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Conclusions from the 7/7 verdict suggest the institutions guarding people's safety are not as good as they could be
London is one of the great cities of the world, an ethnic and cultural hub, a tourist magnet. In 15 months' time, it will host the Olympics, attracting hundreds of thousands more visitors in a glare of global publicity. The institutions that guard the safety and well-being of the capital have to be world-class too. Yesterday's conclusions of the long and careful inquest into the 7 July bombings suggest they are not as good as they should be. Worse, they suggest a reluctance in MI5 either to acknowledge or to address the weaknesses the terrorists exposed.
Lady Justice Hallett has proved a compassionate and feisty coroner, allowing survivors and witnesses the space to recall their experiences in a way that may, perhaps, have helped them and certainly allowed the rest of us to honour the extraordinary courage of ordinary people on an ordinary day caught up in extraordinary and unforgivable events. She has illuminated shortcomings in the emergency services' response. Even more significantly, she has brought a senior MI5 officer to the witness box and exposed what has been at best a shameful negligence of the truth, at worst a deliberate intention to mislead members of Westminster's intelligence and security committee. Not surprisingly, some of the victims' families believe a public inquiry might uncover more MI5 lapses. A long history of inadequate (and until recently non-existent) scrutiny has fostered a dangerous culture of arrogance.
The coroner believes the bombings could not have been prevented. But her inquest was restricted by rule 43, under which she could only make recommendations aimed at preventing further deaths. It is not a substitute for a fuller probe into the competence of the intelligence agencies. While seven of her nine recommendations relate to the emergency response, on the central issue of whether the bombings might have been prevented Lady Justice Hallett is able to demand just two reforms. All the same, although she acknowledges the scale of the complex challenges facing the security services and recognises that the clarity of hindsight can be misleading, there is no mistaking that she is deeply concerned about MI5's conduct in the years leading up to July 2005, even in the truncated narrative she allows herself.
Her call for the best available photographs to be shown to witnesses for possible identification and her proposal for proper recording of the reasons for not putting an individual under surveillance seem elementary. That either point needs to be made suggests the security services were overwhelmed in the face of mounting evidence of home-grown terrorism. Indeed there is a litany of weekly resource allocation meetings that hint at the struggle for the necessary share of an inadequate pot. Surveillance is costly, time-consuming and labour-intensive but it is also indispensible. Much has changed in the past five years: MI5 is both much bigger and much better-resourced. But that only increases the need for proper accountability.
From Iraq to torture allegations to the London bombings, intelligence failings have been a recurrent part of the story that is matched by a reluctance to accept accountability. It has taken successive inquiries to extract an accurate picture. Lady Justice Hallett details the discrepancies between what she learned in evidence and what the ISC was told in its two earlier inquiries – most significantly that far from believing two of the bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, to be "small time fraudsters", desk officers knew they were in contact with others against whom there was more compelling evidence. Given the opportunity to correct the ISC's misapprehension, MI5 ignored it. Others also went unchallenged. "Unfortunate," Lady Justice Hallett remarks – all the more so since, when she began, she was assured there was nothing new to learn. The ISC had already conducted an exhaustive inquiry. Yesterday's report should embarrass MI5. It is mortifying for the ISC.
Despite the shortcomings, the coroner concludes MI5 could not have prevented the attacks. The 52 innocent lives could not have been saved. But if the same mistakes are not to be made again the security services must be properly held to account for their failures. If a public inquiry is what it takes to change the culture, then a public inquiry must be held.