Policing 'Dave and Boris issue'

On Sunday 1 November Andrew Marr interviewed Sir Ian Blair.

Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

ANDREW MARR:

Now then, Sir Ian Blair's professional obituary had been written many times before he finally left his position as Metropolitan Police Commissioner a year ago. His job had been in peril ever since officers mistakenly killed the innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, the day after those 7/7 tube bombings. Last October when Sir Ian announced he'd resign as Commissioner, the then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith and Gordon Brown paid tribute to him. It was the lack of support from the London Mayor Boris Johnson that ultimately sealed his fate, and about which he complains in his new book. Well in his first television interview, Sir Ian Blair joins me now. Welcome. Thank you for coming in.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Andrew, thank you very much.

ANDREW MARR:

Let's start at the end, if I may, with that extraordinary moment you dramatised very clearly in your book when Boris Johnson said that he would not support … he would say he would not give you his support if he was asked, and you therefore concluded in a very sort of traumatic 24 hours or so that you had to go. Do you now understand why Boris Johnson did that?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

No I still don't understand. He's never given me an answer. But I do think it's something to do with the fact that he wanted to show the power of the London mayoralty. And in a sense that's what my book is about, Andrew. It's obviously telling my story …

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh …

SIR IAN BLAIR:

… but it's also looking at the British policing settlement, which is quite important, in which the Chief Officer and the Home Secretary and the Police Authority are co-equals. What Boris did was to introduce the American system, which is just as the Chiefs come and go at the behest of the Mayor. And he just did that and I think that's quite a dangerous thing to do.

ANDREW MARR:

And you suggest in the book he did it partly because of a sort of turf war with David Cameron over in Conservative Central Office because you were not only Head of London Policing of course, when it comes to counter-terrorism and much else, you are a national figure and, therefore, for national politicians to debate.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Yeah, I think what I do is I raise the possibility that it was that as part of the Dave and Boris issue, but I don't know that. What I do know is that what happened has some dangerous implications for the future of policing. There is a system in which the Chief Officers are appointed, they've got disciplinary processes, they've got conduct processes, they are operationally independent. If at a stroke, they can be removed, then the system has been changed. If you like, an external species has been brought into the indigenous situation. There's nothing wrong with the American system, but it's got lots of checks and balances that the British don't have. What we can't do is just change the system at a stroke.

ANDREW MARR:

You got drawn into politics bit by bit, didn't you? I mean there was a series of things that happened and that you said that caused complete controversy. And you make the point I think yourself in your book that you got into a kind of fire fight with the media that in the end you couldn't possibly win. You said it's like "settling down to have lunch with a tiger. In the end the tiger always dines last." Do you regret - and I'm not talking about party politics - but do you regret some of the things that you said on for instance the Soham murders, on ethnic minority representation and so on that started to make you a figure of controversy because you couldn't pull back from that once you'd begun it?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

I think that is an issue and I certainly admit in the book that I made some mistakes. I also think I didn't make some mistakes about some other things. But I think I was also the first commissioner to live in the global 24 hour media age, and one of the points I make in the book is to remind people about the whale that came up the Thames and for hours every couch of every 24 hour news was full of people discussing it. Well the Met can produce that story most days and, therefore, there does become a situation in which you become a figure of political and press debate. It was also the period of course - we mustn't forget - of the most astonishing set of attacks on Britain …

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

So the biggest story in the world was happening on my watch.

ANDREW MARR:

I'd like to come onto that in a moment. Part of the book is of course your own autobiographical story, which I suppose partly counters the idea that you were somehow an intellectual and not a proper copper because there's lots of pretty gritty descriptions - including the time when you very nearly shot somebody dead yourself.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Yeah, I will say that that's one of those moments that does live with me and why I have so much sympathy and understanding.

ANDREW MARR:

Just tell us a little bit about that.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

It was in a much more casual period, if I may say so, about guns and policing, and I was armed and two of us were called to a pub in West London where we were told there was a man in the bar with a gun. So we walked in. We didn't have our guns drawn. But the bar goes a bit quiet when two cops go in. And then I said to the man, "Stand up". And he stood up, but he had his hands behind his back. So I then said to him, "Put your hands slowly up in the air" and he did do exactly that. Unfortunately this hand had a silver gun in it. Now fortunately what he did was he put his hands right up in the air, as we stumbled backwards pulling our guns out.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

But if he'd pointed it at me or at anybody, I think we would have fired.

ANDREW MARR:

You'd have probably killed him.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

And then it would have been found to be an imitation weapon.

ANDREW MARR:

Indeed.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

These are the choices that officers have to take.

ANDREW MARR:

Which of course take us to the Stockwell incident and the Jean Charles de Menezes incident. In the book, you are absolutely clear in your support for the two officers who shot him, killed him in that carriage. And do you still feel that in their position, as it were, you'd have done the same thing?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

I'm obviously not as expert as they are.

ANDREW MARR:

No.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

They are extremely highly trained. We have to remember what was happening on that day. I must say that Jean Charles de Menezes was an entirely innocent man. His death is a matter of huge regret to me and to those officers, of course. But on the basis of what they knew, they went down there assuming that they were going to be able to detain him. On their testimony, he got up, came towards them and they decided that he'd caused …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) Because …

SIR IAN BLAIR:

… he posed such a threat.

ANDREW MARR:

… the jury decided that he hadn't come towards them.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

I agree with that. I understand that. But at the same time, we've also got to look at what the coroner said, which was to exclude the possibility of unlawful killing from the jury.

