Patrick Mercer – Shadow Minister for Homeland Security – has urged the Government to make greater use of emergency response resources when dealing with any national ‘state of alert’

Greater use can – AND should – be made of current emergency response resources in reacting to a potential disaster similar in scale to the Madrid train bombing last March. That was the main thrust of the speech delivered by Patrick Mercer OBE – Shadow Minister for Homeland Security – at Consec, the annual conference run by the Association of Security Consultants (ASC), writes Ian Drury.

In his KeyNote Address to the conference (sponsored once again by Security Management Today), the Conservative MP for Newark and Retford called on the Government to “learn the lessons of Madrid”, where 191 deaths and 1,800 injuries resulted from ten bombs exploding on four separate trains in three stations. Mercer warned that the death toll could be much higher in the event of similar incidents occurring in London, where space and traffic volume restrictions would slow down the emergency services’ response times.

Mercer also called upon the Home Office to heed the Spanish authorities’ successful use of army personnel in preventing further deaths and casualties, pointing to the availability of 60,000 highly-trained UK troops. However, in Mercer’s eyes, instead of successful arrangements being made to deploy them, “far too much reliance is placed on liaison with private and charitable sector organisations such as the St John’s Ambulance Brigade.”

In addition, Mercer made great play of the fact that there’s currently no equivalent Government minister for him to ‘shadow’, and pressed for the formation of a dedicated Department for Homeland Security (similar in nature to that founded in the United States post-9/11).

Also speaking at Consec 2004, Kevin Brear – contingency planning officer within the Anti-Terrorism and Public Order Division of the City of London Police – strongly urged delegates to review their access control procedures and recording mechanisms.

“It’s vital,” stated Brear, “to ensure that an accurate and resilient record is maintained of all those within a facility at any one time.”

Brear also advised in-house security managers that hard copies of the major incident procedure manual produced by the London Emergency Services Liaison Panel (LESLP) would no longer be produced as the contents now need updating on such a frequent basis.

However, readers will be interested to learn that a PDF download version is available on the LESLP web site (www.leslp.gov.uk).

Source

SMT