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The Minister for Policing, Security and Community Safety (Hazel Blears): The IMPACT Programme, a key element of our work to deliver Sir Michael Bichard's recommendations following the murders in Soham, has already delivered some significant benefits to the police service, most notably the IMPACT Nominal Index (INI). For the longer-term, we have a very clear vision of what the programme is planning to deliver.
The programme is now in a strong position to deliver a range of capabilities to the Police Service which will not only meet Sir Michael's recommendations but will transform the service's ability to protect the communities it serves.
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IMPACT will deliver a programme of technology-enabled business change for the police service which will:
discharge our commitment to implementing the relevant recommendations in Sir Michael Richard's report following the Soham murders;
enable the delivery of improvements in police performance, producing substantial benefits through increasing numbers of crimes prevented and detected, and by bringing more offenders to justice;
increase police operational efficiency, driving out considerable savings annually in direct benefits; and
The delivery of the IMPACT Nominal Index (INI) in December 2005 responded to the second of Sir Michael Bichard's recommendations: police officers can now establish whether any other force in England and Wales may have information on individuals of interest to them. However, the system does not give direct access to the records themselves and the next stage is to develop a national information sharing infrastructure which will make operational information visible to forces across the country, transcending force and system boundaries.
The work will build upon the achievements already delivered by the programme, providing a modular and incremental approach comprising the following stages:
The continued deployment of the INI to forces in England and Wales during 2006, initially expanding within Child Abuse Investigation Units then into other selected business areas including some non-Home Office forces and central agencies. This will be accompanied by some limited further development, to improve its functionality;
during 2006, the continued development within police forces of the capability to extract data from their local force databases in a common format (The Cross Regional Information Sharing ProjectCRISPData Schema), enabling the data to be shared with other forces and partner agencies through data warehouses.
Completion of the development of the CRISP software, as the basis for:
Deploying to each force in England and Wales from the middle of 2007, an interim data warehousing capability which will enable information from systems serving their eight main operational business areas to be retrieved by a single query; leading to:
A national data sharing capability (A Police National Database) available to all forces in England and Wales and delivering the full benefits described above by early 2010.
Officers will be able to search for information on specific people, objects, locations and events to inform operational decision-making, or to use the national data as a resource for producing intelligence products prescribed by the National Intelligence Model (NIM). The programme will also link the information contained on the current PNC, and other national systems, to force-level information.
Business processes will be optimised through an associated programme of business change based upon the NIM; the code of practice and associated Guidance on the Management of Police Information (MoPI); and procedures developed within the programme.
This programme of work will be delivered using a managed service based on existing and planned Criminal Justice System (CIS) Exchange shared services
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developed by Criminal Justice IT (CJIT). This offers the potential to exploit the new technology being piloted by CJIT and to re-use existing CJS Exchange components.
The use of the CJS Exchange will provide other Criminal Justice organisations with continued access to PNC data, and the delivery channels to populate the central system with data from outside the police service. The IMPACT programme will continue to retain responsibility for delivering the programme with a strong business lead and a sharp focus on driving out the benefits.
In order to realise the potential benefits from the programme, it will be managed alongside other related developments:
the programme to create strategic forces, including by force amalgamations, to improve the police service's capacity to deliver level 2 protective services;
the framework of police performance measures managed by the Home Office, which incentivise Chief Officers to give the appropriate measure of priority to tackling level 2 crime;
the ACPO level 2 crime programme, which aims to enhance the police operational capability at the supra-force level;
and will support the following key stakeholders:
Chief Officers directly, by demonstrating the extent to which they can reduce the risk to the reputation of their forces by exploiting the opportunities offered by the IMPACT solutions;
HMIC, by supporting and strengthening monitoring and compliance measures developed by the programme.
While the police national database is under development, resources have been allocated to enable the police IT organisation to update the hardware platform of the PNC. This will ensure that the PNC remains fit for purpose until the police national database is fully in service.
The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Mr. Tony McNulty): The Government are committed to maintaining effective immigration controls while at the same time ensuring that genuine passengers are able to pass through our ports with the least possible inconvenience.
The UK will stop accepting South African temporary passports with effect from today. This decision has been taken due to concerns over the effectiveness of the South African passport issuing process and the impact that has on our immigration controls.
