As Warwickshire police reveal that they have wasted £80,000 in planning for an aborted papal event at Coventry airport, the National Secular Society has put in Freedom of Information Requests to four police authorities — West Midlands, Strathclyde, Lothian & Borders and the Met in London — to ascertain what their anticipated budgets are for policing the four day visit. Warwickshire police revealed that they spent £80,000 and 2,490 working hours planning for the pope’s scheduled mass at Coventry airport which has now been cancelled and switched to Birmingham.
The police in Coventry set up a dedicated five-officer team to plan the proposed visit before the Catholic Church announced that the event was being moved to Cofton Park in Birmingham.
A spokesman for the force said: “We had a dedicated team of officers from the force which was established to plan and prepare for the policing operation associated with the visit. The force will seek to apply nationally for these costs to be reimbursed.”
In a short letter to Warwickshire Police’s Assistant Chief Constable Bill Holland, Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols explained the Pope’s visit was moved because Cofton Park has closer links with Cardinal John Henry Newman, who will be beatified in the ceremony.
But commentators have noted that these connections were well known before planning began.
The truth is that the event is being scaled back either because it was too expensive or because fewer people are going to attend than had earlier been anticipated.
NSS president Terry Sanderson said: “That wasted £80,000 could have kept an old folks’ day centre going for a year or helped a youth club stay open. Instead, it is blithely thrown down the drain by the Catholic Church that doesn’t seem to care how much the taxpayer has to shell out for its self-indulgent jamboree.”
The West Midlands Police, which has now been lumbered with the job of securing the pope while he conducts the mass in Cofton Park, has issued a statement saying it will be able to cover the costs. It says it will use money from its own budget and anticipates some help from the Government.
Birmingham MP Steve McCabe (Lab Selly Oak) raised concerns about the visit in the House of Commons.
He said: “The West Midlands police are very concerned that the Government have indicated that they are not likely to give them a special grant, as is the normal custom, to cover the security costs of the Pope’s visit. Perhaps the Minister will want to say something about that at some stage, but as well as having our budget cut, we will incur extra costs, which a Government would normally partly support with an additional grant. That is what happened when the Labour party was in power.”
He said the Labour government had ensured police forces received extra cash when they provided security for the G8 summit of world leaders, which was held in Birmingham in 1998 and Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.
Home Office Minister Nick Herbert told him: “I understand that a bid is expected from Warwickshire police, whose region the Pope will visit, and from other forces, such as the West Midlands, and they will be considered under the special grant.” But he made no promises that the Government would come up with any more money.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the visit is becoming something of a financial “black hole”.
The paper said that security costs at the G20 summit in London last year, which lasted only a single day, was originally slated to come in at £7.2 million but ended up costing £20 million.
The Pope’s visit, on the other hand, will involve three large-scale outdoor events as well as street parades.
One of the officials planning the visit told the paper: "The problem is that the bill for this thing is likely to be open-ended and, like the G20, we won't know what it finally is until we get it. It could end up being well over £20 million and it's by no means clear who should pay for what. It's a bit of a black hole. You've got to assume that if there is a shortfall, the taxpayer will be forced to pick up the bill."
To give some idea of where we are going with this, the New York Times reports that the security for a world leaders’ summit in Canada will cost a minimum $897 million.
The security costs for the Group of 20 meeting last year in Pittsburgh was about $95 million, slightly over a tenth of Canada summit’s budget, according to a study by Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer.
The 2008 Group of 20 summit meeting in Hokkaido, Japan came to $345 million.
Terry Sanderson commented: “The price tag for summit meetings held in one place away from crowds is massive; imagine how much more it will be for multiple public appearances in different places in front of huge crowds.”
An interview in the Spectator with Lord Patten, who has taken over organisation of the event for the Government, suggests that David Cameron is prepared to underwrite the costs whatever they might be.
Terry Sanderson also expressed concerns over the amount of coverage the visit will be given by the BBC.
He said: “The BBC is planning to go completely overboard during the visit, broadcasting the complete tour over radio and TV. We’re going to be well and truly Pope-swamped. The Director General, Mark Thompson, himself a high-profile Catholic, has told the Vatican that the whole visit will be extensively covered. In effect, the BBC will be acting as propagandist-in-chief for the Pope. Couldn’t the whole thing have simply been held in a church with Catholics being satisfied with watching it on TV?”
One positive outcome is that those who want to attend the papal “beatification” mass in Cofton Park will be charged £25. Admission to the mass in Hyde Park in London will be £10.
The Church is insisting that this is not a “ticketing charge” but to “help with transportation”.
Indeed, no-one is going to the masses unless they’ve got the say-so of their local priest and they go on the official buses.
And even the 1,000 priests who will be ministering at the event in Birmingham will be stung for the £25 although the 2,000 VIPs will get a freebie.
The NSS wrote to the organiser of the trip, Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, suggesting the idea of an admission charge back in May and we are pleased that he has taken it up.
Maybe we should have suggested that they call the whole thing off.
SIC: NSS