Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR JONATHAN
PHILLIPS, MR
NICK PERRY
AND MR
ANTHONY HARBINSON
16 JULY 2008
Q20 Chairman: And it was much delayed.
Mr Phillips: -- and it was delayed
and there was a lot of work done to try and see that the transfer
would be as smooth as possible. I think it is fair to say, as
I said to the Chairman, in broad terms it is working smoothly,
but as you would expect there are all sorts of day by day little
problems to iron out. But at this point, I think Robin Masefield
would say that it was going as well as could reasonably have been
expected in this timescale.
Q21 Mr Anderson: So there might be
operational issues, but it is not bureaucracy problems or resistance?
Mr Phillips: I will just check
with Nick Perry, because he is the best person. (Pause) Yes.
Q22 Chairman: Looking at various
statistics and things, yours appear to show that over the last
three years public confidence in the Policing Board and the Police
Ombudsman increased by a modest 2%. How precisely you evaluate
that I am not absolutely sure, but are you happy with this degree
of public confidence? What measures do you have in mind to increase
it? You will know that we have recently been looking at aspects
of policing in the past and the role of the Ombudsman, HET, and
all the rest of it. How do you see these things and how do you
see the frequently claimed criticism that under-resourcing remains
a problem?
Mr Phillips: Let me take the statistical
point first and then I will come to the resourcing point, which
I think relates particularly to the Police Ombudsman's Office.
On the statistics, I would not want to appear complacent but I
am not unduly troubled by those numbers. It seems to me that,
unsurprisingly, both the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman
started off in a very different position in terms of public confidence
from PSNI, deriving its confidence levels from the RUC. So we
should have expected, and we did indeed see a major rise in confidence
in PSNI. Frankly, if an independent office, independently staffed—and
I am here thinking about the Police Ombudsman—by someone
of the obvious independence of the recently retired Ombudsman,
Nuala O'Loan, did not stand high in public confidence I would
be surprised. So I think, actually, to say it has only increased
by a couple of percentage points is not something that troubles
me. On the resourcing question, again I am aware of your most
recent report and the remarks you make on it there, and I know
that the current Police Ombudsman has put his views to you, as
indeed he has to us.
Q23 Chairman: He came to the launch
of our report and both he and Sir Hugh felt that we got it about
right on those comments.
Mr Phillips: We are, of course,
giving very careful consideration to your report and Ministers
will respond in the usual way. I think it is fair to say—and
I know that both the Secretary of State and the Minister of State
have said this—the appropriate time for us to think about
the structure of the investigative apparatus, and the resourcing
of it, is when we have got Eames/Bradley, and to anticipate that
would be inappropriate—I think on this point the Government
and the Committee are in exactly the same position.
Q24 Chairman: Yes, and we made that
point.
Mr Phillips: We are in exactly
the same place, so at this point I do not want to say that we
think we should be resourcing to a particular level, but let us
simply say that that will form part of the response to Eames/Bradley.
Q25 Chairman: What about another
source of resourcing and something which has always been subject
to some contention within the province, and this is the Catholic
representation in the Police Force. There is still quite a way
to go to meet the 30% target for 2010. How do you see that? How
necessary do you see this in the wake of welcome recent developments?
I am sorry that my colleagues from the DUP are not here, because
I know they would have particular questions to ask you in this
context, and doubtless Dr McDonnell will, but I would like your
general overview as to how you see it.
Mr Phillips: I am deeply grateful
that I have only got one!
Mr Murphy: I'll bet you are!
Q26 Dr McDonnell: Jonathan, I can
assure you I am on your side!
Mr Phillips: I am on everybody's
side, of course! On the target itself, the target itself has a
huge political importance on which it is not for me to comment.
I will simply say that I am confident that on the basis of the
commitment to 7,500 regular police officers in PSNI through the
spending review period we (meaning we and they, and more importantly
they) are on target to achieve that 30% by the due date. The current
position, I think, is about 24.5% and that is the appropriate
staging post which we were expecting in order to be able to say,
yes, we are on target. There can, of course, be a political conversation
around this. There might be a political conversation around it
post the devolution of the powers on policing and justice, but
I feel that the Government will have done all it can to live up
to that commitment which was given on the back of the Patten Report,
as you know, and it is for others to argue about whether there
is a consensus to do something different. My own personal view
would be that the revised composition of PSNI has played a vital
role in helping to raise public confidence and it must be, as
a matter of principle, right that any police force attempts to
be representative of the community it serves. That is not a Northern
Ireland point, it is general.
Q27 Dr McDonnell: Just anecdotally,
yes, I agree with the target. I agree it is essential until we
get to the 30%. Yes, I would rather there was a better way of
getting there, but anecdotally I just want to add a rider question,
if you like. Are you aware of how damaging flags at this time
of the year are to the trust and the confidence in the police,
and indeed it may, in the words of some, be the single biggest
issue in terms of how police deal with flags inappropriately flown?
