The hearing in Committee Room 15 at the Palace of Westminster saw several of the leading figures in Olympic security cross-examined by Home Affairs Committee chairman Keith Vaz and a group of fellow MPs.
Those giving evidence included Metropolitan Police Service Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met’s assistant commissioner (and national Olympic security co-ordinator) Chris Allison, LOCOG chairman Lord Coe (and CEO Paul Deighton) as well as Charles Farr – director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism.
The last part of the hearing included a further line of questions for G4S CEO Nick Buckles – who appeared at a previous hearing, of course – and his colleague David Taylor-Smith (chief operating officer at G4S with responsibility for the UK, Ireland and Africa).
Prior to the hearing, Vaz had stated: “The Committee intends to establish all the facts about the involvement of G4S in Olympic Games security. From the evidence we have received so far the Home Secretary and the Permanent Secretary are very clear that G4S failed to honour its agreement to provide sufficient staff.”
He continued: “G4S was unable to give us a convincing account of what went wrong when its representatives came before us in July. We are looking forward to hearing from them again when they will have had exactly two months to investigate what led to the shambles we witnessed just before the Olympics was due to begin. Everyone now accepts that G4S let the country down at a crucial time.”
In conclusion, the MP explained: “After this evidence session, we will have heard from everyone involved in the process of overseeing Olympic security. We hope to ascertain the reasons why the security crisis happened, and who else was responsible.”
HMIC reports on Olympic security
When Vaz began to question Chris Allison – who revealed that 15,000 police officers had been deployed at the Olympic and Paralympic Games on peak days – the MP referred to two reports prepared by Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) which had been commissioned by Charles Farr at the Home Office as part of the “assurance process” around Olympic Games security.
Allison had seen both HMIC reports but not separate documents on Olympic security issues prepared by Deloitte (more of which anon) and KPMG.
When it was discovered – on 11 July – that G4S could not meet its security manpower requirements for the Games, what was Allison’s reaction? “The Olympics was going to happen. It had to happen, and so this is when the contingency plan kicked-in.”
A further question arose from one of the Home Affairs Committee members on crime rates in London during the Olympic period. Had they gone down or up?
In response, Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe stated: “Our initial assessments suggest that crime went down by something in the region of 6%.”
Of course there were protests alongside the Games, including a “critical mass” of cyclists on the opening night, but all were dealt with admirably by the police officers on duty.
Gold Command had been in place from 13 July – the operation finishes this coming weekend, in fact – and 4,000-plus officers per day had been mobilised as a presence in London at Games time.
Allison said that London 2012 meant 14,000 police officers had necessarily been taken out of ‘day policing’ to service the Games. On a logistics note, this was achieved through overtime to reduce the impact on core law enforcement duties elsewhere.
When Vaz quizzed Allison as to whether the Met would do anything different if a similar scale operation were ever required again, the assistant commissioner explained: “We will learn lessons from London 2012, of course, but the basic principles we put into practice would be used again.”
“Biggest challenge” faced by the Games organisers
When LOCOG’s chairman Lord Coe and CEO Paul Deighton sat down to answer the Home Affairs Committee’s questions, the former testified that the G4S announcement on 11 July had represented “the biggest challenge” faced by the Games organisers, but that “collaboration” allowed the ensuing situation to be recovered in due course.
From his point of view, though, Coe outlined that G4S had “failed to understand the size and complexity” of the Olympic security operation and that it was difficult to blame anybody other than the contractor for the manpower situation that arose in the run-in to the Games opening for sporting business.
Coe’s LOCOG colleague Paul Deighton attested that he was first informed of G4S’ inability to meet some of its contractual requirements for the Games at 8.30 am on 11 July when Nick Buckles and David Taylor-Smith met with him. His reaction? “We switched into problem resolution mode.”
When questioned by Vaz as to whether or not he thought anyone else other than G4S could have fulfilled the Olympic security contract, Deighton retorted: “G4S was the obvious and best candidate for the job. They could and should have been able to deliver.”
Deighton went on to inform the MPs present in Committee Room 15 that, on their best days during the Games, G4S was only 4% down on the numbers, while on the worst days that figure hit 35%. That said, Deighton affirmed that LOCOG was happy with the quality of service delivery and conduct of those G4S staff on duty during Games time.
Vaz then nodded once more towards last September’s HMIC report in which it was suggested that the LOCOG security programme was behind schedule and – as stated earlier – “may put aspects of security at the Games at risk”.
Deighton – who has just been made a Peer and begins a new role as a Treasury minister next January – stressed his organisation had commissioned the aforementioned Deloitte report because LOCOG “wasn’t comfortable” about the quality of management information on the Olympics security contract emanating from G4S.
“We had absolutely clear and consistent reassurances from the [G4S] senior management that they’d be able to deliver,” said Deighton, “right up until that fateful day on 11 July. We shouldn’t over-complicate this. They [G4S] just failed to deliver because their own processes broke down.”
Apparently, LOCOG halted all payments to G4S on 13 July. To date, LOCOG has paid G4S GB pound 90 million of the GB pound 240 million total agreed (revised down from the original GB pound 284 million). Negotiations are now ongoing in relation to compensation monies for the Olympic Games, with G4S having subsequently delivered on all of its contractual requirements for the Paralympics.
Confident and assured performance
Following on from Charles Farr, the last to give evidence were Nick Buckles and David Taylor-Smith, respectively the group CEO and chief operating officer at G4S.
What followed was a confident and assured performance by both parties, with Buckles breaking out a wry smile when describing the last Home Affairs Committee hearing he attended as “an invigorating experience”.
Taylor-Smith assured the Committee that all recommendations made in the Deloitte report had been actioned by G4S, and subsequently agreed with Vaz’s assertion that the situation arising on 11 July did represent a “serious failure” on the part of G4S. Indeed, Taylor-Smith offered a personal apology to members of the Armed Forces and the police service who had to step in to help meet the manpower requirements for Games time.
Rightly defending his company, Buckles reminded Vaz that G4S was faced with supplying staff to 110 different locations during the Games and operating a recruitment and training procedure focused around 49 separate types of security role (including CCTV operators, Control Room staff, access control officers and x-ray management operatives). Nothing less than a mammoth undertaking. “There was no track record for this or any blueprint to which we could refer,” said Buckles.
The CEO will be negotiating penalty payments with LOCOG, but did stress that he fully expected his company to be paid for the work it had completed on the Olympics.
“I’m not going to sit here and say we did a great job,” commented Buckles, “but we delivered on a significant proportion of the contract and our people did a great job on the ground. I expect them [LOCOG] to pay us in line with the terms of the contract.”
Buckles, of course, has been with G4S for nigh on 30 years now, the last decade as CEO. During his time at the top, the company’s revenues have grown seven-fold and its contract book broadened substantially to including policing-related projects such as that with Lincolnshire Police.
However, the CEO’s future at G4S still remains somewhat uncertain as the Board of Directors awaits a report from analyst PricewaterhouseCoopers on what happened in relation to the Olympics security contract. Buckles stated that the company would await the report’s outcome – its publication is expected by the end of this month – before any decisions are made.
“I’m group CEO,” urged Buckles, “and if a contract goes wrong then I take the pain of that.”
Independent covert reviews of G4S’ security standards for both the Olympic and Paralympic Games showed them to be on a par with those of the military.
*The Home Affairs Committee’s report is expected to be published at some point next week
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