ANDREW MARR:

In what happened on that day - from the communications to the way photographs were presented and so on - there were clearly a series of mistakes. Do you feel in any way personally culpable for any of that?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

No, I don't. I feel personally accountable and I have stood account for it for a long time. But as the Met Commissioner, you cannot be responsible for a series of events on the ground. Otherwise the Commissioner would leave about every couple of days.

ANDREW MARR:

Something … I mean something clearly went terribly, terribly wrong in this operation. I can't remember how many layers above that operational decision you say, but it was an awful lot of layers. And it occurred to me that maybe there are far too many layers and one of the problems with the Met is that there are so many intermediate layers of bureaucracy.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Yeah, well I've got lots of proposals for the future of policing. Actually that's not one that I put in. But I agree with you, there are too many layers.

ANDREW MARR:

And do you think you were let down by colleagues in not being told much more quickly what has happened?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Yeah, I've said many times that I don't blame anybody who took professional decisions and that those professional decisions were not necessarily right. The issue about identity and terrorism is extremely difficult. False identities are a staple of terrorist activity. There was no suggestion necessarily that this was the right identity. But do I feel I should have been told earlier? Yes, of course I do.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes. And you make the point you know in the pressure of the moment, of course, the atmosphere was very different from afterwards. But do you regret in particular the way that he was virtually smeared - this sense that he was wearing a big jacket and he jumped over the barriers and this? It all came out.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Yeah, I mean this is part of the learning from the whole process here. Those descriptions were the descriptions given by members of the public to radio and TV and they just became part of the web and the woof of the whole story. What I do absolutely reject is the idea that we tried to smear Jean Charles de Menezes at his trial. I mean those…my instructions were as clear as daylight about that and Council as you'll read in the book made those instructions.

ANDREW MARR:

Indeed. Now for whatever precise reasons Boris Johnson decided that he wanted to get rid of you and that is part of your story. But looking ahead there is a much bigger question here as you say about the future of policing because the Conservatives have argued pretty strongly for elected - whether we call them police commissioners, whatever the title is - an elected official in each area looking, overseeing policing on behalf of the public. And for many people up and down the country worried about the state of the crime on their streets and so on, that would seem an entirely sensible and plausible suggestion. Why not democratise policing?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Well policing already has democratic control, and this takes me back to the point I was making earlier. We've got a system here where we have these co-equal partners, where the Chief Officer has independence. There's a Police Authority who has discipline processes over and there's the Home Secretary. If you replace that Police Authority, which is partially elected and partially not elected, with a single person, you end operational independence. You replace acquiescence with independence and you will see exactly the processes that happen in the United States.

ANDREW MARR:

Is it a bad thing for the Chief Constable to have to listen to somebody who's been elected by the people of that area?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

No it isn't a bad thing, and that's essentially what Chief Constables do already. But it's a broad mandate in which you are listening to lots of people, not just to a single person. I really want to make clear this is not a party political point.

ANDREW MARR:

No, you make lots of attacks on Labour in this book as well. I understand that.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

(over) Exactly. If the Labour Party was putting forward this proposal, I would say it was as ill thought out and historically ignorant as I think it is at the moment.

ANDREW MARR:

And you're saying to the Conservatives - because this is very clearly their policy, this is something that will happen if they win the election - first of all what in your view would be the effect on policing and what would you ask them to do about that policy?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Well I would ask them to get rid of that policy. But if it's going to be there, then the effect you would have to have is to have the things that the Americans have. They have an FBI who can supersede the investigation; they have federal decrees where they can force police forces to follow government policy. You'd have to have hearings in the same way as the Americans do about whether somebody's fit to hold office. It's a completely different system. It's also worth remembering, Andrew, that people know about the New York Police Department and maybe of Miami through CSI and all the other things, but there are 17,000 separate law enforcement agencies in the United States - some of which are of a very poor standard indeed.

ANDREW MARR:

So your overall conclusion is that it would make things less safe, not safer?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Absolutely.

ANDREW MARR:

You're also very strong in some of your language about terrorism - an extreme risk, an extreme threat you say in the book even now. Just tell us - I mean you've been out for a bit - but why it's still such a risk? It's been quite a long time since the Glasgow attacks. We've seen bombs going off of course in other parts of the world. Do you think it's still as serious a risk as it was when you were Met Commissioner?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Well as you're kind enough to say, of course I've not been privy to the intelligence for the last twelve months, but those that are tell me that nothing has changed particularly. We are in a position in which almost all of the attacks which we faced in my time in office came out of the blue, and that is the difficulty that I think we all face. That while we have got lots of control over lots of people, some of the people like the Glasgow characters were nowhere. They just suddenly arrived. And that is still a possibility. The number of young people travelling to the camps in the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan is very high.

ANDREW MARR:

So we're lucky day by day, but the threat hasn't gone down. And in terms of the sort of terrible car bombings and so on that we've seen in Baghdad and indeed in Kabul as well, you believe that there is a genuine, real and you know ever present risk of that occurring on the streets of London or Britain?

SIR IAN BLAIR:

I do, and I think you've got to remember the famous IRA phrase that you - the defenders, as it were - have to be lucky all the time. They, the terrorists, only have to be lucky once.

ANDREW MARR:

Well on that chilling note, Sir Ian Blair - thank you very much indeed for coming in and joining us.

SIR IAN BLAIR:

Andrew, thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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