Matt Jukes gave evidence.

We come now to our fifth panel for the oral evidence session. We have until 2020. Can the assistant commissioner for specialist operations at the Metropolitan police, Matt Jukes, introduce himself to members of the panel?

Matt Jukes:

Thank you very much. I am Matt Jukes and I am the assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan police responsible for our specialist operations, but I also carry a national role as the head of counter-terrorism policing, responsible for the investigation of terrorist offences across the country and for our work in protective security.

I apologise, but I may have inadvertently given a date rather than a time. This panel lasts until 2.20 pm.

Q24 Assistant Commissioner, good afternoon. Thank you for appearing in front of the Committee today and more generally, thank you to you and your officers for the incredibly important work that you do to keep the public safe. It is hugely appreciated.

I am conscious that some, but not all, members of the Committee have spent quite a lot of time thinking about the nature of the threat that we face. You are supremely well placed, given your experience, to talk about the nature of the threat. I know that there will be limitations on what you can say. However, it would be incredibly helpful for the Committee if, based on your extensive experience of policing, you were able to say something about the nature of the terrorist threat that we face today and how that compares with, say, 10 years ago. Can you also say something about your assessment of the legislation we are dealing with and its benefits?

Matt Jukes:

Thank you very much, Minister, and I thank the Committee for the opportunity. Before I move on to the threat, I would like to acknowledge all those who have been directly affected by the reality of terrorism in the UK and particularly to remember the victims of the attacks that have given rise to the movement towards the Bill. I pay particular tribute to Figen Murray for her tireless campaigning to bring us to this point.

The terrorist threat in the UK remains substantial and across the years that I have been involved, we have moved from a situation where people once needed to travel to acquire terrorist training, methodologies and equipment to now being able to carry out that kind of research and reconnaissance and acquire terrorist knowledge from their bedrooms, increasingly driven by the internet. The most pronounced feature of our work of late has been low sophistication actors who are self-initiated. They are sometimes called lone wolves or lone actors, but are in fact often connected to small groups of individuals online and often inspired by terrorist rhetoric, which endures from decades of presence of that kind of material, now in the online space.

We see three principal forms of ideology driving radicalisation and risk. First, there is those who have been inspired by or are directly connected to organisations such as Daesh/ISIS or al-Qaeda—so-called Islamist extremist terrorism. Secondly, we have seen over recent years the growing presence of extreme right-wing terrorism in our casework. Thirdly, there is an increasing number of cases of individuals who are mixed, unclear or unstable in their ideology and who seek inspiration in the material online from a range of different sources, sometimes mixing and moving across those ideologies.

In contrast to the previous decade, where we saw the rise of the Syrian caliphate and travel overseas, in recent years we have seen less travel overseas to carry out acts of terrorism and we have worked incredibly hard internationally and in partnership to reduce the movement of terrorist foreign fighters. One consequence of that has been that all the major terrorist organisations, which seem at times very remote from the UK, speak in terms of attacks being carried out where you are—effectively, if you cannot travel, then you might consider an attack where you are—and we have seen examples of that ideology following through.

The major terrorist organisations, which have been significantly degraded since 2014 and the rise and fall of the Syrian caliphate, should be acknowledged, as the director general of MI5 has said, as being down but not out. Although I have spoken about the numerous, dispersed individuals who are inspired to act on self-initiation, we are seeing signals of growing and re-emerging sophistication in international terrorism. The most obvious instance of that was the Crocus City Hall attack in Moscow earlier this year.

I will finish by scaling all of that. I am fortunate to work with a range of partners, communities, victims and survivors. Our core teams in counter-terrorism policing are currently investigating, in 800 separate cases, thousands of individuals who have expressed some intent to pursue a terrorist cause. Every year, 6,000 to 7,000 people are added to the roster of those who have been referred into the prevention of violent extremism casework through the Prevent lens.

