Global Response to Terror: UK

The UK has had a history of terrorist attacks as a fallout of the long running problems in Northern Ireland. However the current threat is primarily from radicalised individuals who are using a distorted and unrepresentative version of the Islamic faith to justify voilence. The UK government has assessed the threat from such "Islamic terrorism" to be serious, sustained and geniunely international in scope, involving a variety of groups, networks and individuals who are driven by particular violent and extremist beliefs. In response the UK put in place a long term strategy to counter international terrorism (CONTEST) which aims to "reduce the risk from international terrorism so that people can go about their daily lives freely and with confidence". The strategy is divided into four principal strands:

• PREVENT - prevent terrorism by tackling the radicalization of individuals, by tackling disadvantage (inequalities, discrimination), supporting reform, changing the environment in which these elements operate and challenging ideologies that justify use of violence.
• PURSUE - pursue terrorists and those that sponsor them including gathering intelligence, disrupting terrorist activity, strengthening legal framework and working with partners to strengthen different areas of international cooperation.
• PROTECT - protect the public, key national services and UK interests overseas including strengthening border security, protecting key utilities, working with the private sector, reducing risk and impact of attacks on transportation and in crowded places.
• PREPARE - preparing for the consequences including identifying potential risk and assessing their impact, building capabilities to respond and continually evaluating and testing preparedness.

Subsequent to the terrorist attacks in London on 07 July 2005, the government has worked with others to strengthen and deepen the counter-terrorism effort. On 05 Aug 2005 the British Prime Minister set out a 12-point action plan principally focused on strengthening powers to tackle those committed to facilitating and promoting terrorism and on strengthening community integration.

GBP 775 million was made available following the 9/11 attacks to provide additional resources to respond to terrorist events and in support of the delivery of the counter-terrorism strategy, including increasing the funding and capacity of security and intelligence services and the police. By 2008, annual spending on counter-terrorism, intelligence and resilience will reach GBP 2 billion.

The Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) in the Cabinet Office coordinates the UK governments work to enhance the country's resilience to the full range of emergencies. The CCS coordinates the work of the Government departments who are responsible for contingency planning and response within their areas.

A horizon-scanning and national risk assessment capability has been established in central government to spot trouble in advance and ensure long term preparedness. The horizon scans and risk assessments issued by the Domestic Horizon Scanning Committee serve to give the Government Department and others a heads-up on approaching potential disruptive challenges up to 12 months ahead, and a common understanding of the likely nature and extent of the impacts. This operates in harness with a national risk assessment framework, which identifies over a five year period and forms the basis for decisions about emergency preparedness and about capabilities planning.

The UK is one of the pioneers in coordinated risk management for emergencies. The World Economic Forum (WEF) report on "Global Risks 2008" recognized UK's National Risk Assessment as the keystone for national risk management. Publication of the National Risk Register (see http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/) will mean that UK will meet most of the five principles of country risk management established by the WEFs Global Risk Network as outlined below:

• Accountability: the need for accountabilityof risk assessment as a condition of the legitimacy of the assessment as a basis for concerted government action both within and across departments of government
• Integrated Assessment: establishing common procedures across government departments to assess risks reduces the changes of exaggeration of the risks and understatement of the more positive aspects of risks
• Devolved Implementation: integrated assessment of the risks should not imply centralised implementation of risk management and mitigation
• Seperation of analysis and policy: analysis is best kept within a seperate structure from policy implementation, to prevent pressures from policy makers from impinging upon the independence of the analysis
• Disclosure and transparency (if possible): the Global Risk Network recognises that Governments are caught between pressure to disclose risk assessments and the need to keep some assessments confidential so as to avoid panic, protect sources, and maintain resilience. But it considers that disclosure is to be preferred to avoid a situation in which incomplete or inaccurate information causes a popular reaction that may be worse than the risk itself.

The Capabilities Program is the core framework through which the Government is seeking to build resilience across all parts of the UK. The program identifies the generic capabilities that underpin the UK's resilience to disruptive challenges and ensures that each of these are developed. These capabilities include dealing with mass casualties and fatalities, response to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents, provision of essential services and warning and informing the public. Some components of the capabilities relate to the activities of central government, such as central crisis management faciliteis or the use of the Armed Forces. Other components are delivered by regional or local responders, but developed within the framework established at the center by the capabilities programme to ensure consistency and high standards. The program consists of a total of 19 capability workstreams which in turn fall into three groups:

• three workstreams which are essentially structural, dealing respectively with the central, regional and local response capabilities
• five which are concerned with the maintenance of essential services: food and water, transport, health services, financial services and utilities
• ten functional workstreams, dealing respectively with the assessment of risks and consequences, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) resilience, site clearence, infectious diseases (human), infectious diseases (animal and plant), mass casualties, evacuation and shelter, warning and informing the public, mass fatalities, humanitarian assistance, flooding and recovery.

