Britain’s most senior counter-terrorism police officer has warned that “dramatic cuts” of more than 10% to local policing budgets will undermine part of the drive to tackle the terrorist threat.
Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police’s assistant commissioner in charge of operations, has told MPs on the eve of the chancellor’s spending review that trailed increases in the security and intelligence services budgets to tackle terrorism must be proportionately matched by increased resources for local policing.
Rowley went public with his concerns for the first time after confirming he was the author of the leaked letter to the home secretary in the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks warning that further reductions in officer numbers would “severely affect” their ability to respond to future attacks.
“I was disappointed that it leaked,” he told the Commons home affairs select committee before confirming in broad terms that “dramatic cuts [to local policing capabilities] which undermine part of our counter-terrorism efforts would be of concern to me”. He said those capabilities included neighbourhood policing teams and specialist firearms units.
Rowley said the “tipping point” as far as he was concerned varied across the country, but in London the Met commissioner had already indicated that cuts of up to 10% would be “difficult but manageable” and beyond that would “pass the tipping point”.
David Cameron has already indicated that Wednesday’s autumn statement will include an additional £1.9bn for the security services, who will get an extra 1,900 officers and protection for the counter-terrorism budget. But that does not extend to the mainstream Whitehall grants for the 43 police forces in England and Wales, which are expected to face cuts of up to 25% over the next four years.
Rowley underlined the counter-terrorism role played by local police forces, including the use of their firearms units for armed surveillance and occasionally interventions in counter-terrorism operations. He also said local neighbourhood police teams were critical to the flow of information from communities.
He also confirmed that the police and security services were “working flat out” to look for any British links to the northern European terror network behind the attacks in Paris.
He said a report on the firearms capabilities of British police in the aftermath of the Paris attacks was already on the home secretary’s desk. It concluded that the current variety of weaponry – both machine guns and single shot – available to forces would be sufficient to respond to a mass terrorist attack.
The security minister, John Hayes, also giving evidence to the home affairs committee, responded to Rowley’s budget warning by observing that the policing contribution to counter-terrorism was only one, albeit important, component in the battle.
He declined to give details of the settlement the Home Office has reached with the chancellor, saying it would be impertinent of him to do so before the autumn statement on Wednesday.
Hayes agreed with Conservative MPs that Britain’s small airports and ports remained a weak link in tracking movements in and out of the country.
MPs also heard from Charles Farr, the head of the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism, who was recently appointed chair of the joint intelligence committee.
Farr declined to recognise police estimates of 4,000 “subjects of interest” over Islamist terrorism in Britain and instead preferred to focus on the 750-800 British citizens who had travelled to Syria and Iraq. He said 70 had been killed there and “about half” had returned to Britain.
Farr was careful to distinguish between those who had gone to Syria “in the early days” to join the fight against Assad and who posed no threat to Britain on their return and those more recent jihadis who had gone to join Isis.
