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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 539-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE The Europa Hotel, Belfast
'Hate Crime' in Northern Ireland
Monday 13 September 2004 MR CONAL DEVITT, MR ADRIAN ARBUTHNOT, MS MARY BUNTING, MR BILLY GAMBLE, MR GERRY MULLIGAN, MR STEPHEN SANDFORD, MR JAMES CUTHBERT and MR MAURICE ROONEY
DR DUNCAN MORROW, MS FRANCES McCANDLESS and MR PAT CONWAY Evidence heard in Public Questions 206 - 295
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on Monday 13 September 2004 Members present Mr Michael Mates, in the Chair Mr Adrian Bailey Mr Roy Beggs Mr Gregory Campbell Mr Tony Clarke Mr Eddie McGrady Mr Stephen Pound The Reverend Martin Smyth Mark Tami Mr Bill Tynan ________________ Memoranda submitted by Northern Ireland Office, Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and the Department of Education
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Conal Devitt and Mr Adrian Arbuthnot, Northern Ireland Office; Ms Mary Bunting, Mr Billy Gamble and Mr Gerry Mulligan, Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister; Mr Stephen Sandford and Mr James Cuthbert, Department of Education; and Mr Maurice Rooney, Northern Ireland Housing Executive, examined. Q206 Chairman: I am very sorry that we kept you waiting. I am afraid that was courtesy of British Midland or Heathrow Airport's organisation or whatever it was that held my colleagues up. You are very welcome. Thank you for coming to help us with our inquiry on hate crime in Northern Ireland. If we could start off perhaps with you Mr Gamble, if you accept that Northern Ireland at the moment is an increasingly polarised society is it inevitable, as some witnesses have told us, that hate crime will continue to increase given the suspicion, the mistrust, and lack of understanding? Mr Gamble: Chairman, my name is Billy Gamble and I head up the Good Relations Reconciliation Division of OFMDFM. What we are doing through the Shared Future policy is to promote greater tolerance, respect and greater sharing in Northern Ireland. What we need to do through that policy is to replace the enmity that has existed and the mistrust that has existed across Northern Ireland and to help build relationships between the communities. I would suggest that certainly coming out of the work that we have been doing that Northern Ireland is very much becoming a more multi‑cultural society. It is not so much a bipolaral society and therefore it is very, very important that through the work that we are doing trying to construct a dialogue at very local levels we can bring together people to seek to resolve some of the issues that flare up at a local level, whether they are issues around community safety, whether they are issues around racism, whether they are issues around the paraphernalia which we associate with paramilitaries. A lot of that work is practical work on the ground, Chairman. Q207 Chairman: I am sure all that work is good and worthwhile but a number of submissions that we have had tell us that segregation in relation to housing and education is increasing. The Housing Executive itself said that 98 per cent of working class Belfast is now strictly segregated by religion. That is the situation. If you are looking for what you say you are looking, which is a multi‑cultural, tolerant society, that is going in the other direction. Mr Gamble: Certainly from the questions that we posed during our consultation (and there were two questions that we posed) one was do we accept the division that we currently have or do we move towards a more plural society. The reality is that we have an overlapping reality here in that on one level we have to recognise that Northern Ireland is divided and secondly we need to move forward at a pace which people are comfortable with to create a more tolerant and a more integrated society. Q208 Chairman: Do you have any evidence that that has actually happened? Mr Gamble: The recent Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey showed that certainly people in Northern Ireland are in favour of integration both at a workplace level and integration in terms of housing if the right conditions are available and also would wish to see a more integrated society across Northern Ireland. For the first time in five years there has been an increasing trend towards a more integrated society and that is coming through in the Northern Ireland Life and Times material which I will happily share with the Committee. Q209 Chairman: That is a survey of what people would like to see as opposed to what is happening, that is the real difference. Ms Bunting: Chairman, if I could come in here. My name is Mary Bunting and I am the Director of Equality in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and Billy works with me. What we are trying to do in government is to try to promote an integrated and co‑ordinated approach across government with the statutory agencies, and then within the community with elected and community representatives, to try to find ways to build trust and confidence within communities and between communities. We all recognise that if we are really to move towards a society where we are halting this downward spiral towards greater and greater division we need to have an approach which is multi‑faceted. You yourself have already mentioned areas like housing and education. We have with us today people from our departments and agencies who are working in these fields and perhaps you might be interested to hear from some of them in terms of what we are doing in the areas of housing and education. In addition to that we have an important strand of work which is about developing a greater sense of safety within local communities. Our colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office have a major programme to develop community safety within local communities. We think that the key to all of this is that we need to have leadership shown at political level and we need to have communities working with the statutory agencies and working with government. There is no quick fix to this and we all know that and that was a strong message that came through in our response to the Shared Future consultation. If you would be interested, Chairman, maybe you would like to hear from some of our colleagues in housing and education. Q210 Chairman: We certainly would, briefly, yes. Ms Bunting: Maurice Rooney is from the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. Q211 Chairman: What do you say to this business of 98 per cent segregated by religion in Belfast? Mr Rooney: That is confirmed by our own statistical analysis. In terms of social housing in Northern Ireland, which makes up around 20 per cent of the total housing stock, around 93 to 94 per cent of it remains segregated and that is a reflection, the Housing Executive would argue, of people's choice over the years where they have in essence voted with their feet and based their housing choice decisions on the level of personal safety that they believed existed within communities and indeed the level of trust of members of the community of different religious persuasion, so that is the reality which was very much over the years a reflection of the difficulties and issues that we were trying to address in Northern Ireland. But it is a reality which we now have sitting alongside what is clear evidence from within our communities of a desire to live in mixed or more integrated estates and indeed our waiting lists would demonstrate that there is a rising number of applicants who would seek to live in integrated housing. Q212 Chairman: How are you going to accommodate that desire? Mr Rooney: In general terms, Chairman, we have established a Community Cohesion Unit within the Housing Executive to address all of those issues which we the Housing Executive think we can contribute to improving community relations. One of the objectives that that Community Cohesion Unit has had laid down for it is to explore on a pilot basis the possibility or the potential for the development of two integrated housing schemes. Q213 Chairman: Where are they? Mr Rooney: We are at the very early stages, Chairman, in terms of identifying the location. The location will be determined by the level of housing need in particular areas, the characteristics of the waiting lists in those areas, the level of segregation in the adjacent areas (because clearly there would be little point in the Housing Executive developing integrated estates in a general locality that is quite segregated) so we have a considerable amount of work to do yet on analysis and indeed those schemes even when we identify suitable locations will only be progressed and worked up in conjunction with local communities and local representatives. Q214 Chairman: Very early stages? Mr Rooney: Very early stages but nevertheless there is a commitment there to do so. Q215 Chairman: Okay, thank you very much. How do you in OFMDFM define hate crime in the context of sectarianism? Ms Bunting: I would ask colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office to deal with this because the legislative side and the definitions and terms of the legislation would fall to them. Q216 Chairman: Excuse me but you are the people who are actually doing something about it so what definition are you working on? Ms Bunting: We are working on the definitions which are covered within the legislation at the moment. Mr Arbuthnot: Perhaps, Chairman, if I could contribute. I am Adrian Arbuthnot, Head of the Criminal Justice Policy Division within the NIO. The definitions are dealt with by the police on a self‑referral basis only. If the victim of a crime believes that the crime has been provoked on account of race, sectarianism or other factors then the police will record that as a sectarian or other crime, or indeed if a third party, if an observer of the crime believes that the crime was occasioned by such motivation then again the police will take that at face value, so the definition is very much worked out on a self‑referral basis. Q217 Chairman: Yes but you people who are trying to set these schemes up for housing and education must be working on an idea of what it is yourselves. Ms Bunting: We are working on an idea of moving towards a future where people in Northern Ireland can live and work and play and be educated together in harmony. That is what our objective is and that is what our mission is. Our mission is a shared future where people in Northern Ireland can live and work together so that in all of our work across government - and just for clarity in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister we co‑ordinate but the leads are within other departments so the Department of Education has programmes, the Department of Social Development has programmes and the Northern Ireland Office takes care of the legislation - we are quite clear about what it is we are trying to achieve. Q218 Chairman: How do you and the Government between you then measure the level of hate crime? I am talking just about sectarian hate crime for the moment. Mr Arbuthnot: Again the PSNI have developed reporting mechanisms so that they are very much monitoring the incidence of sectarian race crimes, et cetera, and using those statistics to paint a picture of where the main problems lie and what the trends are so that they can more effectively operate through their community liaison officers and encourage greater reporting of incidents of hate crime through Crime Stoppers and in other ways, put on extra patrols and generally build up confidence in communities that are affected by such crimes so that those communities can feel that they are supported by the forces of law and order in the face of attacks. Q219 Chairman: So what is the picture they paint? Mr Arbuthnot: The picture that is being painted at the moment, the statistics show, unfortunately, that the instances of hate crime have been rising in Northern Ireland and it is for that very reason that the police are developing and have developed policies to try to reverse that