All of that takes us to the question of how to mitigate those threats. We mitigate them through the pursuit of those who are already on our radar effectively, working closely with MI5. We mitigate those risks by trying to get ahead of them, with the prevention of violent extremism through the Prevent programme and elements of deradicalisation. It is absolutely critical that, in the conditions I have just described, we are able to protect the potential targets of terrorism and prepare communities, businesses and society to respond when terrorist events take place.

The terrorist threat now is harder to spot and harder to stop than it has ever been. Therefore, however effective our investigations are, we have to be ready to prepare and protect the potential targets of terrorism. To do that, we think that the proposed measures in the Bill—Martyn’s law—are proportionate, and highly likely to be effective.

We enjoy extremely positive relationships with a range of sectors—they are giving evidence this afternoon—but the measures will move us forward from a mode of co-operation, encouragement and collaboration, to giving communities, customers and society the confidence that there is a base level of preparedness and protection in place in the venues captured by the Bill. While we have enjoyed those relationships, we know there is a great deal of inconsistency around the country, and we would not want to see in any sense a postcode lottery for those who deserve protection.

I will finish with a small illustration. You have probably already heard, and will continue to hear, fear and concerns about the proportionality, cost and scale of the impact of the Bill. Given the terrible events of 2017, it is worth remembering that in Borough market during the London Bridge attack, the simple act of encouraging customers to remain in a premises and locking the door saved lives. At the level of intervention that is proposed in the majority of premises, the simple preparedness of staff to take low-cost or no-cost interventions can absolutely contribute to saving lives in the UK. For that reason, counter-terrorism is full square behind the Bill.

Thank you for your remarks, which are useful to hear. Out of interest, looking back at terrorist attacks that have happened over the years, do you think the Bill could have made a difference if it had been in place?Q

Matt Jukes:

The foundational incident for these conversations is the attack on Manchester Arena in May 2017. The evidence of the inquiry was clear that with a better prepared environment there, responders and those working on the premises could have changed the outcomes, whether by preventing an attack that evening, or mitigating its effects. One factor that has been discussed is that we will only capture a range of premises. We might touch on thresholds, but we might capture a range of premises and not all public spaces. One thing I felt quite confident in judging is that preparing businesses in these different tiers to be more security-minded, preparing people who work in those businesses to be more security aware and planful around the prospects of safety will raise overall the readiness of communities for attack.

Even though some of the attacks that we have seen over recent years have taken place in public spaces in open areas and would not be captured by this legislation, we might have seen trauma kits more readily accessible in adjacent premises. We might have seen people who were travelling to or from work who were more ready to play their part in responding as part of the community response to those incidents, and we might have been able to mitigate some of the risks of the spread of those attacks in the way I described in London bridge.

We know that where it has worked best, a combination of vigilance, preparedness and physical security can all play their part. We absolutely see both deterrent and mitigation of risk. Based on our experience of attacks over recent years, it would have to include those at major events. You are going to hear some more evidence about that. We know that in an enduring sense, major and public events remain a focus of terrorist planning.

Thank you for your evidence. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Jonathan Hall, said of the 2023 draft Bill that “careful attention” needs to be given to the risk ofQ

“displacing attacks from locations within scope of the Bill to a location out of scope”.

Do you want to comment on that? Then I will invite you to talk about thresholds, since you said that you had some thoughts on that.

Matt Jukes:

Without making assumptions about terrorist intent, we know that there are some very enduring themes about attacks on public locations, major events and crowded places. Disrupting that through better protective measures or through better informed responses will remain an enduring feature, even if there is absolutely at the margins displacement. We see from our casework that there is evidence that better-protected targets sometimes do deflect terrorists to other targets or locations for their intent. We have seen some evidence of that.

