillance network in the world, we are the envy of many
governments and certainly the envy of most police forces in the
world. Most of them cannot understand how it has happened and
why the British public and the British Government have allowed
it to happen, and they cannot understand how we have managed to
get it in place. But, despite having a very extensive CCTV network,
it has been developed in a piecemeal way, it has been developed
in a relatively un-coordinated way, and we are not making maximum
use of its effectiveness. As the technology changes it is a significant
issue for everybody involved right the way through the criminal
justice system to play catch-up. My colleagues in the courts,
for example, are still just getting over the development of VHS
recorders where the rest of us are looking at the next development
past digital and DVDs, Blu-ray and all sorts of stuff like that.
There is real potential for a massive waste of money if we do
not co-ordinate this together. My number one priority would therefore
be some sort of national body, and it is a recommendation, around
managing this whole approach and co-ordinating the whole approach
of public CCTV in this country because without it we have every
local authority doing their own thing, every police force trying
to catch up with every local authority doing their own thing,
every CPS Service, every Probation Service, every magistrates'
court, crown court and defence solicitors all trying to get behind
somebody else's bit of technology. At the moment I am taking perfectly
good digitally recorded CCTV evidence and putting it on to an
old-fashioned VHS cassette to allow it to be played in some parts
of the criminal justice system at significant cost and degradation
of the quality of the image. It cannot go on like that. I think
we need some form of national co-ordination board. Secondly, if
I am allowed three, it is around driving out some standards. At
the moment we are faced with hundreds and hundreds of digital
imaging formats. It is a bit like the current argument they are
having about Blu-ray and HD DVD, but if I turn it back a bit it
is like VHS and Betamax. If you can imagine instead of having
VHS and Betamax, add another 400 different formats. My police
officers can go out and recover CCTV and find it in any one of
those 400 formats without the necessary playback software available.
What used to be a very simple and straightforward task for us
to recover CCTV evidence, which was to go and get the VHS cassette
and put it in the police station, is now becoming quite a technical
process and the Police Service is having to move towards employing
people with technical expertise just to get the evidence and that
is because there are so many different formats out there. If this
is CCTV that public money is being spent on I would like some
form of standard so it is compatible right the way through the
process. Finally, there is no point having standards if they are
not enforceable so that requires some form of mechanism. We talk
about appropriate legislation but it might be just tightening
up some of the existing codes of practice and some inspection
regime that says to people, "This is what we require of you".
Every time you see a poor quality CCTV image it is not fit for
purpose and if it is not fit for purpose it does not comply with
the legislation which covers it, which is the Data Protection
Act, and that is not being effectively policed. The Police Service
and the criminal justice system is wasting a huge amount of time
on trying to manage and recover CCTV that is inappropriate, we
are missing detection opportunities and that needs to be dragged
together.
Q151 Lord Rowlands: You say somewhere
in your evidence that the vast majority of cameras are in the
private sector anyway, is that right?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: Yes.
Q152 Lord Rowlands: If so, have you
got any recommendations on how you relate the public sector CCTV
systems with the private sector?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: That
is the difficulty. In fairness to my colleagues in the public
sector, in the main their systems are pretty good because they
work fairly closely with us, but we are duty bound to gather evidence
from wherever we can, so we are duty bound to gather evidence
if it is available, and very often the evidence that we gather
does not relate to the premises that we gather it from. It might
be an assault in the street and the CCTV system from a shop has
captured that assault in the street, so we are asking them to
provide us with the CCTV evidence to help prove an investigation
or support an investigation that is nothing to do with them. We
are in a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, we do not want to
dissuade them from providing us with the CCTV evidence but, on
the other hand, we would dearly like them to improve the quality.
There is a dilemma around how we drive up the quality of CCTV
in the private sector. Bear in mind that could also comply with
the Data Protection Act in most cases and if that was properly
enforced we perhaps could do it that way.
Q153 Lord Peston: In my judgment,
I think Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard has anwered my two questions
when he was talking to Lord Rowlands, but could I just make sure
I understand his answer to the last of the questions. You seemed
to say that you do favour a national body to regulate all this,
number one, and, secondly, you seemed to say you think it ought
to have real powers to make sure it gets its own way. Did I rightly
interpret what you were saying as that?
Deputy Chief Constable Gerrard: Certainly
a national body to co-ordinate the development of CCTV in the
UK and to make the most of the significant public investment we
have already put in. When the money originally went out, it went
out to lots of local authorities and at that stage none of the
local authorities had any expertise around the development of
CCTV, although they have it now. We do need to better co-ordinate.
Certainly a national body to co-ordinate and then some form of
legislative support or increased powers perhaps for the Information
Commissioner's office to drive up the standards of CCTV, not just
in the public sector but the private sector so that the CCTV that
we are taking is appropriate. At the end of the day if the public
think the camera is there they should expect the camera to do
the job at least. If we are going to the trouble of taking pictures
of people they should be fit for purpose otherwise it is a double-whammy
against the public, is it not, you have conned them into thinking
that they are being covered by CCTV but the images are not any
good. We need some way of driving up the quality of the images.
Chairman: Gentlemen, on behalf of the Committee
can I thank you very much indeed for your attendance and the evidence
you have given. Thank you very much.
1 Note by witness: The witness wished the record
to reflect that he meant that "the public may have a different
expectation in terms of the amount of crime that CCTV might prevent". Back
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