trend. Q220 Chairman: What are you doing to try to reverse that trend? Mr Arbuthnot: I personally ‑‑‑ Q221 Chairman: You collectively, the government, the Assembly, this is not just a problem for the police. It is a problem for government to have the right policies, to put the funds in the right place and help the police, so I mean at the moment all you are telling me is that a crime is what the police say it is, what is hate crime is defined by the person who suffers it, and that the police tell you that it is getting worse. What I would really like a feel of is what are all you guys doing to make it better? Ms Bunting: I will ask Billy Gamble to talk to you about our new strategy on good relations in Northern Ireland and what that will be like and I will ask Connal Devitt to talk to you about our community safety programmes, which are two important aspects of it, and then our education colleagues on what is happening in education. Q222 Chairman: Let's just keep it to sectarianism problems at the moment. Mr Gamble: Chairman, through the Shared Future consultation we engaged with over 10,000 people across Northern Ireland and the issues that came out, understandably, were concentrated around dealing with sectarianism and issues around racism so those law and order issues were very much to the fore. Also coming through was the issue that education has an important role to play in a more plural society and also housing in terms of choice and safety was another crucial component for the future. There is an issue around shared space and that involves the arterial routes in Northern Ireland and the message that flags and paramilitary paraphernalia give out and the need for agencies and the police to work together to try and ensure that we remove that paraphernalia across arterial routes. Also working with options around the support and the delivery, and that includes an enhanced district council programme where we through our current funding (which is around £2 million) perhaps provide more funding to ensure that elected representatives at a local level can work with communities to try and improve relationships at a very local level. On top of that we are currently funding a Community Relations Council to the tune of £3 million and clearly the work there is important to support. In terms of good practice in Northern Ireland, a number of councils, including Belfast where you are today, have developed good relations strategies at a very local level involving elected representatives and as part of the out-working of that is funding arrangements to support people on the ground to build effectively good relations. Certainly John Spellar whenever he spoke to the Grand Committee was minded to accept that type of model in a new structure that we might set up where district councils might come forward with good relations strategies that would be supported at the centre and around which we could construct a local dialogue which would start to address some of the key issues that flow from those strategies. Q223 Chairman: We will come back to that because Mr Campbell has some questions about this. Just before we leave the first set of questions, what about racially motivated hate crime, that is a growing problem, is it not? Mr Devitt: I am Conal Devitt, Head of the Community Safety Unit in NIO and we are responsible for building safer communities largely in relation to the Crime and Disorder Act in England and Wales, so in every local authority area there now is a community safety partnership with a community co‑ordinator. They are currently going through a process of audit action identifying issues in their areas and putting programmes together to address them. Within the context of hate crime part of the problem up until now has been a reactive approach rather than a proactive approach so we have been leading on bringing together the agencies to develop a common monitoring and reporting system which will allow us to capture data in a standardised way so that we can analyse it properly and the responses can be more appropriate and be more proactive. At the same time we are working with the victim organisations, particularly Victim Support and others, to make sure that the response to the individual victims is much more finely tuned. For example, you heard in our last submission that Victim Support are actively recruiting members from the Chinese community. They are promoting their services in Cantonese so that people feel that the services are more shaped towards them. Fundamentally, community safety is about all of these agencies, as Mary said, working with local residents to deal with this and in terms of hate crime, both sectarian and racist crime, it is very much about bringing the community with us in order to address these things in a sustainable way - taking issues like Neighbourhood Watch and making them much more appropriate for areas where there are high levels of ethnic minority residents, looking at ways in which communities can look out for each other and address anti‑social behaviour which is generated by racism and sectarianism and taking the environmental approach to things like flags and emblems which are often generators of fear in communities and make people feel that this estate is not worth staying in and therefore reducing the balance of the communities in these estates. So we come at this from a community safety perspective allied to our colleagues coming at it from a community relations dimension. Q224 Chairman: Specifically on race hate, what has been the effect of all those things you told me you are doing because the number of race hate incidents is going up? Mr Devitt: Yes, they are. Q225 Chairman: Forgive me for saying this but these are all very fine words, your initiatives and everything else but the problem is getting worse. Are you doing the right things or should you be doing more of what you are doing? What is preventing you from making the situation get better? Mr Gamble: Perhaps I could say a little bit in support of the community safety side. We had a very useful meeting of the Race Forum last week and the design of that meeting was to bring the police and representatives from the ethnic minority groups together to get a better understanding of where the incidents were occurring and the perceptions on each side in terms of the response to those incidents. What was useful in that was trying to see whether there were practical measures that we could introduce to support groups on the ground and to try and deal with the racist attacks. We learned from good practice in Dunganon and good practice in Ballymena and we think that in terms of the key work that is going on there to try and deal with these issues that we might be able to translate those types of models elsewhere in Northern Ireland to support groups on the ground and to try and deal with the problems that may arise. Q226 Chairman: I am really not trying to be patronising or critical but we met the Chinese community two or three months ago who said that the response was bad and they were not getting the co‑operation they wanted and there were more and more incidents of race hate crimes. Leave sectarianism out of it for a moment. This is a separate and growing problem. You are telling me all these grand things you are doing but the problem is still getting worse. The question I am asking you is why. Mr Gamble: Chairman, it is extremely complex. At the one level, enforcement is very, very important and at the meeting last week the police explained in very, very great detail to each of the groups that were there the actions they were taking in order to secure prosecutions and the practical steps that they can take in trying to relate this to the ethnic minority groups through their liaison officers on the ground to ensure that incidents are reported and effective action occurs following that. Q227 Chairman: I am going to interrupt you again. It is not whether or not incidents are reported, it is whether incidents continue to happen and what we are doing to try and change attitudes and protect these minority racial communities from these incidents. Reporting them, dealing with them, counselling them about it is fine but the one thing you want to do is prevent them. Mr Gamble: I agree entirely, Chairman, that we do want to prevent them, and I think that is why the role of the Race Forum is extremely important because it does bring together ethnic minority groups and the statutory agencies to ensure that all of us collectively can respond in order to support groups on the ground, with the police who are also in the forum to ensure that they take effective action to deal with those incidents. Ms Bunting: Another thing that we are keen to develop, Chairman, is work with local indigenous communities, with people in communities themselves, to try to get the message across to them that this type of activity is harmful to their communities and to try to get them to understand the benefits in trying to prevent it in the first place. Northern Ireland is a complex and interesting place and in some of these local communities it is a big challenge to try to do that sort of work but that aspect of our work is something that we hope to develop through our new Race Equality Strategy working with local communities - elected representatives and community people on ground - on a day‑to‑day basis to give some support to those communities to try to, if you like, educate them to understand the benefits of having minority ethnic people within their communities rather than seeing them as a threat, and in a society where we have some evidence that there may be political groupings who are trying to instil fear into local communities, that is a very big challenge. Chairman: Let us move on. We have touched on community relations; Mr Gregory Campbell. Q228 Mr Campbell: The Shared Future document has now been in the public domain for about 18 months or thereabouts and there has been a debate following its publication. You outlined to some degree some of the things that various agencies are doing but what has the Government's response been to the debate that has been engendered as a result of Shared Future's publication. Mr Gamble: Certainly the debate was extremely wide‑ranging and extremely helpful. Also the opportunity to have a discussion at Grand Committee at Westminster was equally important. The Minister, John Spellar outlined a number of the areas that he felt the future direction of community relations policy would go and it was welcoming that the Committee was supportive of that general direction. It was about moving forward in a very sensible and pragmatic way and it was about trying to engender greater sharing across education, across housing and also to provide extra support at a district council level through the district council programmes in a way to construct the dialogue so that those relationships and those issues can be dealt with. Where we are on it, Mr Campbell, is that the Minister gave a commitment that a draft of that policy, having regard to the consultation that has gone on will be the subject of a detailed, focused discussion with parties and that should happen in the autumn. Q229 Mr Campbell: Right. Hate crime in relation to race in Northern Ireland is a comparatively recent phenomenon compared with other types of criminal activity. I am just wondering in the midst of the plethora of programmes that you have alluded to, and some others that I am aware of, can you give us a guideline or some kind of league table or some kind of estimator as to how government is going to adjudicate on the success or otherwise of the programmes? Mr Gamble: Clearly in terms of the ultimate policy we bring forward on Shared Future a key aspect of it was how would we monitor it in the future. Obviously the issue that immediately comes to mind is the distance between communities measured in terms of attitudes at one level through the Life and Times Survey material but also the extent to which those who wish and to live in more integrated housing actually can, so the pilot Maurice Rooney talked about will be a good benchmark to see