Fraudulently obtained South African passports are regularly encountered at UK ports, held by a wide variety of nationalities. The South African temporary passport, which is issued pending the issue of a full South African passport, poses a particular problem as fewer checks are carried out prior to issue. In our opinion the temporary passport does not satisfactorily establish identity or nationality/citizenship or is in compliance with international passport practice. As a consequence there is intelligence to suggest that these passports provide an easy target for those with other nationalities who seek to come to the UK illegally.
This decision will not prevent South African nationals coming to the UK, but it will require them to obtain a full South African passport before coming here.
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Transitional arrangements will apply to those who already hold SA temporary passports obtained on or before 19 April: those travellers who purchased tickets prior to 19 April will be able to travel on their temporary passports to the UK before 1 June; those who purchase an airline ticket after the announcement but before 10 May will be able to travel to the UK on their temporary passport, providing they arrive in the UK before 10 May; and those who purchase an airline ticket following the 19 April for travel between 10 and 31 May, can travel to the UK before 1 June provided they have first secured a visa for entry to the UK. This will ensure that anyone with plans to visit the UK will be able to do so or will have time to secure a new full South African passport.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Peter Hain): Further to my oral statement to the House yesterday, copies of the joint statement made by the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach in Armagh on 6 April have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses, as have the associated speeches they delivered that day.
The Prime Minister's speech was as follows:
"So the moment comes, as we always knew it would, for the ultimate decision. On Tuesday, we had a reminder of the past: an horrific, bloody murder. It represented all we have sought to escape from, these past nine years.
Go back to the core of this issue for a momentand it's never wise to prolong this in the politics of Northern Irelandrecall the history. We are here in the island of Ireland that has been driven by strife between British and Irish for centuries.
In the early part of the last century, it was eventually partitioned. The larger part became the Republic of Ireland. The rest stayed part of the UK. But the struggle continued within that part: one tradition wanting a united Ireland; the other to remain in the UK; one predominately Catholic; the other predominately Protestant.
For decades up to 1998, the issue was marked by conflict, often of the most brutal kind. Politics here in Northern Ireland were divided not on the basis of ordinary political philosophy but on the core issue. Perpetual attempts were made to break out of this constraint but none with lasting success. The brutality continued.
Why did we manage to reach agreement in April 1998 on a basis to settle the struggle? Of course, there were acts of courageous political leadership. Of course, painstaking negotiation, often creatively deployed, allowed us to unravel knots of discord. Of course, the advent of new Governments and the pressure of the world to grasp resolution, played their part.
But what determined it, was something different and more profound. The people understood the futility of the status quo. They looked at the world around them, changing rapidly as the millennium drew to a close and realised that they were in danger of being left behind; that the way this struggle was being conducted was indeed brutal and bloody but most of all, it was unbearably old-fashioned, out of date, pointless. No-one was ever going to "win". "Winning" in the sense of the unionists driven by bombs and terror into a united Ireland; or in the case of republican and nationalist sentiment cowed into accepting partition: was simply never going to happen.
The people, without necessarily articulating it in quite this way, understood it and empowered the politicians to move forward.
The basis of the GFA was actually one of mutual respect for a difference of view. Each tradition accepted the other had a right to think and feel differently. One had a right to believe in a united Ireland; the other to believe in the United Kingdom. Both had legitimacy. But neither could be pursued without the consent of the people, freely given.
The idea was then to make politics take the strain of resolving the issues of concern to the people in Northern Ireland within that framework of mutually acknowledged difference.
The GFA was a massive achievement. If it was naive ever to think that, by it, all could be resolved with relative ease, then it is fair to say that perhaps only naivety could have emboldened us to aim so high; and without such ambition, we would have achieved nothing.
What has happened subsequently is an object lesson in all conflict resolution. I have dealt with all sides now for almost a decade. The problem is that agreements such as the GFA can provide procedures, mechanisms and laws. What they can't do is enforce a belief in the other's good faith. That can't be forced. It can only come through genuine conviction.
Essentially, in the eight years since the GFA, that has been the issue. Of course it has manifested itself in endless wrangles over the procedures, mechanisms and laws. But the true problem has been that each side has believed in its own good faith but doubted that of the other. Naturally, most of the time, everyone has doubted the good faith of the Governments!
