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Terrorism: Aviation Security

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend the Home Secretary in the other place and for the detailed information contained in it. The whole country has been shocked by the events of the past four days and by the discovery of two concealed and hard-to-detect explosive devices, one at East Midlands Airport and the other in Dubai, and by the very serious and challenging threat that such terrorist activity constitutes to public safety and our country’s security. There can be no complacency when it comes to preventing and dealing with terrorism. The noble Baroness has said that the devices were probably intended to detonate in mid-air and that had they done so, they could have succeeded in bringing the aircraft down. Today, my right honourable friend the shadow Home Secretary, Mr Ed Balls, has commended the Home Secretary for the calm way in which she has led the response to these threats. I join him and the Minister in commending our police, intelligence and security services for the vital work that they have undertaken in the past few days, in close co-operation with our allies around the world, to save lives. It is the job of the Opposition to ask questions, to probe statements and to hold the Government to account. We will do that but we shall also be mindful, at all times, of our wider responsibility to support necessary actions, to keep our citizens safe and to protect our national interests. In that spirit, I pose a number of questions to the Minister in three areas: first, the detailed events of the past few days; secondly, the implication of the events for airline security; and, thirdly, the implications for wider security policy. On the first point, we all appreciate that where intelligence and international co-operation are involved, events move fast and things are always clearer in hindsight. At what point were the police, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister first told about the potential threat? Were there delays in getting precise information to our security and police officers on the ground? Can the noble Baroness say why the device was not discovered by police officers during the first search? Would early information have made a material difference? What operational lessons will be learnt from dealing with such events in the future? The second area concerns the fact that these two live explosive devices were intercepted only by an intelligence tip-off after they had already been carried on a number of different planes, including passenger planes, giving rise to serious questions about the security of our airspace. Some security experts have referred to cargo security as a potential blind spot. The noble Baroness will be aware of comments made by BALPA to that effect over the weekend. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, drew attention to the potential risks of cargo transit in his annual reports in 2007 and 2008. As a result, significant actions were taken to improve intelligence and international security co-operation, and a tougher search method—explosives trace detection—was introduced for passenger flights following the Detroit attempted attack. I appreciate that this is a complex problem to solve, that a review has already been established and that the Home Secretary has already acted to ban unaccompanied cargo packages from Yemen. The Minister has also set out, in the Statement, a series of measures that the Government have already taken. What conclusions does the Minister draw about the reliability of current checks from the fact that the device was not spotted on first check by police experts at East Midlands Airport? Will the review consider extending explosives trace detection to cargo flights? Will the scope of the review cover cargo being carried in passenger aircraft? Are there other immediate actions that we should take now to improve the security of cargo coming into, out of or transiting through the UK while the review is being undertaken? The events of the past few days raise wider issues for our national security and counterterrorism strategy. It is clear that terrorists operating from Yemen constitute an increasing threat. Can the Minister assure the House that the Government are in urgent discussions with the Yemeni Government and our allies around the world with a view to interrupting terrorist activities at source? Given the wider evidence of a mounting threat, the judgments that underpin the Government’s current review of counterterrorism powers will be especially important. While we will reserve judgment until we see the outcome of the review, we have said that we will support the Home Secretary where we can and that consensus should be our shared goal. I raise the issue of resources. Given that these explosive devices were intercepted through vital intelligence work, is the Minister confident that a 6 per cent real-terms cut in the single intelligence account over the next four years can be managed without compromising this vital work? Given that the device was discovered by specially trained police working closely with our security and border services, is she confident that a 10 per cent real-terms cut in counterterrorism police over the next four years, and a 50 per cent cut in capital available to the UK Border Agency, will not undermine our operational capability? The Olympics, when the eyes of the world will be on this country, are now just two years away. With a planned 20 per cent real-terms cut, front-end loaded, in police budgets—a 6 per cent cut in the year before the Olympics and an 8 per cent cut in the year of the Olympics—can the Minister assure the House that, given the extra strain that police resources will face, this does not pose an unacceptable risk to fighting crime and to our national security? Finally, does the Minister agree that, in the light of the events of the past few days, the issue of resources should now be looked at again alongside the counterterrorism review?