whether or not we can increase that level of integrated housing. Equally, the Costello proposals do offer us the opportunity to have greater sharing in education. I think that is extremely important when we go into rural areas where there is a decline in roles in relation to public schools and where we have an ability to respond sensibly to the needs of those communities. There are a number of measures that we can draw together and those will clearly be the subject of a discussion with parties. Q230 Mr Campbell: I assume you meant state schools rather than public schools. Just a last question on the issue of funding for many of these programmes. Is there on‑going work in analysing if the level of resource allocation is sufficient to meet what the Chairman outlined and which all of us know is an increasing problem, a problem that is escalating? What is your view on the funding allocation now that there are plans to change it? Mr Gamble: At the moment in terms of the mainstream community relations funding there is approximately about £11.5 million spent each year and that is across funding for the Community Relations Council which does a lot of work on the ground at interface level and in terms of developing relationships across Northern Ireland. Equally, on the £2 million that I mentioned in terms of district council expenditure, it was clear from the dialogue that we have had that if we move to a point where district councils play a greater role then very, very clearly there would need to be greater resourcing of that at a district council level. No decisions have been made on future funding. We believe there is a sizable amount of money going in. The key is to make sure we get value for money from that funding. Ms Bunting: To reaffirm that point, Mr Campbell, we are conscious that resources are important and the money we spend is important but far more important is to ensure that we are spending money on the right things to produce the right results, so we need to get those two things together. Q231 Mr McGrady: I want to ask a few questions for clarification about the progress of the equality agenda so I presume it is the Equality Directorate who will be mainly responding to it. The Act has now been in place for six years now so how successful do you think it has been in promoting, firstly, equality and, secondly, good relations and how do you monitor that progress or indeed lack of it? Ms Bunting: I assume that you are referring to the statutory duties under Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The Act has indeed been in place and within government we in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister play an important role in promoting the duties across government. We take that duty very seriously and one of the prime ways that we do this is through our support for the work of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland which has specific statutory duties relating to the enforcement of Section 75. The Equality Commission monitors progress every year and produces annual reports on progress on the statutory duties and so far its progress reports, which are in the public domain, have shown that people have taken this duty seriously and that good progress is being made. The first three years of these statutory duties were quite a steep learning curve for government and public bodies and those outside government who are affected by it. It required government bodies and other public bodies to produce statutory equality schemes which they had to consult upon and that in itself was a big learning curve for all of those concerned. I think evidence is there to show that good progress is being made. In addition to the work that the Equality Commission does in monitoring progress, the two governments, the British and Irish Governments, arising from the Joint Declaration agreed in April 2003, are currently undertaking a review of the operation of the Section 75 statutory duties. They have appointed two people, Neil Farris and Esme McLauchlan (?), to conduct an independent element of that review and they are being assisted by a broadly‑based advisory group and consultative forum. We are hoping to see the outcome of the independent reviewers' report by the end of October so that should given us good information on how well the duties are being implemented in terms of monitoring and enforcement. Q232 Mr McGrady: With due respect, you gave me a scenario of the rubric of how it is all done but my question was not that; my question was how successful has it been in operation? All these things you say about it and how effective has the application of Section 75, particularly paragraph one and two, been? If you give me that measure of success how have you monitored it and compared it? Ms Bunting: What I would say, Chairman, is that the Equality Commission has a statutory duty to monitor the effectiveness of Section 75 and it is committed to conducting an exercise in 2005 to do that. Our job in government is to ensure that the duties are being implemented across government and to promote and advise and challenge departments on that. The current review, which is being undertaken by McLauchlan and Farris in association with the Equality Commission, and the review of the effectiveness in 2005, should give us some indication as to how successful these duties actually are. In fairness, it is very early days even yet to be able to honestly say what has the impact in terms of equality outcomes for the various groups which are covered within Section 75 been. Within our own department we are taking the lead in the equality and social needs research and information strategy which will gather together information and indicators across government in terms of the equality outcomes which should feed into the review of effectiveness which the Equality Commission will conduct next year. Q233 Mr McGrady: Sorry Chairman, with respect, I have got no new information. I know all these reviews are happening and I know we are a society paralysed by analysis, but I have no flavour of whether there has been any progress successfully of the application of Section 75 or whether there has not been, what type of monitoring you do and what the conclusion of the monitoring is, indeed whether or not the allegations or suggestions being made that the application of Section 75 has been very, very slow indeed are true. Did you want to reflect on that and maybe come back to us with some figures or assessments or percentages or something I can say from there to there there has been progress or from there to there has seen regression? Ms Bunting: Can I say again through you Chairman, that we have not had a review of the effectiveness of Section 75 in terms of its outcomes on equality groups yet. The Equality Commission monitors this on an annual basis and has produced its reports. The question is how do we actually measure the effectiveness of Section 75, how do we look at what are the outcomes in terms of the various categories. Until now it is true to say that most of our monitoring has been to ensure that the duties are being implemented by departments. Q234 Mr McGrady: Someone referred earlier to the work we had done at local government level. Could you give me some example then of the good practices and the effective practices within district councils which have shown you an improvement or not of community relations between religious beliefs, political beliefs or even racial groupings? Ms Bunting: That is something that I will have to come back to you on, Mr McGrady, because I am not in a position today to give you information on good practice, particularly at district council level, but that is something that we will try to come back to you on. Q235 Mr McGrady: My second last question is on the Race Equality Strategy. How has that progressed in combating racism? Has any assessment been made of that? Mr Gamble: Where we are is that we had a draft of the strategy out during 2003 for consultation. The key aims of that strategy have been explained to the Committee at the last session. We clearly will be bringing forward the Race Equality Strategy alongside the Good Relations Strategy, so it is difficult at this stage to assess the effectiveness of that because it is not in play yet. Q236 Mr McGrady: That will be published in the autumn? Mr Gamble: We are bringing that forward in the autumn. Q237 Mr McGrady: Is that still on target to be published then? Mr Gamble: It is still on target. Because the issue of race equality sits very closely alongside good relations, it is important that they both come forward together. Q238 Chairman: It is autumn now. When in the autumn? Autumn is here but your strategy is not here. Mr Gamble: Chairman, we are hoping to come forward with it during October/November. Q239 Chairman: November is getting very near to winter. Has this thing been delayed? Mr Gamble: It has not been delayed. Are we talking about the Race Equality Strategy? Q240 Chairman: Yes. Mr Gamble: There has been a slight delay on that. Our reason for the slight delay is that we want to bring forward the Good Relations Strategy alongside the Race Equality Strategy because it would make sense for both to come forward together. Q241 Mr McGrady: Your endeavours in all this are going to be strengthened, we hope, by the Single Equality Bill so how is the Single Equality Bill going to give you additional strength and power and effectiveness? Ms Bunting: Chairman, just by way of background for those members of the Committee who may not be as aware of this as Mr McGrady and local representatives, we are currently consulting on options for a Single Equality Bill for Northern Ireland. The consultation was launched in June and we will run that until the middle of November. The Bill will focus on building upon our existing body of anti‑discrimination legislation harmonising where practicable. The extension to new categories will be considered and there will be no reduction in the protection offered by existing legislation. The existing grounds which are covered within Northern Ireland are race, disability, religious beliefs, political opinions, gender, general reassignment, married persons and sexual orientation. Age will be introduced in 2006. The Bill will not focus on hate crimes directly or on sectarianism directly, but I think it would be fair to say that with a strong body of legislation outlawing discrimination on a range of grounds that can help to create a culture within the community and within employment in particular. I think it would be fair to say that in Northern Ireland one of the places which is probably the most integrated of any of our institutions is the workplace. We have more people meeting one another across the community divide in our workplaces in Northern Ireland than almost anywhere else and that, to a large extent, I think it would be fair to say, has been the outcome of creating a culture of fairness and equality in workplaces and creating a culture in workplaces where people learn to live and work and respect one another. So equality legislation in that sense has an important part to play. Mr McGrady: Thank you, Chairman. Q242 Mr Clarke: Witnesses have already pointed out to us that as well as new legislation that there are holes or gaps in existing legislation. They point out examples such as the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 which does not include the equivalent to the GB Order of 1987 which outlaws "abusive or insulting behaviour within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress". So there are differences between the Northern Ireland Order and GB legislation. They have also suggested that in recent legislation such as the 1997 Protection from Harassment (Northern Ireland) Order they are surprised that it did not include sectarian harassment. Is there a belief that some of the existing legislation as well as some of the new legislation should be amended to make it more powerful and more useful to those combating hate crime? Mr Arbuthnot: The Northern Ireland Office introduced, as you are probably aware, in July past a Criminal Justice Order