The Channel tunnel cannot be made safe from terrorism, contends John Adams. So why is the Government refusing to even face the issue?
Early promotional literature for the Channel tunnel featured a map which helps to explain why the tunnel is bound to be a terrorist target. The map shows, branching out from either end of the tunnel, two networks of roads and railways on which are superimposed a set of concentric rings indicating travel time distances from the tunnel. The purpose of the map is to stress the tunnel's strategic significance as a project destined to become the key link joining two large transport systems and two large economies. It is a veritable terrorist's dartboard.
For planners of large systems, such as bank and air-traffic-control computer systems, it is axiomatic that they build in sufficient spare capacity to prevent the systems crashing if key components fail. The Channel tunnel, however, threatens to reduce enormously the spare capacity in Britain's links with Europe. The severing of any rail or road link within Britain or the continent might cause inconvenience, but numerous alternative ways of getting from any A to any B would remain. The large capacity of the Channel tunnel, however, makes things much more risky.
In its prospectus, Eurotunnel boasted it would capture two-thirds of all car passengers, coach passengers and excursionists travelling to and from the continent. Assuming that the banks and shareholders agree to write off most of the debt, assuming it achieves the service frequency Eurotunnel claims, assuming a few years of operation - after the damage caused by the November 18 fire has been repaired - and assuming no further major interruption, the Channel tunnel's capacity will enable it to wipe out most of the competition from the ferries.
Its financial recovery will depend on it doing so. The proposal by P&O and Stena - which has just been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission - to merge their cross-Channel ferry interests, is an acknowledgment of the financially ruinous overcapacity in cross-Channel services.
This problem is about to be compounded by the building of a new high-speed link from the tunnel to St Pancras station in London. The proposal is well advanced, and much of the money for it is to be in the form of public subsidy. The Government has promised the link's intended builders a Pounds 1.4 billion grant, plus probably even more again in the form of assets (which the Government declines to value) such as Eurotunnel rolling stock, the Waterloo terminal itself, plus St Pancras station and its surrounding land.
The high-speed link would significantly increase the country's dependence on the tunnel. By making journeys faster it would attract more passengers, and by making the tunnel more expensive it would increase its need for more customers.
Eurotunnel has published forecasts of passenger rail traffic through the tunnel in the year 2040. Without the high-speed link it expects through-rail services alone to carry 22.5 million passengers a year, and with 45 million. Last year international traffic through Heathrow was 44 million passengers. The stark question posed by the link is: how many eggs is it prudent to place in one basket?
The tunnel is a soft and attractive target for would-be terrorists, ranging from those who aspire to publicise their cause through maximum economic disruption, to freelance psychopaths of the Hungerford and Dunblane persuasion, bent on killing the maximum number of people. It is a soft target because there are no known methods of security screening that could prevent a terrorist placing a bomb in it.
The world is full of soft targets and only a few are chosen. The attractiveness of the Channel tunnel is in direct proportion to the potential disruption and loss of life that a terrorist attack on it could cause. If an aeroplane crashes or a ship sinks in the English Channel, hundreds of people can be killed, but a relatively small proportion of cross-Channel capacity would be lost.
On a busy holiday weekend, however, there could be many thousands of people in the tunnel at any one time; it is 50 kilometres long and there are only two ends for the smoke, and passengers, to escape. Any incident, whether caused by strike, accident, hoax or sabotage, could produce an absolute shortage of capacity, for an indefinite period. If most of the ferry services had been withdrawn, and London's airports did not have spare capacity greater than that of present-day Heathrow, for a great many people there would be no alternative way of getting to or from the continent.
In October 1991 Sir John Wheeler admonished MPs, in a closed session of the Home Affairs Select Committee on security, not to speculate about the threat of terrorism in the tunnel (see box), an invitation to bury their heads in the sand. The use of " * * * '' in his committee's report to indicate matters too sensitive to publish is a self-important pretence ). The Home Affairs Committee can have heard no evidence in private that contradicted the then chief constable of Kent Sir Paul Condon's public contention that the tunnel cannot be made safe from terrorism.
In seven months in 1989 the IRA closed the railway from Dublin to Belfast for more than 60 days, about two days a week, with 19 bombs and numerous hoaxes. There is no reason to suppose the Channel tunnel will be a more difficult target. Anyone who has been through an international airport has experienced the state of the art in security screening. It involves X-raying hand luggage, emptying pockets of keys and coins, personal searches, and manual spot checks of hand luggage. No effective way exists of screening the mix of traffic passing through the tunnel cars, campers, vans, lorries, coaches and freight and passenger trains, that would not be prohibitively expensive in terms of both time and money. But the costs of repair and disruption to service resulting from the fire, on November 18 (estimated to date at Pounds 85 million) have falsified Sir Paul's view that security is in conflict with commercial viability; it is essential to viability.
If security cannot be provided through effective security screening, it can only be provided through the provision of a diversity of connections to the continent, sufficient to ensure that no one link becomes crucial. The most important lesson to be learned from the fire in the tunnel, and from the strike of French lorry drivers, is that it would be folly to encourage even greater dependence on a single vulnerable connection to the continent by subsidising the high-speed link.
If construction of the link proceeds, how might sufficient spare capacity be provided? It would almost certainly require a subsidy to be paid to the ports and ferry operators. Paradoxically, the greater the subsidy paid to the tunnel in the form of written-off debts and Government support for the high-speed link, the greater, ultimately, will be the public subsidy required for the spare capacity necessary to ensure dependable connection to the continent.
The Channel tunnel, sold to investors as a "cash cow'' and a "waterfall of money'', is now more than Pounds 8 billion in debt and its share price is a small fraction of its original value. It is a project that, like the last great Anglo-French joint venture, Concorde, has been fuelled by promoters' hype. The "optimistic'' assumptions about its cost and the time that it would take to build it have been exposed as baseless. The claim that it would be "the safest transport system in the world'' has been shattered. And still the Government intends to spend further billions to extend the link to London.
It is not yet clear whether the fire in the tunnel was caused by accident or design; but whatever the cause, now is precisely the time to speculate about the question of terrorism and security. It could save many lives and much money.
John Adams teaches in the department of geography, University College London.
Too dangerous for words....
"I am sure as a general point of principle that none of us wants to 'talk up' this question of terrorism and security. I think we know that there are issues here so we must not allow our friends in the media industry to speculate to too great a degree." With these words Sir John Wheeler, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, concluded a closed session, in October 1991, on security in the Channel tunnel.
The official record of the session is filled with " * * * '', indicating passages deemed too sensitive for public consumption.
But sufficient was published to make clear the nature of the "issues'' upon which speculation would be unwelcome. "A structure like the tunnel,'' he said, "with the volume of traffic that it would carry, commercial and civilian, is bound to be a terrorist target."
Sir Paul Condon, then chief constable of Kent, did not dissent: "There are many occasions where sensible levels of security and crime prevention are in direct conflict with commercial viability''.
When asked if he was satisfied that sufficient had been done to protect the public he replied: "The start point, if you like, is not how do we make the tunnel safe from terrorism because there is acceptance that it cannot be made safe from terrorism . . . * * * ."
What followed was considered to be too sensitive for public consumption.