Can the new Home Office beat al-Qaeda? Yes, but...

With the new Home Office now the centre for counter-terrorism policy, the question is raised whether a more centralised approach will deliver a more coherent counter-terrorism strategy. Judging by previous experience, the answer is not clear-cut. The key may be reorganisation at the mid-level rather than at the top.

The idea that counter-terror policy should be co-ordinated from one specific area complements the centralisation of law enforcement in the UK over the last decade.

The 1990s saw the development of the National Crime Squad and the National Criminal Intelligence Service. These were replaced in 2006 by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which also absorbed the investigative capacities of Immigration and Revenue and Customs with regard to drugs. Similarly, the Assets Recovery Agency was established in 2003 to remove financial resources from criminals through both the criminal and civil law.

Both of these are national organisations and report to the Home Secretary. In 2008 SOCA will swallow up the ARA. Although the proposal to merge the 43 police services in England and Wales into a dozen or so super forces was eventually shelved, this is also a sign of the creeping nationalisation of policing.

However, centralised organisations are not always the solution to a given problem; SOCA has already been criticised for inflexibility and inactivity.

The government recognises the problems of an overly-centralised counter-terrorism policy. A terrorism tsar has already been rejected, and indeed would have achieved little. One person cannot co-ordinate the policy or its implementation. Similarly, any merger of MI5 and MI6 was rejected. In addition, the Home Office counter-terrorism structure would coexist with some decentralisation in anti-terror operations.

Four new regional Counter-Terrorism Units (CTUs) are being established — Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire and London. They will encompass multi-agency working, bringing together conventional police, Special Branch, the security services and other relevant agencies. In other areas such as Wales and southern England, smaller regional intelligence cells are being established.

These are promising developments, provided that CTUs are not to become whipping boys for any perceived failures in countering terrorism.

The government has also rejected the kind of collaborative structure currently in operation in Northern Ireland in the form of the Organised Crime Task Force (OCTF), developed initially to tackle paramilitary related crime. This is a low-cost, network-based structure overseen by a minister and dealing with overall policy towards organised crime (prosecution, disruption, prevention) and specific areas (fraud, armed robbery, drugs, extortion, counterfeiting etc.). Such a mid-level approach has risks: flexible committees are only as good as their ‘software’ — the personnel who staff them. However it is this mid-level approach which could provide the balance between centralised and decentralised innovations.

In theory, centralisation brings co-ordination, speed and coherent decision-making. In practice, depending on the size and operation of the organisation, it may bring lethargy and confusion. Decentralisation, in theory, brings flexibility and a closer fit between strategy and intelligence on the ground. In practice, it can also mean chaos and competition between decentralised units.

In the UK and the US there is a combination of both: the Department for Homeland Security and the Home Office in the UK both have a co-ordinating structure which oversees the network of security, police and other relevant agencies tackling terrorism. The key is to enhance the sort of middle level flexible information sharing networks seen in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the regional CTUs will develop this function, and in that respect they may be a more important innovation than changes at the top.

It is important that Home Office control does not expand inordinately. There are a number of different counter-terror strategies, including financial investigation, disruption activities, criminal investigation leading to prosecution, immigration policy and so on. Many of the decisions on these matters should in fact be made from the bottom up rather than the top down. However, the pressure for central control may grow, not least because the government insists on placing pressure on itself.

According to John Reid, ‘we agree that we need a radical step change to ensure that there is a seamless co-ordinated approach to the now seamless threat.’ Here the government is creating hostages to fortune. It is impossible to have a seamless co-ordinated approach because mistakes occur, resources are limited and decisions have to be made on partial evidence.

Countering republican and loyalist paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland via Special Branch and military intelligence was generally regarded as a success; certainly many other jurisdictions see it as a model to follow. This was not without mistakes, shifting strategies and human rights controversies.

Similarly the current terrorist threat is not seamless. Al-Qaeda’s terrorism is not as new or uniquely international as is often claimed. What is needed is a concrete and realistic approach to a concretely defined threat.

Any re-organisation at the top must recognise that the aim should be to enhance the operations of those agencies tackling terrorism on the ground. Whatever the organisational form adopted, the key is whether mechanisms for the sharing of ideas, policy development and assistance in investigations can be developed.

In tackling al-Qaeda the main problem is not the movement’s use of new technology or its ideology, it is the practical problem that the UK police and security services have not yet thoroughly penetrated its networks of sympathisers and activists.

Other strategies used by the police, such as financial investigation, only go so far and are not substitutes for the development of informant intelligence. If this does not happen, whatever the actual form of the Home Office, it will always have a limited impact.

Dr Jon Moran is Reader in Criminal Justice at the School of Legal Studies, University of Wolverhampton. He is currently editing, with Mark Phythian, ‘In the Shadow of 9/11: Politics, Intelligence and Security in the UK War on Terror’, for Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming in 2007. He is also working on a book, ‘Politics, Crime and Security in Northern Ireland’, dealing with the policing of terrorism and organised crime in Northern Ireland after the peace process, to be published by Manchester University Press in 2008.