which gave courts the power to increase penalties in respect of crimes that have been aggravated on account of hate in different ways. In the course of consultation on that legislation we received very much the backing of the police and of other organisations in terms of the way the legislation and the policy was going in hate crime and related legislation, so whilst I accept that the use of existing legislation has not been perhaps as great as one might have anticipated, we are confident that the police and others firmly support the new legislation and as a way in which they can get to grips with criminality that is prompted by race, sectarianism and other factors. Q243 Mr Clarke: I am grateful for that and I am going to come on and ask you a question on the Criminal Justice 2004 Order but my question was about the 1987 Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order and the gaps and the differences between existing (not new) legislation in Northern Ireland and that which exists in GB and two glaring omissions, one in the 1987 Order which does not include this caveat on abusive and insulting behaviour, and also the Protection from Harassment Order 1987 which amazingly does not include sectarian harassment. I take what you say about new legislation but if there are gaps and holes in existing legislation as glaring as a Protection from Harassment Order that does not include sectarian harassment, is there any merit, do you think, in legislative change to correct that and to amend those gaps? Mr Arbuthnot: We are reviewing constantly the effectiveness of legislation and if we are approached and there is a case to amend previous legislation, to close the types of gaps that you have highlighted, then certainly there would be a willingness to do so on the part of the NIO. Q244 Chairman: 17 years later is there not that evidence? Mr Arbuthnot: That to the best of my knowledge, Chairman, was not brought forward in the most recent consultation but if there is a body of opinion that says that we ought to proceed with amendment then certainly we will consider that. Q245 Mr Clarke: Northern Ireland carries this awful stigma of being categorised as the race hate crime capital of Europe. Those are comments which have been made by witnesses. I take all the good intentions on board in terms of future legislation and indeed in having the Criminal Justice 2004 Order fully implemented, but people judge Northern Ireland on what has gone on, on its history and they see that these previous Bills, these previous Orders, this previous legislation do not match the need, have not been amended over 17 years, and cannot protect people from harassment because they are excluded (and this is constant, it is not just a dimension because we find out that disability was dropped initially from some of the new legislation and had to be inserted after action from the Committee). I take into account that every good civil servant will say we take into account constantly the need to review legislation as and when people bring evidence towards us. What we are saying is given the poor name that Northern Ireland has, given the stigma attached to being described as the race hate capital of Europe, do you not think it is time that legislation is updated and people can have more confidence in new legislation being brought forward, because the witnesses we speak to are saying to us that they do not have the confidence in new legislation and what is going to be different from the past? Mr Arbuthnot: The effectiveness of the legislation is obviously how well it can be implemented and applied by the Police Service and, at the risk of repeating myself, that where the police would come forward with requests that legislation be updated or changed then certainly there is a responsiveness on the part of the NIO. The other measure of effectiveness is the way in which legislation is implemented on the ground and I think there have been huge strides in putting policies in place through the police and through the community safety units that involve all sections of the community, with ethnic minority groups and others, to ensure that there is a greater confidence in the way in which crime can be reported, can be responded to and can be, importantly, dealt with so the legislation is under constant review and we will be very open‑minded to any requests for changes and updating but we also, alongside the legislation, wish to ensure that the legislation we do have in place is very effectively implemented and works to the benefit of local communities. Q246 Chairman: How long have you been in your job Mr Arbuthnot? Mr Arbuthnot: I think, Chairman, when we last met in May I told you I had been a month in my job, therefore approximately six months now. Chairman: So you have got some experience now of the field in which you are working. What is your opinion, I think this is what Mr Clarke wants to know, on the fact that sectarian harassment was left out of that Bill 17 years ago? Was that right or wrong? Mr Clarke: This was the 1997 Bill, this was only seven years ago. Q247 Chairman: I am sorry, I am exaggerating. What is your view on this? You have got to advise Ministers. Do you not have a view? Mr Arbuthnot: My view is taken from information that I will receive from the criminal justice agencies such as the police and others and when we are proposing legislation and contemplating new legislation, Chairman, we will as a matter of course trawl round other agencies so that they in turn can highlight to us where they consider the gaps in the law exist and that is the way the process works. Q248 Mr Clarke: At the moment there are more holes and gaps I would suggest. Can you tell us how you will be monitoring the effectiveness of more severe sentences in respect of the 2004 Order because that will have a big impact if people are given more severe sentences if their crimes are race or hate related. How would you monitor that? Mr Arbuthnot: We will be ensuring through our community safety strategy, through the work of the police and the Community Safety Unit that there is a good information flow to local communities, to local ethnic minority groups and to others which demonstrates to them that the courts are taking seriously issues relating to hate crime and therefore in building up the confidence between local communities and the police and others and demonstrating to them through examples of how the courts deal with race hate crime I believe it will build up a confidence that will in turn be to the benefit of local communities and work towards hate crime being more greatly highlighted as an issue and stamped upon by the forces of law and order. Q249 Mr Clarke: And finally, are the courts considering restorative justice and education for offenders to help in stopping reoffending? Mr Arbuthnot: Yes, we are also working with local community restorative justice groups to develop appropriate guidelines for effective community restorative programmes in Northern Ireland. They already exist and we are working with the groups in question. Q250 Mr Bailey: Can we just briefly go back to this issue about the gaps in legislation because it seems to me, would you not agree, that there is a Catch-22 situation here? If there are gaps in legislation then the criminal justice agencies and the law enforcement agencies are not going to report on activities or breaches of non‑existent law so, in effect, to consult them about the need to change the law when they are not actually monitoring the law is bound to result in a total absence of identification of the problem. Is it not better to actually consult other organisation which may be able to give evidence which the law enforcement and criminal justice agencies are not obliged to find? Mr Arbuthnot: Yes, of course you are absolutely right and we do as a matter of course consult widely with community and other groups, but I think, importantly, the PSNI policies do lead them to working much more closely with the community and people within local communities are able to identify areas where they feel perhaps under‑protected by the law. I therefore think working in partnerships between the criminal justice agencies and local communities will bring to the surface the types of issues that you have referred to. Q251 Mr McGrady: Just very quickly, and maybe you would like to come back to the Committee in writing, I have a great concern about the use of the term "restorative justice". In many areas, including my own, restorative justice is in fact a pseudonym for punishment beatings. There is no relationship whatsoever between those committees or those groupings and the police, the courts, the probation service or anybody else. Are you making a strenuous effort to regularise this situation and why has it taken so long for a restorative justice policy to be actually decided never mind implemented? Mr Arbuthnot: There are different aspects to restorative justice, Mr McGrady. For example we already have implemented the youth conferencing scheme within the Youth Justice Agency which is a restorative justice programme by another name. There are community groups existing which deal with restorative justice issues and we are working to develop the sort of guidelines, the sort of quality assurance that such schemes might adopt in the future and we are liaising with them at the moment. Yes, it has taken a long time. There are many complicated issues, particularly in relation to the role of the PSNI, that sort of issue, but we are doing our best to make progress and working with the groups to develop guidelines that will be acceptable to all. Mr Pound: Good morning, lady and gentlemen. Can I add my voice to those of welcome that you have already heard. If you feel that we are searching for empirical evidence in a way that is difficult for you to provide, it is possibly a reflection of the fact that politicians often take refuge in strategy and we quite often find that aspiration is easier than achievement. We recognise our own faults in asking these questions. I am speaking for myself obviously! With this collective intelligence and strength that we see before us can you give us a best practice example of one case, be it geographical or be it racial, where race crime did exist, was reported, was addressed, has been resolved and today does not exist? Chairman: The short answer to that must be no. Q252 Mr Pound: There has got to be one, surely? Ms Bunting: Give us an opportunity to consider that. Q253 Mr Pound: There have got to be a couple of Portuguese farm workers, there has got to be something, surely? Mr Devitt: The nature of racist attacks to a certain extent is a combination of opportunity and a lack of deterrent and we have heard already about some of the concerns that we have about the way in which incidents are reported and then the response of the police, particularly in areas where there is little evidence gathered because of the nature of these attacks. Perhaps it is late at night and no‑one wants to become a witness to this, which is why we are trying to promote instant reporting and using vehicles like Crime Stoppers and anonymous reporting. One of the things that we think will build confidence in the criminal justice system, and the police in particular, is bringing the perpetrators to justice. We are not very good at that yet, as you heard from the last report. Certainly in individual cases, particularly in relation to the support of victims after the incident and the reductions in repeat victimisation some of that early work is beginning to bear fruit particularly in relation to the confidence that individual victims feel about how they have been treated and the likelihood of their being repeatedly victimised. This is part of a bigger problem associated with an increase in the number of minority ethnic groups coming to Northern Ireland, largely because of the changes socially in Northern Ireland and the European community. It is also people feeling that the deterrents are not sufficient to deter people and underlying that is the moral issue about good relations and trying to build in belief systems which will