Look carefully the next time you are on the Tube at what instructions exist. There are notices telling you what to do when you want to pull the red handle, you are told not to put your feet on the seats opposite, you are told not to eat smelly food and you are asked to keep your personal stereo system as quiet as possible. But no where are there any instructions about what to do in a catastrophic emergency.

That is not quite true, because 14 months after the July bombings one small emergency notice has appeared on just the Jubilee line which, to paraphrase, tells you to stay where you are and wait for London Underground Staff to come to your assistance. Now, it is not an easy problem and a train struck by a bomb or an incendiary device in a deep tunnel is not only horribly dangerous but it is mercifully rare. I understand that emergency instructions have to be worded to cover all eventualities but why has it taken so long for such a simple process to take its first few tottering steps.

Similarly, try to find out what emergency equipment there is on each tube train. I am told that there are “carry sheets” in each train – improvised stretchers I imagine – but where are they and how many are there? And I am told that there is only one first aid kit in each train. It is in the driver’s cab: on 7/7 the box was found to be locked!

I am also told that each platform has a supply of stretchers. But again, where are they and should I, as a regular traveller, be ready and prepared to help to carry the injured? I am perfectly capable of it and I would be more than willing to help. Why am I not told what to do? I also found it reassuring after 7/7 and 21/7 to see frequent police patrols that were often accompanied by sniffer dogs. Where are they now? If you go to the Rome underground you will find not just civilian security personnel but also armed Caribinieri there. When was the last time the Roman underground was attacked? I don’t think it has been, probably because terrorists are deterred.

Our enemies bombed the tube successfully. They failed to do it again last July and I suspect that at least one more attack has been thwarted. Now, whilst there have certainly been numbers added to the British Transport Police and more dogs are in the process of being bought, it should be pointed out that the BTP’s Charter does not allow them to be armed!

There is no doubt that our emergency services responded extraordinarily well on 7 July and, to a lesser extent on 21 July. However, there were some serious flaws in the equipment that was available to them – none more so than their communication systems. After the Kings Cross fire in 1987 it was recommended that emergency workers in tunnels must have a radio system that would be able to communicate with others on the surface. Scandalously, nothing has been done. Certainly, the Airwave system is being purchased but it has not yet been deployed nor have any interim solutions that are currently available. What else has got to happen, how many hundreds more people must die before we put this right?

Then there is the question of the searching of passengers. It is clear that a detailed search of all of the tens of thousands of passengers moving in and out of the tube every day is impossible. However, there was random searching after July last year which was certainly inconvenient for passengers but to which there was little objection. I have had my ticket demanded on a random basis by plain clothes officers whilst on the Tube: why can’t similar teams be used to search people? We have stop and search powers and they are used but, surely, the name of this particular game is deterrence. We must sow doubt into the minds of the terrorists if we are to make ourselves a less easy target.

On a similar theme, in Northern Ireland the public were made intensely aware of both the terrorists threat and their capability. It was a bit easier over there because the IRA were visible every day and people were not allowed to forget the latent threat. But we can do a lot more with posters, broadcasts in the Tube as well as London TV and radio campaigns to make sure that people know what our enemies are looking for and how they might operate. How difficult is it, for instance, to tell people what bombs might look like? We did it in Ulster and the terrorist ended up feeling as if every pair and ears was hostile.

The next point is shocking. Since 2001 there has only been one comprehensive Tube evacuation exercise. Even that took place on a Sunday, involved no members of the general public and the emergency serves were all pre-warned. That is totally unacceptable.

So, what would a Tory Mayor and a Tory Government do to make the Tube safer? There is a simple check list: the ongoing CCTV and radio communications improvements programmes need to be completed with the utmost urgency. Next, we need more police on the Tube and a greater proportion of them need to be armed. Similarly, more officers must operate in plain clothes, they must carry out random searches whilst their colleagues in uniform have got to be given more dogs to use. Very simply, we must tell people what to look out for and what to do. The public must have some idea of terrorist vulnerabilities and we must educate people.

Lastly, we must be much innovative. There are search technologies such as millimetre wave equipment that the Israelis have used with great success: let’s learn from them. And if we want trained first aiders immediately available on the scene of a disaster, let’s incentivise travellers to go on first aid courses by cutting the cost of tickets for those who do.

Above and beyond everything else a Tory government will appoint a single minister of cabinet rank to oversee security generally. He or she would operate like a hand in a glove with London’s Tory mayor and I know the result would be an immediate increase in safety. Let’s make sure it happens.

19 October 2006
Patrick Mercer OBE MP