The relevance of this Bill—I have already touched on it—serves to shift the whole of societal awareness in terms of vigilance and preparedness and increase protection overall. If there is displacement from one place to another, it is more likely still as a result of this—if this Bill were to pass and be enacted—that there will be a state of readiness, preparedness and deterrent in those other places. Tragically, the kinds of sectors and sites that have been in the sights of terrorists are much more susceptible to their ideology and their intent than they are to the shape of a particular Bill or legislation. Sadly, for example, places of worship will endure as a potential target.

For those who are fixated on targeting places of worship, it is more likely that they might desist from a particular attack or that that venue would be better prepared. There are examples from around the world. We have lots of practice in the UK where security at places of worship actually has saved lives. So I recognise Jonathan Hall’s reflections. Any sense of a rising tide of awareness and preparedness will serve to secure communities. I suspect that displacement is something that we can have in view and will continue to work at, but not something we should be preoccupied by. I would say, because it goes to thresholds, if I may bridge to that point, that there is an area of attention we need to apply to those places that are filled with smaller venues, but create big spaces.

If you think of the big public squares in London, they may be surrounded by premises with a capacity of 100, but overall they create spaces that are very significant and iconic. For that reason, going into the earlier evidence, we felt that the thresholds proposed previously were helpful, as they capture the scale of the premises that can be taken together. I could reel off the names of those squares; you would know which ones they are. I do not really want to give a target list to terrorists, but it is fairly obvious that there is a set of places across major cities in particular and towns where premises of 100 sit alongside each other and build up quite substantial public crowded places.

For that reason, we felt that 100 was a sensible place to start. You have to draw the line somewhere, and that felt like it. If we are to move upwards, we lose some of those premises, such as the bars, clubs and restaurants that would have been in Borough market, which might have been captured and therefore contributed to overall safety in that environment and may be missed. On thresholds, we are anxious about the effective moving further upwards and if there was any further consideration would have preferred that to move back down to where the earlier drafts had started.

That is really helpful. Thank you.

Assistant Commissioner, thank youQ . First, I associate myself with the words of the Minister earlier in thanking you and your colleagues in the wider service for your work. What is your view on the investigatory and enforcement powers in the Bill? Do you have any concerns about them?

Matt Jukes:

The first thing to say, as I am subject to a few watchdogs myself, is that the best performance of a watchdog is to raise overall standards and improve outcomes for the public. That might seldom be achieved by enforcement and best be achieved by the sharing of practice, the development of understanding and the support of the sectors involved. I do not have extant concerns about the investigatory and compliance powers, but I would expect a regulator and the authority that will come into that space to have their major focus on raising standards and for us all to hold compliance actions as the backstop to the cases that might be required.

I say that based on the fact that you will hear evidence from the Counter Terrorism Business Information Exchange, which we work with closely to work with sectors. We get an enormous amount of leverage from working with sector-specific experts themselves, and I expect that the regulator would want to do that, rather than investigate and enforce in any excessive way. Having said that, the absence of something that is rigorous and provides that backstop would undermine the overall effect of the Bill if it were not present.

You mentioned to the Home Affairs Committee that you would like to see a regulator in place that could provide intervention support and improved notices. Do you feel that the Security Industry Authority is the right regulatorQ ?

Matt Jukes:

That is obviously a proposition that has come through close work by the Home Office and the consideration of others. In essence, just to land on a conclusion, I would definitely say that the SIA is well placed, having played a leading role in regulating security standards. I am into my 30th year of policing, and I can remember the quality of private security provision at night-time economy venues and all sorts of other places going back to the years before the SIA had its very important role, and there is no doubt that it has professionalised and raised standards across the security industry.

As well as the sector-specific support that we would get from networks such as CTBIE, which you will hear from, the SIA is very well placed to sit at the heart not just of this function as a regulator but of the private security industry, which in the end will play an important part in raising standards across the piece. It is a matter for Parliament in due course, and it has been a matter for the Home Office to bring forward its recommendation, but we could certainly support continuing to work in the way that we have with the SIA.

A timely finish. I am afraid that brings us to the end of the time allotted for the Committee to ask questions. I thank our witness on behalf of the Committee.