reduce the likelihood of this happening. Q254 Mr Pound: Can I ask for the record how you benchmark that achievement of confidence in the victims to whom you have just referred to. Mr Gamble: I think it is a mixture. It is joint working between the community safety side and the Race Forum where we can discuss what has happened and the extent to which groups on the ground believe that people are responding to the issues. Q255 Mr Pound: There are some people, be they Philipino nurses, be they Chinese restaurant workers who are now saying, "We feel more confident that we are less likely to be repeat victims of hate crime." Is that correct? Mr Devitt: Only on an individual basis. Q256 Mr Pound: That will do. Anything! Ms Bunting: I think it is fair to say as well that there is a greater recognition within those communities that government is trying to do something about it. We are not going to pretend that suddenly because of these programmes that we are putting in place that this is going to stop immediately. It is going to take time. It has to be said that there are some of these incidents that we might not be able to stop because of the nature of who is perpetrating them. What we are trying to do in government is to work with the community and to work with the agencies, and build confidence among the communities that their concerns can be addressed, show that they are being addressed, and listen to them. Our Race Forum, and I am not sure if you have a similar organisation in the rest of the UK, has its departments, agencies and representatives of all the minority ethic groups who sit down regularly to talk about issues like this to try and find sensible ways to deal with it. Q257 Mr Pound: There has certainly been a demonstrable upping of the tempo in relation to support services and similar things for victims. Can you explain how the policy developments in the areas of truth, justice, reconciliation, healing, all the sorts of things we have talked about, will assist the victims of hate crime? I appreciate that Mr Devitt has already touched on this to a certain extent but for the record it would be important to hear from you. Mr Gamble: As you know, the Secretary of State is currently considering how best to move forward in trying to deal with the past. At this stage it is difficult for me to comment on what he will move for on that. At a very practical level what my own department is involved in is monitoring victims of what we term "The Conflict", 35 years of violence in Northern Ireland that has existed, and it is at a very, very practical level in terms of trauma support, in terms of working through general practitioners, working through the statutory agencies on the ground to ensure that there are arrangements in place for victims of, shall I say, conflict as distinct from race crime and they are actually being supported on the ground and there is funding in place to try and make sure that that happens. Q258 Mr Pound: Is the Memorial Fund helpful, in your opinion? Mr Gamble: I would suggest that the Memorial Fund is meeting at an individual level a very, very important constituency there. Q259 Mr Pound: In your own opinion should it be expanded? Mr Gamble: The Memorial Fund has received significant funding from government and indeed from the Irish Government. Q260 Mr Pound: That was not what I asked. Mr Gamble: I would say, Mr Pound, that they are currently engaged in a process as a result of their own consultation to look to see how best they can meet the gaps that exist and they are currently going through that and I would not suggest that I have an answer to that. The Memorial Fund is currently looking at what more it might do. Mr Pound: That was a superbly professional response. I mean that as a compliment. Thank you. Q261 Mark Tami: Mr Devitt, you have already touched on the role of the Community Safety Strategy and the partnerships. Could you perhaps explain how successful or otherwise they have been and then what do you see their role in the future? Can you try to give us some examples of how they have actually worked or not worked? Mr Devitt: They are very new, Chairman. They are literally just in the formative stages which is why, in effect replicating the Crime and Disorder Act, we are really back in 1998 in terms of how this is coming together. Already through the unit we have funded a number of grants to voluntary communities, mainly about equality and the celebration of diversity which we see as important in setting down a mark for this. I can also touch on some of the practical examples which we use in relation to the dispersal of grants. Attack alarms for people from minority communities who feel threatened, the installation of CCTV in people's homes for that and panic buttons simply to try and reassure them in order to try and get a quicker response to all of this. We have to convince them that these individual responses are put in a broader context of how we deal with perpetrators in relation to their housing tenancies. For example, we would like to move away from (which is what we did with domestic violence) moving the victims out of their property to moving the perpetrator out of the estate. Q262 Mark Tami: How do the partnerships get that solution or work towards that solution? Mr Devitt: Those partners at local level are reflected throughout Northern Ireland at Executive level with those agencies. We need to develop policies around how they deal with, for example, anti‑social behaviour which has a racial and harassment dimension to it and the enforcement of housing legislation and what the partnerships are doing locally is to be implementing consistently what the Housing Executive is dealing with in terms of anti‑social behaviour. The local partnerships come up with local solutions but the agencies have to put behind that the policies and strategies. It is very early days for community safety partnerships. Q263 Mark Tami: You see an expanded role for them in the future? Mr Devitt: Absolutely and particularly when they are faced with targets because, as the Chairman said, the only way to reduce racist crime is to give people hard targets in relation to doing that and to challenge them locally. You really cannot do that until you have a sense of how much and where this is happening in order to ground that locally, and we have not got the monitoring systems sophisticated enough to be able to do and to say to the partnerships, "This is your problem locally, this is the nature and extent of it; what are you going to do about it?" Q264 Mark Tami: Just one further point, in your view has illegal immigration inflamed racial tensions? Mr Devitt: I have only anecdotal evidence for this and obviously it is an emotive issue and it is tied up with a lot of fears and prejudices that are associated with how Northern Ireland sees itself and how it sees the outside world. It is part of that thing I mentioned earlier about a wider European community, Northern Ireland becoming more open and, in effect, people having to deal with diversity. We are not very well experienced with that here and we do not have positive experiences which is why we have these negative experiences. That is the context within which we are but I have no direct evidence about illegal immigration. Q265 Mr Beggs: Good afternoon. There has been criticism of the Department's Education for Mutual Understanding policy that it has been ineffective. What assessment has the Department made of the effectiveness of the policy and since it is being replaced by Local and Global Citizenship Education how will that succeed where EMU has failed? Mr Cuthbert: Good afternoon, Mr Beggs. My name is James Cuthbert and I am an inspector with the Department of Education's Training Inspectorate and I have an interest in this area. You are quite right to assert that there have been criticisms of the Education for Mutual Understanding Strategy/cultural heritage cross-curricular theme, which members of the panel will know was introduced in 1992 as part of the Northern Ireland curriculum provision. We were always aware as a Department that if you put in cross curricular provision there is a real danger that it may not embed as well as we might think. That is why in 1999‑2000 the Department commissioned the Education and Training Inspectorate to carry out a survey of EMU/cultural heritage in the primary sector and in the post‑primary sector. The results of those inspection reports are summarised in the submission that we gave to you, ladies and gentlemen, and there were in both of those reports indications of success and positive outcomes for many children and for many teachers and for many schools. There was also a clear recognition that because of the cross curricular nature of this provision there were gaps. In particular, I might highlight the fact that although the EMU objective in terms of fostering respect for others and self‑esteem came out quite strongly, the concept that the schools and the children should have experience of dealing with and understanding conflict in non‑violent ways and the concept that the theme would promote more strongly the idea of inter‑dependence and the idea of cultural understanding did not come through as strongly as we would have liked, so the reaction has been, as you know and as you alluded to, the introduction of the concept of citizenship education which broadens the scope of EMU/cultural heritage and puts it into a more modern context and is also looking to embed it more tightly within personal development education in the primary sector and through more discrete provision of citizenship education in the post‑primary sector, key stage three and key stage four. You will appreciate, Mr Beggs, that that process has only just begun. We have a massive training programme in place for the teachers of citizenship education in key stage three. We are rolling that out on a gradual basis and we have put in place provision to inspect that provision within the next year to 18 months. Q266 Mr Beggs: My final question would be why has the Department cut funding for the Churches' Peace Education Project? Mr Cuthbert: I have no information in front of me that would enable me to answer that but I will happily come back to you on that. Q267 Mr Bailey: The Chairman's opening questions covered some on housing so I am really going to follow up with one point that was not dealt with. What is the Department doing to address incidents of harassment and intimidation such as those on the Torrens Estate in North Belfast? Mr Rooney: Obviously the developments in the Torrens Estate over recent months are in many ways a reflection of the dynamics of Northern Ireland society over the years. What we had there was a situation of significant demographic change in the area generally. We had a gradual reduction in the demand for housing within that particular estate and as properties became available for reletting there was a reduced demand and an increased difficulty in reletting those properties and that of course then contributed to a spiral of difficulties in managing the void properties that would arise in that area and the increasing unpopularity among the remaining population in living there and an increased risk of intimidation. The Housing Executive's initial response to that was significant investment in urban renewal and improvement of the properties in an attempt to increase demand or re‑create demand for those properties. That, sadly, did not materialise and people continued to move out of the properties and intimidation undoubtedly played a part in that. The Executive responded more recently through attempting to undertake some security measures with increased fencing et cetera but we ran into difficulties in that regard with intimidation of contractors on the site and vandalism of the fencing, thereby rendering it ineffective. We continued to respond to individual requests to move from the estate, particularly from those people who expressed an immediate desire to move on grounds that they felt they were being intimidated and we provided, in accordance with our normal response in that situation, temporary