Each of these workstreams is the responsibility of a designated lead department. Within each lead department, a workstream leader at senior civil service (SCS) level is responsible for the management of a program of work set out in a delivery plan agreed with Ministers and with the civil contingencies secretariat (CCS) at the center. Within the Cabinet Office, an SCS-level program director reporting to the Director of Civil Contingencies is responsible for the management of the program as a whole, on behalf of the Permanent Secretary, Intelligence, Security and Resilience. The program director holds quarterly meetings of workstream leaders (the program management team) and provides quarterly report of progress to the committee on Domestic and International Terrorism - TIDO(SD)(PREPARE) - the official committee on UK resilience chaired by the Permanent Secretary, Intelligence, Security and Resilience. Ministerial oversight of the program is exercised through Defence and Overseas Policy - DOP (IT)(PSR) -committee, the Ministerial committee on UK resilience chaired by the Home Secretary. Leaders of the ten workstreams have responsibility for developing capability at the national level. The well-established regional resilience teams in each of the Government Offices for the Regions are responsible for coordinating activity at the local (local authority or police force) area, and for communications between workstream leaders at the national level on the one hand and the local authorities and first responders on the other. Responsibilities at the local level have been formalised through the provisions of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, and through regulations and guidance issued after the Act passed into law. The program has no defined end-point or outcome. An important part of the work is to continually identify, challenge and monitor the current levels of resilience in each of the areas covered by the workstreams. This enables Ministers to decide what increased levels of resilience they wish to acheive in each area and then to plan and if necessary to allocate additional resources to acheive that increased level of resilience.

Integrated emergency management (IEM) comprises six related activities: anticipation, assessment, prevention, preparation, response and recovery. The first four of these relate to pre-emergency elements of IEM while the last two can be described as the post-emergency elements of IEM.

Responding agencies at the local level include Police Services, Fire and Rescue Services, Health Bodies, Coroner, Local Authorities, Government Agencies and other NDPBs, the Armed Forces, private sector, voluntary sector and the community. It is interesting to note that the UK authorities understand that the Armed Forces maintains no standing forces for Military Aid to Civil Authorities (MACA) and hence cannot make a committment that guarantees assistance to meet specific emergencies, that the armed forces should be called upon only as a last resort, and responding agencies should not base plans upon assumptions of military assistance. There is a distinction between the defence of the UK against military threats and UK civil protection as established in statute by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. All military operations undertaken within the UK fall under the generic title of "UK Operations". This designation includes the Defence contribution to resilience, which is provided at the specific request of the civil authorities, is subject to civil primacy and requires the authorization of the Defence Minister.

For management and coordination of local operations, there is an agreed national framework for managing the local multi-agency response to, and recovery from, emergencies - the bronze or operational level, the silver or tactical level and gold or strategic level. Tactical command will be done from an established incident control point near the scene of emergency and will address issues such as the setting up of an outer cordon and the location of key functions or facilities such as a survivor assembly point, casualty clearing station and media liaison point. While the generic framework is designed to be flexible enough to be used to manage a wide range of emergencies.

There is also special provision for communicating with the public and for media management incorporated into contingency planning. First of all, there is the Media Emergency Forum (MEF) that have been working with the media to establish arrangements to ensure the delivery of information to the public in an emergency. A protocol for the delivery of urgent public safety information has also been agreed with national broadcasters. As an emergency develops, there will be a requirement for a more comprehensive media response structure to ensure consistency in the information provided at all levels of the response. The Cabinet office communication group may activate the news coordination center (NCC). The NCC supports the LGD in their communications management of the overall incident.

The UK government considers investment in counter-terrorism and resilience to be a priority and this has been reflected in the resources which have been made available both to respond to terrorist events and in support of the delivery of the counter-terrorism strategy. As the knowledge of the effectiveness of counter-terrorism capabilities increased and as new threats and opportunities have emerged, the government has allocated further resources to this area to enable increased capacity. Since a lot of the Indian central, state and local structures and policies have their origins in British India, the UK's response to terrorism holds a wealth of information that can provide guidance to establishing the new institutional framework for countering terrorism.