Examination of Witnesses (Questions 714
- 719)
WEDNESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2004
MR JOHN
SPELLAR MP, MR
BILLY GAMBLE,
MR CONAL
DEVITT AND
MR TOM
HAIRE
Q714 Chairman: Minister, I am sorry
we are late in calling you but if your government will call votes
in the middle of our meetings, we are likely to run late! It is
nice to see you, as always. One of our difficulties right through
this inquiry has been the difficulty in actually establishing
the extent of hate crime. We have had evidence in which your officials
have noted the role which the Community Safety Unit of the NIO
would play recording incidents motivated by hatred based on religion,
race, sexual orientation and disability. How is that establishment
of accurate figures progressing, and can we be assured that monitoring
hate crime will be comprehensive and robust under these arrangements?
Mr Spellar: Thank you, Chairman,
and thank you also for the initial apology but I would say quite
frankly, if when MPs came to see me as a minister I kept them
waiting as long as this Committee has kept me, under the rescheduled
time, they would be legitimately complaining quite strongly that
I was not treating them with proper respect as members bringing
a delegation. I understand things can run on but this is three
quarters of an hour after the rescheduled time and I have been
waiting out in the corridor, and I think we need to order our
affairs a little better in that regard. I do take your point,
however, in the introduction that we need to get accurate data
in order to understand the extent and also the spread of crime,
and hate crime. We also need to break that down between whether
there is an increase in crime or, indeed, whether there is an
increasing willingness to report that crime, and I am deal with
an analogous position, for example, on disorder in various town
centres with the introduction of CCTV cameras and we are identifying
more offences and offenders and capturing them and, therefore,
that is an advantage. But of course it leads to a temporary upwards
movement in the statistics. I do not believe there is more disorder
taking place but I do believe we are getting a better handle on
it, and that relates similarly to hate crime. There has undoubtedly
been an increase and PSNI are monitoring that and also the Community
Safety Unit are developing mechanisms for getting further understanding
and getting more detail on that. At the same time I think we do
have to acknowledge, and this is obviously a tribute to the work
you will have heard about from the previous presentation from
the police, that we are getting a greater willingness and greater
confidence from those who are the victims. There is still a problem
which we are trying to overcome about their willingness then to
proceed, and when I looked at the number of cases that have then
led to conviction, one of my concerns and the police concern as
well is about the willingness to further proceed. That is not
unique to Northern Ireland; it is a widespread problem. So I think
we are getting a better handle on the figures and a better understanding
of what lies behind them, but at the same time there is work that
is being undertaken. For example, I do not know if you were advised
in the earlier session about the system that will be coming in,
the monitoring and recording of hate crime in Northern Ireland
which will be coming in in two stages from next month, a manual
system and an IT-based system in April of 2005, but that will
obviously give us further refinement on those figures.
Q715 Mr Tynan: We heard evidence
from officials in September about the introduction of several
government strategies regarding good relations, race equality,
sexual orientation, and the on-going work through Section 75 of
the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Can you provide us with an update
on the progress of these?
Mr Spellar: Certainly. On the
good relations policy, that and the strategic framework is being
finalised and I am hoping to have focused discussions with local
political parties over the next few weeks. There is a degree of
good will behind that but there is also some argument on some
of the areas, and that has obviously got to be taken into account
because we need a policy that will be signed up broadly across
the community. Now, the finalised race equality strategy will
be published later this year, we hope, alongside that good relations
framework and that will take into account the views expressed
during the public consultation and also the specific consultation
we have been having with the minority ethnic communities, and
also we have been involved in dialogue with the Northern Ireland
Race Forum as well, and that will cover a whole range of policy
issues that impact on the daily lives of citizens from minority
ethnic communities in Northern Ireland. The gender policy unit
in the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister has established
a sexual orientation reference group to assist in the development
of the strategic action plan on sexual orientation, and I understand
a final draft action plan will be prepared by the end of December.
Q716 Mr Tynan: Whilst strategic plans
are vitally important, and we accept that, have you a mechanism
in place to judge the success of implementing these strategies
in relation to hate crime?