accommodation to those people who felt the need to move, placed them on waiting lists for re‑housing with considerable priority and assisted them with the normal compensation grants that would be provided to people who were displaced through disturbance. So we have now a situation where the properties have, in essence, been emptied of their original occupants. We have obviously got a responsibility to try and protect those assets, a considerable number of properties remain there, a significant number of which we have invested significant amounts of money in to rehabilitate and we have obviously a responsibility to protect those properties and where a demand has been identified from within, let us say, a community with a different religious persuasion to those who were previously in occupancy there, we will consider letting those properties to protect the assets and obviously to meet the changing housing need in the locality. Q268 Mr Bailey: Would it be fair to say that you dealt with the problem from, if you like, a housing provision perspective rather than a community perspective? Mr Rooney: I would not necessarily accept that view in the sense that we worked quite actively with the community in that area over a considerable period of time to attempt to address and address the needs that they identified in order to stop and to minimise the difficulties that they were encountering, but in many respects it is a reflection of broader societal change that was occurring in the area and the limitations that we as a housing body have in attempting to address broader societal or demographic developments within the locality generally. Q269 Mr Bailey: And you accept that basically it was a social problem which you could not deal with through housing provision? Mr Rooney: It was a social problem and a community problem that we certainly could not deal with in totality. Q270 Mr Tynan: Could I ask you a few questions on the Sexual Orientation Advisory Body which has been set up, with the intention to identify the priority issues and problems. Could you indicate what the priority issues are and the problems that you see and how they will be addressed in the strategic plans? Mr Mulligan: Chair, I am Gerry Mulligan also from the Equality Directive from the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister where I am responsible for the Equality and Social Need division and part of that responsibility is advising ministers on policies which deal with the problems which face people from the gay, lesbian and bisexual communities. As our memo to the Committee indicated, we are currently engaged with representatives of the gay, lesbian and bisexual community to identify a range of problems that they encounter. Some of those problems we have been talking about already this morning in terms of the incidence of what is referred to as homophobic violence/homophobic attacks, but there are other issues as well that have been identified through this process, including the need for improved health and health care advice, particularly around sexual health which among young, gay men is much poorer than the rest of the population. There are issues around education, particularly where the groups have identified homophobic bullying as an acute problem or a problem faced by those of a different sexuality. There are issues around the attitudes of those who provide services to people of a different sexual orientation and so therefore there are issues around raising awareness about the legislation, about the rights of people with different sexual orientation and these too are being looked at. The issues that are emerging are about health, they are about bullying, they are about homophobic violence and they are about awareness‑raising in the population generally about the rights and needs of people of a different sexual orientation. Q271 Mr Tynan: When will the strategic plan be published? Mr Mulligan: As issues begin to be clarified and emerge from that discussion and that dialogue we are simultaneously talking to departments to find out what is already happening, indeed there are already a number of things the department is already doing in areas of housing and education to reinforce and underline the importance of those and also to identify what more might be possible. We will pool all this together into a strategic action plan which we hope to put to ministers by the end of this year. Q272 Mr Tynan: So you are working at the present time on co‑ordination with other departments? Mr Mulligan: Very much so. Q273 Mr Tynan: To be in a position to publish that as soon as possible? Mr Mulligan: We certainly aim to provide advice to ministers by the end of the year and thereafter to publish very soon afterwards. Chairman: That is the end of our questions. Strategic plans falling like autumn leaves, only rather late. Thank you very much indeed for helping us. Memoranda submitted by the Community Relations Council and the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Dr Duncan Morrow, Community Relations Council; Ms Frances McCandless, Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action; and Mr Pat Conway, Northern Ireland Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, examined. Q274 Chairman: Thank you for coming to help us. We have got a difficult day made more difficult by the fact that British Midland did not bring people here when they said they were going to. Could we ask for very brief answers, to the point, and let us see if we can play a bit of catch-up. Dr Morrow, you note in your submission that "there is a lack of quantitative data detailing sectarian hate crime" and that the PSNI does not keep records. What data does exist and how do you think we could differentiate hate crimes motivated by sectarianism from others? Dr Morrow: As far as we are aware, the only district command unit that keeps records is Larne in which there has been a development and what is coming out of that is that it is systematic, that much of the measurement comes from the press, that it is a regular reporting, and we have instituted ourselves monthly report now of what we pick up from the press which is on our web site in which we detail sectarian-motivated incidents, paramilitary activity as reported and racism incidents. That has been running since January. Part of the question of course is definitional. Part of the question is how do we differentiate between these things. On your general question on how these things might be differentiated, obviously law works best when it controls the exceptional rather than trying to criminalise the endemic and part of the difficulty with sectarianism in particular is that it is endemic in Northern Ireland. The pattern of sectarianism in the background turning into crime is in many ways going to be a difficult line to draw. Sectarian graffiti on walls for example creates a climate of legitimacy around sectarianism and racism which then is acted upon and where it begins and where it ends is always a difficult question. There is work on going about how it might be defined. It obviously will have to be about behaviours rather than attitudes because attitudes are going to be extremely difficult to define. Second of all, the most difficult part is going to be in relation to political justification. Hate crime and politics have got extremely tied up and one person's hate crime is another person's political incident. On race and homophobia it seems that a consensus does exist which isolates acts of violence on ‑‑‑ Q275 Chairman: --- I am just asking about sectarianism at the moment and we will try and separate these things out. This is really a question for all of you. Do you think sectarian-motivated hate crime is increasing or decreasing? Dr Morrow: Insofar as hate crime includes murder, bombings and shootings there are signs that there is some decrease in 2004. Q276 Chairman: If you take out murder, bombings and shootings and just look at the rest of it, why we defined "hate crime". I think a murder is a murder, is it not? Dr Morrow: It fluctuates in Northern Ireland often in response to particular local circumstances, so that there are signs of rises in some places, for example at times when they are parades and protests in local areas you get a rise. Paramilitary activity is much more difficult to say. What I would say to you is that there is no sign of its diminution in the longer term as yet. Q277 Chairman: Do you think sectarian-motivated hate crime is under‑reported? Dr Morrow: If anything is it under‑reported rather than over‑reported, yes. Q278 Chairman: Why is that do you think? Ms McCandless: I think it has become the norm in our society. It is how different parts of our community relate to each other. To define it as hate crime is actually a step that some people feel is too far to take. Q279 Mr McGrady: The CRC report ‑ and I will address this to everybody ‑ indicates that there is an increase, as you have said, in the level of violence since the ceasefires of 1994 and there are deteriorating relationships between the two communities. Do you see this as a failure of government policies and how do you square those comments in the light of survey figures which seem to indicate an improvement? There seems to be a contradiction here. Are we talking about the same thing or where is the data coming from? Dr Morrow: We drew our data from the available sources that we could find. In terms of the Life and Times Survey which indicated relationships, there was an improvement at the time of the ceasefire measurable in terms of people's attitudes which then undoubtedly collapsed or at least declined to a considerable degree. I have to inform you that there is some evidence since the Assembly was abolished that this is slightly increasing, certainly this improvement stopped. Q280 Chairman: Things have got better without the Assembly? Is that what you are saying? Dr Morrow: The Life and Times Survey has picked up over the last two years that there has been a slight improvement again in these things. I am just reporting to you what we have found. Q281 Chairman: There we are! Dr Morrow: On the other hand, the truth is that none of this has stopped the persistent trend of sectarian antagonism which has continued. What is happening, for example, is that particularly in suburban areas new what are called interfaces ‑ maybe it is wrong word ‑ new points of controversy are emerging in places where it was not previously the case due to housing movement, and there was some talk there about the Torrens situation as an example of an on‑going context of housing in which shared housing seems impossible; it is either us or you. So when people move in other people feel intimidated and therefore feel obliged to move out and we have not solved the social problem on the basis that it is possible for people to live together on housing demand but when one group moves in it becomes an interface. That has continued I have to say. Whether it has got worse it is always difficult to say because these are trends which are so well and deeply established and in 1971 led to mass housing flight, which we in general have not seen, but what is absolutely clear is that it has not seen any radical improvement or change in direction at the moment. Q282 Mr McGrady: Just following that up, we have had evidence that two of the primary reasons for the prevalence of sectarian hate crime is segregated housing and the lack of inter‑community contact. Those are two broad areas. Could you give us a few headings of other impediments to improved relationships that you have identified? Dr Morrow: I have to say the ultimate impediment at the moment is the political environment in which it is happening, the huge disagreement about the constitutional future that has gone on, and our inability to solve the issues around violence, particularly around decommissioning, and also an agreed policing service. All these kinds of issues continue to create a climate in which people regard each other with a degree of fear and suspicion and that fear and suspicion has an armed element within it. All of the social activity takes place within