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Mr. Peter Robinson: Does not the experience of the Police Service of Northern Ireland show that, in order to get the required composition, the standards for entry into the pool of merit are lowered, and we end up with a lower standard of candidate as a result?
Mr. Hunter: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. That point also featured in their lordships' debate. It was a matter of worry to several Members of that House that, were such a pool system to emerge, even de facto, it would automatically result in a lowering of standards. I agree with my hon. Friend on that. I should also like to make the wider point that, in practice, having organisations reflect and represent the community has, over the years, meant disadvantaging the pro-Union people of Northern Ireland.
Another justification for the Bill has been that it will lead to higher trust and confidence in the judicial system. I submit that there is no need whatever to aspire to that. I was amazed by the comments of the hon. Member for Dundee, East on that point. I look back over the last 30 years or so, and I try to recall occasions on which there has been a serious lack of public confidence in the judiciary, but I cannot think of any. I am sure that they were minimal, at the very least. In that regard, I bow to the experience and judgment of the noble Lord Mayhew, who, both as Attorney-General and as Secretary of State, had long experience in these matters. He concluded, in a debate in the other place, that
- "the judiciary of Northern Ireland, appointed as it has been by the Lord Chancellor, has earned a superb reputation for its fairness and impartiality, to say nothing of its courage and dedication to the rule of law."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 December 2003; Vol. 642, c. 1107.]
The 2002 Act required only lay members of the appointments commission to be representative of the community, but the Bill extends the requirement to all members. It provides that membership of the commission must reflect the community in Northern Ireland. We have yet to hear from the Government a clear reason for the change. Why are judicial members now to be subject to the requirement? Why is the change proposed so soon after the 2002 Act? We are entitled to speculate that we know the answer. It lies in Hillsborough and the purpose of the ensuing joint declaration.
How are we to define the community in Northern Ireland? Sinn Fein is now the dominant non-Union party, and it remains what it always has been: indivisible from the Provisional IRA, whose failure to decommission and renounce violence caused the suspension of devolution.
The criminal justice review was right to recommend that an appointments commission should be established only once devolution was in place. So long as devolution is suspended, it is a fundamental mistake to believe that public confidence in the judiciary will somehow be enhanced by trying to make it more reflective of Northern Ireland's fractured society. It cannot be right to amend the judicial system to try to make it more acceptable to those who break the law.
The Bill was originally drafted to make the judicial system in Northern Ireland more acceptable to the provisional republican movement. It has subsequently been caught up in the hasty and ill-thought-out decision to abolish the office of the Lord Chancellor. It should be rejected on both scores.
5.51 pm
Mr. Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP): Several references have been made to the Bill's origins and the political motivation behind it. My hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) referred to Hillsborough, which is in my constituency, and the joint declaration that emerged from the discussions that took place there on implementing the Belfast agreement, and issues that arose after the agreement.
Many aspects of the joint declaration go much further than the Belfast agreement. It introduced proposals that the agreement did not envisage and were therefore not the subject of the referendum that was held immediately afterwards. No one can claim that the proposals that emerged from the joint declaration have any democratic legitimacy through the referendum. Aspects of the Bill fall into that category. They are additions to the provisions and regulations of the Justice (Northern Ireland) Act 2002.
Almost all major legislation in recent years has dealt with implementing the Belfast agreement, correcting mistakes in it or adding to its provisions. Clearly, the Bill has a political origin and is not simply about tidying up or improving arrangements for dispensing justice in Northern Ireland. It is about satisfying specific political agendas.
The Minister knows that confidence in the justice system is important to ensure that it operates effectively. Some hon. Members have questioned the confidence of at least one section of the community in it and suggested that that at least partly justifies the Bill. I have yet to learn of any significant body of evidence—presented here today, or presented in any other form—that supports the accusations suggesting that our judicial system and the judges who are part of it are unfair and biased.
Like every other MP, I am visited now and then by constituents who bring complaints. They feel that they were treated unfairly as a result of a court hearing, or they are the victims of a crime and do not feel that the court went far enough in applying the rule of law and imposing a sentence. I am currently dealing with the case of a young lad in my constituency who was seriously assaulted by four youths. He has been in hospital for a long time with significant brain damage; the four youths were eventually sentenced for causing an affray, and were given sentences that the victim's family felt were wholly inadequate in terms of reflecting the damage done to their son.
It so happens that that family is Protestant. Many of my Protestant constituents come to me from time to time to complain about some grievance involving the application of the law. Any suggestion that the Protestant community is entirely satisfied with every aspect of the judicial system and that the Roman Catholic community is not constitutes a complete misrepresentation of the position. Any kind of poll would establish that most decent, law-abiding people in Northern Ireland support the judicial system. Only those with something to fear from the law have a grievance. I am afraid that at least part of the Government's intention is to assuage the so-called concerns expressed by some of those who have never really recognised our system of justice in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Dodds: My hon. Friend is right. A number of us have mentioned the composition of the High Court and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. Is it not the case that there is no basis for any perception of imbalance in terms of the religious background of the judiciary?
Mr. Donaldson: Indeed. I made that point to the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Luke) when he argued that the Bill was essential because of a widespread lack of confidence in the judicial system and the appointment of the judiciary in Northern Ireland. He gave no evidence to support his argument, and, as my hon. Friend says, the reality does not reflect it.
Mr. Carmichael: There are other ways in which the judiciary can often be unrepresentative or imbalanced. It is not just a question of religion. The hon. Gentleman himself has identified a number of difficulties with the judicial process. The drift of legislation over the past 20 years has been towards fettering judicial discretion because of a perceived lack of representativeness. That legislation merely treated symptoms, whereas this Bill strikes at the disease itself.
Mr. Donaldson: I would accept that but for the fact that my argument is not really that the system cannot be
reformed. Every system can be reformed and improved. Like other Members, I continually receive letters from people throughout the United Kingdom who are campaigning for justice—for this, that and every other cause—because of some perceived injustice perpetrated on them by the courts. If the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) analysed the judiciary in Northern Ireland, I dare say that he would discover that few of them come from working-class, Protestant backgrounds. I will not suggest that because that is the case we should necessarily radically reform the appointments system. We are not arguing against the principle of the appointments system; it is the political motivation behind it that concerns us.In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State discussed the benefits that have accrued from the Belfast agreement, and he laboured the point on policing. I say to the Minister—and through him to the Secretary of State—that if he were to take a poll in my constituency of community attitudes to policing institutions today and compare it with polls taken in 1997 and 1998, he would find that there is greater dissatisfaction today with policing than there was before the Belfast agreement. That is because of growing criminality, antisocial behaviour and paramilitary activity and the fact that the police cannot respond because they do not have the resources.
I get more complaints about the lack of police response to crimes in my constituency than I did when the Royal Ulster Constabulary was policing my local community. On the ground, that is the reality of the Patten report and the downsizing of the police in Northern Ireland, and it is also the reality of the impact of 50:50 recruitment. The police have not been able to recruit as many officers as they have lost, and many of the district command units are significantly under-resourced, which is the case in Lisburn in my constituency.
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