Mr Spellar: I think that the key
area here, and I do take your point that there are quite a number
of areas we are looking at, particularly when you have such a
diverse range of interests in Northern Ireland and quality impact
assessments and so on and, therefore, a lot of this process of
policy development takes longer for understandable reasons, but
I can still understand the frustrations of those who are looking
at the development of that policy, but I do not see that we are
just doing this in series. I think there is quite a bit of work
being done in parallel as well. For example, while we are developing
these policies, PSNI will have told you earlier about the work
they are undertaking to deal with the perpetrators of hate crime,
to build up confidence in the community to report, and also work
that they are undertaking in broader education in the community
in order to chip away at the basis and some of the origins of
that crime, so I think this work has to be done in parallel in
the same way that I introduced and have already brought in --
legislation that gives the courts increased penalties to deal
with the perpetrators of hate crime so that the courts can indicate,
one, the disapproval of society of these activities but also can
indicate their very strong measures that they can take against
individual perpetrators and send a very clear message to that
criminal community that this will be not be tolerated.
Q717 Mr Tynan: But is there a mechanism
in place, or will there be, in order to judge the success of the
implementation?
Mr Spellar: I think the way of
judging that will be in terms of reduction of the offences and
also in our interaction with the various communities, whether
that be the gay community, the ethnic community or, indeed, looking
at reduction in sectarian crime as well, and also the disability
groups as well, and a group that made strong representations to
this Committee which formed the basis of your report and which,
indeed, led to us making additions to the legislation to provide
the protection for that community. So I think it is looking at
the objective statistics and data that we will get from offences
but also looking at the increasing confidence of those various
communities who are affected by such crimes.
Mr Devitt: We are anxious to encourage
reporting and I think one of the indications will be the extent
to which the variety of communities use these new monitoring systems
because building confidence in the overall criminal justice system
will result in a higher incidence of recording. Also, the feelings
that people have, particularly when they come to Northern Ireland
for the first time, about whether or not they are being accepted
and whether diversity has been welcome -- the quality of life
in Northern Ireland will be very important in judging the race
equality strategy.
Q718 Reverend Smyth: We have been
talking a great deal about monitoring and the role of the PSNI
in monitoring such crimes. For what purpose? Is it just to restore
confidence in the community, or should it not be target-set by
them to reduce hate crimes?
Mr Spellar: On that, the first
thing is to identify the extent and depth of the problem. Secondly,
we have to target the perpetrators and to do that, one, by getting
the community -- and not just the ethnic community but those in
the wider community -- to identify those responsible, to remove
some of the protection and to get a broad political consensus,
which, as you know, in south Belfast has now become a very broad
political consensus, including some of the loyalist parties in
terms of putting pressure on to the perpetrators in the community
in order to stop that activity. It is then to provide confidence
for witnesses, or indeed to build on professional witnesses so
that the individuals cannot then be subject to reprisals and to
identify that, so those are the areas, and I would hope that certainly
from my experience of the work that PSNI are doing on this there
has been a substantial change both in clamping down on crime but
also in engaging much more in the community, having dedicated
liaison officers dealing with the community who, therefore, become
an established source of communication. All of those are starting
to have an impact and, indeed, rates are still too high but it
is quite interesting that the rate of increase has slowed very
substantially as a result of the response of PSNI, but we and
they do not think by any means we have reached the end of the
road on that.
Q719 Reverend Smyth: You did refer
to south Belfast and one of the most glaring basic incidents of
racism took place in south Belfast, and it is alleged that the
police know the perpetrator and he was certainly set aside by
others in his organisation, but there are those who say why was
he not brought to justice?
Mr Spellar: It does become the
case, quite simply, of getting court compliant evidence that will
secure a conviction, and one of the difficulties until now has
been in identifying the perpetrators but also having witnesses.
You can be very clear. I cannot tell you how many times I am told
in the business of Northern Ireland that the dogs in the street
know who is responsible for which particular evidence but, as
the Chief Constable says, dogs in the street do not have standing
under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and we need evidence
that is compliant! That is why I stress so much in my earlier
contribution about giving confidence to witnesses and also, as
I said, looking at professional witnesses as well, and building
up community pressure in all of the communities against those
who are responsible. So I am pleased at the work we have done
but I also acknowledge that we need to be undertaking more of
that in order to bring more of the perpetrators to justice, and
then the courts have greater penalties to use to signify both
the disapproval of society and also to inflict significant punishment
on the perpetrators.
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