that context. I do not know whether Frances wants to agree or disagree. Ms McCandless: I agree with that absolutely and I would put education very close to the top of that list as well. The research that showed that children as young as three were able to recognise different sectarian symbols should be giving us a clue that we need to start this very, very early. I know that teachers are under enormous pressure to deliver the curriculum and everybody when they see a problem says, "We have to deal with it through education," but this is one issue where if we do not begin to deal with it properly at that early stage and support it with parents' involvement and teachers' involvement (because what you cannot do is place such huge responsibility on young people if adults are not willing themselves to engage in the process) I do not see how we are going to make any changes. Dr Morrow: Can I add that the areas of improvement in Northern Ireland have overwhelmingly taken place within what might be called "protected" places. There is considerable evidence that the workplace is now more easily mixed than ever. In education although it is extremely slow, as Frances is pointing out here, there are curricular and structural things which have changed over the years which have actually improved the level of interaction between different groups in education and within, I would have to argue, some of the projects supported by the PEACE programme there is at least a degree of structural interaction. In the area which is not protected ‑ ordinary life, people living in their houses, getting on with their business - there continues to be a general common sense which is that you need to act taking sectarianism into account. It is not something that you can leave aside as part of the every day. Q283 Mr Clarke: Ms McCandless's comments on education move us nicely on to the need to change attitudes and practices. Could any of you talk me through your views on how we build better community cohesion at a time when there is evidence of increasing polarisation? We have heard this morning about people's experiences in terms of their housing and in terms of schooling. It seems as though it is a tough task to build community cohesion and educate at a time when we have segregation in both housing and education. You have also talked about a framework for bringing together partners ‑ the media, the voluntary community sector and the public sector. It is a huge task. Could I just ask how we are going to achieve building better community cohesion against all those problems? Ms McCandless: It is an absolutely enormous task. The one thing we can start to do and start to do quickly is to stop spending all of the Northern Ireland budget on underpinning separation. De facto what we do when we do not promote sharing over separation is promote separation and we are spending vast amounts of money every year structurally embedding intolerance in Northern Ireland. We have had generations of doing this and we are not going to turn it round overnight, as you rightly point out. This is where I come back to Mr McGrady's question is this a failure of public policy ‑ yes, it is a failure of public policy and it is a failure of public spending to do anything more than articulate a willingness to change things without actually spending to underpin any cultural change. Mr Conway: If I come at it from the criminology point of view, NIACRO runs a Community Safety Unit which is based on a practice where we are invited into communities to try and reduce crime. So the ticket, if you like, is a crime reduction ticket. Obviously in amongst all that is hate crime and I think it is true to say that that model has been operational for about six years and it is only recently that NIACRO and certain communities have felt comfortable with the issue of interface work as defined within a crime paradigm if you like. Obviously that affects the quality of life for people if they are in interface areas and there is a large degree of sectarianism and that turns into criminal behaviour or criminal activities that affect the general well‑being of communities. On a more individualised matter, I think we would like to see a greater acknowledgement that in terms of sectarian and race hate crime or any hate crime that that be flagged up at the point of sentencing and that individuals would be subject to programmes that actually address that. So, if you like, there is an indivualised response and a community response but it is bound up in terms of the community safety side of things and this action has to be taken by communities if it is going to be effective. It will not work top down. Dr Morrow: Can I come in on top of that and say that there is a danger in the language of "community" cohesion in a Northern Ireland context where communities are often sectarian, separated communities. It has to be about social cohesion in which communities actually play their role. My view is that we have an opportunity through a review currently running called the Shared Future review to create a policy raft which begins to at least do what Pat said which is take this into account when doing planning policy. It is a step-by-step issue but there are clear issues. Will Hutton has talked about the need for public spaces so, for example, town and city centres where this is common space should be protected and people should be able to access them. We have done some work recently on, for example, the difference between cultural celebration and cultural aggression in which cultural celebration is marked by temporary flagging and celebration of things and aggression is about territorial ownership where nobody can move and where it is very clear that nobody can come in. There needs to be some kind of thinking around that. There are educational things, there are clearly housing things that need to be done. There need to be a public space partnerships and making the partnership real where people take shared decisions and it is actually promoted. There are a whole range of incremental steps but maybe one of the biggest ones is through the Alliance Party. I do not know how far they have done this work. A recent meeting I was at suggested that £1 billion of public money is spent additionally in providing duplication of public services in Northern Ireland, so a health service here, a health service there, one library here, one library there, three leisure centres here and three leisure centres there. Somehow or other the planning of how we do these kinds of things needs to be looked at. We could reduce it by making sure that they become shared spaces and all of the things that the public sector provides are points of community cohesion and parts of community ownership. Finally, we have to do something about access to public resources because even where things are located close by to people the access routes may actually provide intimidatory reasons as to why people cannot use them, so there is something that could be done around access. Ms McCandless: We need to find out quickly what works and what has been working. We have had a great deal of research into what has driven communities apart, what is called separation, what the dynamics of that have been, but what we have not had a great body of research on is what about those communities that have managed to remain mixed all these years and those areas where trouble has not broken out, what are the dynamics and the support structures that allow those things to happen? Then you can start to turn the wheels in the other direction but other than that it is guesswork. Dr Morrow: I want to put one more thing in here. The review of public administration in Northern Ireland which is coming up, is a really major event, largely driven locally but obviously under your responsibility too, and will create probably new councils. I think as part of what they are about and the thinking on how they provide services provides an opportunity which could help foster this kind of approach in the way that it is sets the new organisations up with minority protections and so on. Q284 Mr Clarke: I am conscious of time. I am just going to ask a question and ask for a one‑word answer if I may. PEACE monies, I, II or III, should they be more widely available for strategic programmes rather than simply those practical and at the interface, all the work you have talked about? Should the criteria of the PEACE monies be widened? Ms McCandless: No I think they should remain additional monies and government should fund those mainstream activities. Q285 Mark Tami: I will be brief as well. Looking at the Shared Future document what do you think can be drawn from that to really try to combat hate crime? What do you think are the key components in that? Dr Morrow: Hate crime I suppose has to be dealt with both at the level of the symptoms and where it happens and, more importantly, it has to be understood to have wider social roots in Northern Ireland, so the Shared Future document actually begins to say that hate crime has to be tackled both where it happens and at the root and branch level. My own view is that the key thing is that the concept of this being a society which all people living here must and can share in a way that is appropriate and not relating to hate crime is central to the way policy is thought about. I have tried to articulate earlier, and I will not repeat it, a number of areas where we could make incremental steps. The last part I would add - and maybe Pat wants to talk about - is this is a real area and it may be better for restorative justice that somewhere hate crime has happened something is actually done to rebuild relationships between the communities where there has been an attack and part of the attack has been a race and a hate issue and that is tied in with education. That is not instead of what I said previously but additional to what I said previously. Mr Conway: I think in terms of what I said previously I was not taking the pressure off government, if you like. We would interpret everything that we do within a legislative, structural and attitudinal framework and government obviously has a large role to play in making that happen. Certainly I made the pitch in terms of the submission that we made that the restorative justice programmes would be an ideal vehicle to actually repair relationships on an individual basis, but hopefully if that were to happen then the word would spread and it would form an educating role within the context of Northern Ireland. Ms McCandless: What the Shared Future document showed very clearly is that we have no agreed vision of what civic/civil society in Northern Ireland would look like. We have no vision of what a modern, pluralistic, multi‑cultural society here would be and the constant focus on political uncertainty, the decades, the generations long conversation about constitutional and security issues has done enormous damage to the possibility of forming a view of where we might go into the future and what a modern society in Northern Ireland might actually look like. People have no conception of where it is we are going. Q286 Mr Tynan: Could you give a brief indication of what you believe the Government's priorities should be as regards tackling sectarian attitudes and behaviour? Dr Morrow: I think, not to we repeat it, that the Shared Future document offers a whole range of opportunities for an inter-departmental approach and I think there was a recent debate in the Northern Ireland Grand Committee which gave some emphasis on that. I think there is legislation already existing in Section 75(2), which relates to good relations and which applies to public bodies and which up to now has probably not been developed anything like to the degree we would like to have seen it happen, which would encourage public bodies to think about the way they provide services, to think about how staff are entreated to engage with the multiplicity of communities that they are both serving and recruiting from. A key issue is obviously the peace process but I will leave that aside for the moment. I think the establishment