So unionism has often thought that republicanism was adopting a series of tactics in the name of peace; but its strategy was in reality still one of physical violence to circumvent the principle of consent. Republicanism believed it was making the most mighty moves to set aside the past and that unionism was only interested in peace not equality, and without equality there could be no proper peace.
Each side wanted certainty before moving. Each side's uncertainty of the other's certainty led to more uncertainty.
In October 2002, I asked for acts of completion. The ambiguity had to end. Negotiation followed negotiation, the most recent intensive bout in December 2004. But then came the Northern Bank robbery and the McCartney murder, and uncertainty again set in. In July last year, the IRA announced its armed struggle was at an end. That was a move of huge significance. However, those earlier events still cast their pall. But now I feel, after months of desultory discussion, there is a renewed willingness to break the deadlock uncertainty has imposed.
We have today set out a framework beginning with the recall of the Assembly on 15 May; but running up to November of this year for the ultimate decision to be made. At that point we close the chapter or close the book.
But once again, it won't be the details that settle this. This is a framework that only works if the parties choose to use it for proof of good faith, not to themselves and their own community but to the community of the other.
Unionism has to show republican and nationalist sentiment that it is serious about its commitment to share power; serious about equality; and serious about its recognition that republicanism has indeed changed and its leadership taken real and verifiable risks for peace. When, as will happen, dissident elements opposed to all we jointly seek to achieve, try to disrupt by the methods of the past, unionism must play its part, in refusing to give those elements a veto over democracy.
Republicanism has to address the unionist community in a way that recognises that though of course there may be those within unionism that hanker after the old days, the mainstream of unionism is very clear: it is worried that violence is still in the culture of republicanism and will re-assert itself, but does indeed want to put the past behind it and share power if it can be convinced it is doing so on a shared basis of democratic belief. So
Above all, this is a moment to let the process be governed not by suspicion but by the faith that the other does want this to succeed. I don't say suspicions will not still be there. Just don't let them prevail, to the exclusion of the basic truth: people do want this to work.
In Northern Ireland over the coming years, crucial decisions will be taken on the economy, health, schools, local government. Is it not more sensible that they are taken by the directly elected representatives of the people those decisions will affect, not by Direct Rule?
The IMC will continue its work. It has said unequivocally that the IRA no longer poses a terrorist threat. That must be recognised for the vast leap forward it is. But there are real issues about criminality and normal policing, accepted as legitimate on all sides, with criminals pursued whatever their political allegiances, would go a long way towards convincing people that culture and attitude had changed decisively.
There is ample scope to find agreement if that is what people want. But be in no doubt. At the conclusion of this period, we either resolve to go forward on the basis of mature democracy or we call time on this and seek another way to go. Two things must be understood. There can be no room for compromise or ambiguity on the commitment only to exclusively peaceful and democratic means. Political argument is the only means of persuasion. That was set out clearly in the Belfast Harbour speech and remains.
On the other hand, however, there can be no way forward that does not recognise the legitimate aspiration of nationalists and republicans for a united Ireland; and give expression to it, through partnership, North and South.
In other words, the essence of the GFA, is valid. The question is: do the political parties in Northern Ireland lead its implementation or do the two governments, perforce have to step into the breach? Stasis is not an option. The option is whether the dynamic is driven by a hale and healthy democratic mandate derived from the people or by a necessarily more rigid will imposed from outside. We, the two Governments, can't exercise that option. Only the people and parties in Northern Ireland can.
So the coming months will see a decision taken. One concluding thought: If it was a sense of the futility of the past and a desire to be part of the future, that has taken us this far; reflect please on how much more relevant that sense and that desire is today. Look at Britain and Ireland. Today, we are allies. Today we engage in common purpose in a new Europe. Today our rivalry is found in a healthy competition for which economy is more vibrant. Today there is a confidence and vitality in our relationship that has enabled us, after almost 70 or 80 years of mistrust, to work together to carry this process forward. And do so not as surrogate leaders of warring tribes, but as friends.
Today also Northern Ireland has seen more peace, stability and progress than was ever imaginable 10 years ago. Getting to here has taken many painful decisions. But in any process there is always the ultimate decision. It is yours to take.
You, the leaders here, have a far harder task than us. You have lived with the past, not just contemplated it. But now you and the people you represent have the power to decide. I ask you to use it wisely".
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