of DPPs provides the opportunity for communities to begin to see this not just as a pure policing issue but to begin to do what Patten foresaw which is to begin to advocate for change. I think they could be used but that will take training and development inside the DPP. Finally, I think it is about creating the classic word "joined‑upness". This should not be something that is just happening in a small unit. It needs to be part of the housing strategy, it needs to be part of the cultural strategy. It is the big Northern Ireland issue. Cohesion and how we get away from the notion that is it is okay to hate people because they are different and to act out that hate in crime in the end is an issue everywhere and it is an issue in Northern Ireland. I do not think there is any disagreement that we need to tackle it and it is a question of making sure that it is not avoided any more but that we write it in and think through what its implications are for all those policies. Q287 Mr Tynan: On the Government's approach at the present time are they taking the right approach or the wrong approach? Ms McCandless: We think they are absolutely taking the right approach but they are taking a very long time to get there. The uncertainty around devolution means that we are always considering the different options every time a decision has to be made so things are endlessly delayed and it becomes terrifically difficult to get on with what we are doing. An integrated policy framework, which is what Shared Future promises, is absolutely the way to go but there are things that could be done in the short term. The visible manifestations of sectarianism and race hatred and all the things that Duncan has already articulated, cleaning up public spaces, we could go ahead and do a lot of those things. There are successful examples in East Belfast for example of murals being removed and kerbstones being painted out. We could get on and do this stuff now and that would go a long way towards the perception of what was and was not happening. The physical manifestations are very important. Q288 Chairman: What is stopping people doing that now? Ms McCandless: It is dangerous. Council employees, for example, do not want to go in and do it. Police would have to go in and protect them doing it. It is very labour intensive. However, there was an example this year on a roundabout, which is not particularly surrounded by residential areas, where flags went up and the police went in immediately and took them down, to universal appreciation. There are precedents. I would answer your question by saying I do not know what is stopping it. It can be done and we have seen it done and we have seen people appreciate it being done. Q289 Mr Tynan: Do you believe that the aims of Section 75 will have contributed to an environment whereby sectarianism could diminish? Dr Morrow: Section 75 has two parts; equality, which is obviously critical to making sure that everybody feels they are an equal citizen, and good relations. The truth is that the good relations element is largely aspirational at this stage and the easiest part to do is in a sense the easiest bit to measure, which is equality. It does provide an instrument in which good relations are part of the constant dialogue between the wider public sector and individual bodies which have a job to serve everybody because that is their public sector remit. I think that what needs to happen is we exhaust the possibilities of Section 75 before we decide to dismantle everything else. Part of that ‑ and I would say it is beginning to happen but it is very slow again ‑ that the Equality Commission and other bodies like ourselves outside begin to promote this in a much more practical way because one thing we do not want to be doing is just saying to people you have to do this, this and this. It is not a good way to build relations. What we do want to say to organisations is we need you to think strategically about these issues and to come to us and engage in an on‑going dialogue with us about how everybody can begin to feel comfortable and that we can meet the demands of the Act. Ms McCandless: I think Section 75 has to be the floor and not the ceiling of our aspirations. It is the bare legal minimum that we need to build on. We have to go further in promoting the kinds of attitudes that are going to move us into the future. We have to be very careful that it is not interpreted too narrowly in the sense that people have complex, multi‑relational identities. Nobody sits neatly into a box that says you are a man or a woman, you are a Protestant or a Catholic, you are a person with a disability or you are a person without. We always have to bear in mind that categories have to be set up in order to monitor and for legislation to take effect but we have to be very careful that we never forget that people do not fall into any one of those categories alone. We have been very remiss in Northern Ireland in the past by taking only one primary signifier ‑ this is a Protestant community, this is Catholic community. Life is not like that, people are not like that, and we force people into boxes that they need not necessarily have been in. What Duncan said earlier about the use of the word "community" being sometimes a dangerous thing. That is often a dynamic that forces people into those boxes and does not allow them to choose where they live, where they work and where they socialise. We want to be moving away from that. We have to be very careful that we use this legislation in the way that will benefit us most. Q290 Mr Tynan: Is that message getting through? Mr Conway: I think there is an issue about Section 75 being used as another hurdle for the public sector to get through. I have seen some of the equality impact assessments that have been carried out and they are pretty thin and do not take account of what is actually happening. It seems to be there is a danger that it will gravitate towards "we have completed this statutory obligation so we are organisationally in the clear and that is us" and there being no discussion beyond that. So I think that is an issue that needs to be addressed. Ms McCandless: We always need to focus on outcomes. This is not about processes. Processes are to get us to the outcomes. Dr Morrow: The usefulness of it is that it has put it on to the debate. I think that what would be useful is that as it is a floor not a ceiling that it begins to perform the role where key leadership in public sector organisations is now engaged in how do we take this off the table. We are not just doing this to tick the box. We are doing this to make sure that everybody has the equal access to services that they should have. That is what we are about. We are also trying to use our services to make sure that good relations are promoted rather than bad relations in the communities. Q291 Mr Beggs: To what extent do you think paramilitary organisations are responsible for the growing problem of racist attacks, and how far do you think racism is a widespread feature of life in Northern Ireland, both in rural as well as urban areas? Ms McCandless: Can I start by saying that at a meeting this past week of the Race Equality Forum, which was mentioned in your previous questions, PSNI were present and they said that they have evidence that Loyalist paramilitaries are involved or at least they are convinced that Loyalist paramilitaries are involved. Also in regards to other sections of the community there may be under‑reporting because people are unwilling to go to the police but that is not to say there is not paramilitary involvement in different ways that we just do not know about. I think it is there. It is difficult to say whether the situation is worsening. I heard somebody say earlier that racism is a new thing in Northern Ireland. Racism is not a new thing in Northern Ireland. There has been a Chinese community living in Ballymena for 50 years and for 50 of those years they have been experiencing the kind of treatment that they are experiencing today. The media has suddenly latched on to it. The news agenda has shifted so there are not so many bombs every day for journalists to report but there are a number of racist attacks. This is not a new phenomenon. I think people are becoming more confident in reporting and people are becoming more articulate in voicing their support. I absolutely do not think it is a phenomenon. It is difficult to say whether it is increasing or whether people are just reporting it more. Q292 Chairman: It was interesting that the Chinese community did think that it was growing as a new phenomenon. It may have been there in the past but it has been getting very much worse recently. Ms McCandless: They would be the experts in that. I am taking this from what I heard from a Chinese community worker in Ballymena who said it became a norm. Why would you bother to report something that happens to you every day in your business where you get verbal abuse? It may be that it is more serious physical abuse and it is certainly more organised, I would definitely agree with that. You can see the pattern. These are not one‑off attacks happening in South Belfast at the minute. It is a definitely organised. Q293 Chairman: That is a new phenomenon? Ms McCandless: That is a new phenomenon. Q294 Chairman: You think the paramilitaries play a part in that? Ms McCandless: Yes I do. Dr Morrow: Racism is in many ways, as a real, existing issue, something which is becoming more general here in the sense there are now more people of ethnic minority background living everywhere and that is really increasing now with Eastern European workers coming here to do agricultural labour. That is going into rural areas as well as other areas. Second of all, the police, informally at least in conversations that I have had with them, are hoping that figures will increase because they believe there is a reporting problem in a paradoxical way. At this stage they believe they are going to have to see an increase to get real about the scale of what is going on here. They also say that it is not the big incidents that are the key thing, it is the on‑going, everyday harassment of people on the basis of their ethnic origins which is the real issue. On the question of paramilitarism the difficulty here is that it can be paramilitary without any paramilitary organisations having made any direct order in this regard. Paramilitary structures are in the twilight world between the formal and the informal. The big difference in Northern Ireland, to be honest, in communities is that paramilitary organisations exist and they are an inheritance of the last 30 years if not before and that those structures create possibilities of acting out on race hatred that may not be quite the same as anywhere else. One of the reasons our figures are so bad is exactly because there are these units of people who use violence locally and the fact that they are coming to the fore. Q295 Mr Bailey: I will try and wrap up a number of questions in one omnibus one to do with the enforcement of existing legislation. First of all, could you summarise whether existing legislation to tackle hate crime is being enforced effectively or not and, secondly, do you think there are any improvements that are needed in order to make the enforcement of it more effective? Ms McCandless: We definitely think that the legislation which is in existence already, as you cited earlier with the Public Order (NI) Order 1987, is not being used fully. There are clearly gaps around the kinds of harassment that are outlawed. We are not even using legislation we have fully. We do not see a huge number of convictions or offences being brought under that legislation or at least the number that would appear to be concomitant to the number of instances we see on the streets or on television every day. I think that we should use the legislation that we have as effectively as possible. Chairman: Thank you. That was short but very useful and has given us an update from what some of you told us earlier. We are very grateful to you. The Committee will now adjourn until 2.15. |