Mr Phillips: I had not heard it
put quite as starkly as that, in terms of being the single most
significant issue, but it is an issue which I have heard about
anecdotally too, and of course it raises very difficult issues
in terms of the interaction of PSNI with particular local communities.
Chairman: Can you give us a specific
example for Mr Phillips to comment on?
Dr McDonnell: A specific example
is that anecdotally—and indeed talking to senior policemen
about this they would agree—that the action by the police,
the PSNI, in dealing with loyalist paramilitary flags in places
like Larne had a massive impact on raising confidence, and I was
just wondering if any of the statistics you have there maybe reflected
that? Certainly I know from my own perspective that in areas like
Finaghy, at the one end of my constituency, or the likes of Newton
Park at the other, are touchstones and the police's handling of
those situations has certainly helped greatly to improve confidence,
trust, dialogue, and all the rest. So I just wondered if it had
percolated through to any significant level. Certainly, Larne
was the one issue where they dealt with—and I am talking
particularly of the loyalist paramilitary flags—but it can
also be a question of using the Union flag totally inappropriately
and in a way so as to be provocative and offensive, just as the
Provos at times can use the Irish flag to be provocative and offensive.
Q28 Chairman: There is a proper place
for that, yes.
Mr Phillips: I think the straightforward
answer to your question is that the measures of confidence that
we have do not have that degree of granularity—I am not
aware of them anyway—being able to pick up on that kind
of detail, but I do take the point. I think the more dialogue
there is through political representatives, through DPPs, and
so on, about the local situations where confidence can be improved
in that way, the better.
Q29 Chairman: Can I look at something
else from your report? I cannot pretend I am always enamoured
of targets and public service agreements, and all the rest of
it, but your Justice for All does include targets for time to
trial, elapsed times. The Ministry of Justice, with the rest of
the UK, uses one measure, offences brought to justice, and you
seem to have followed a different approach in the province from
certainly England and Wales. How fair a criticism is that, or
is that a misreading on my part of the report?
Mr Phillips: When one comes before
a Committee like this one feels vulnerable on a number of issues
and the Committee may spot them. I do not feel in the least vulnerable
now on the delay target. I feel reasonably vulnerable to the criticism
that the delay in the system in Northern Ireland is as significant
a problem as it is. That one should be setting targets at the
level that we are to make reductions from, I think, 188 days to
140, which is the Crown Court target, points to a very significant
problem which needs attention and I think it is very good that
both the current Secretary of State, his predecessor, and the
current Attorney General, and her predecessor, have been very
much focused on this as something which does need dealing with.
In response to the question, "why does our approach differ
slightly from the Ministry of Justice in England and Wales on
this?" our delay targets are simply a reflection of the particular
circumstances in Northern Ireland and are driven forward by a
body called the Delay Action Group (the title explaining its purpose).
Q30 Chairman: It is yet another way
of dealing with the legacy?
Mr Phillips: Exactly.
Chairman: Although you did make a lovely
sort of throwaway remark. You said that when you come before a
select committee there were things that you felt vulnerable on.
Let us into the secret! What do you feel vulnerable about?
Mr Murphy: Can I just pick up
on that? I am just trying to help on this, to be honest.
Chairman: That is unusual!
Q31 Mr Murphy: Just to pick up on
that point before we leave it, and again the way the numbers are
collected, on re-convictions apparently there is an assessment
made by the number of people who re-offend against a predicted
rate rather than actual. Why is that?
Mr Phillips: That could be a small
vulnerability, but I am glad to be able to say that in the current
CSR period we are moving to the same system as the Ministry of
Justice, which bases its targets on re-offending rather than re-conviction.
The advantage of using re-offending rather than re-conviction
is that re-conviction relates to the commission of a further offence
but it is measured as to whether or not there is a conviction
within a fixed time period, which limits its validity, candidly,
whereas with re-offending you obviously have the re-offence but
you take the measurements irrespective of the period when the
conviction occurs. You get a better measure. I think we are getting
better -
Q32 Mr Murphy: There is an element
of massaging the statistics there, is there not?
Mr Phillips: I think you could
argue that we had been, although I genuinely do not think it was
massaging. I could leave with you the research paper which sets
out the statistical methodology behind the re-conviction target.
I think you would be impressed by its thoroughness, and I genuinely
do not think it was an intent to massage the statistics when it
was set up.
Q33 Chairman: That is a beautifully
agile answer. Mr Murphy gave you a chance to get yourself off
the hook a little when I asked you what the vulnerabilities were.
You have now had time to think a little bit more about them. Where
do you feel most vulnerable?
Mr Phillips: I feel most vulnerable
in terms of the issues covered in the departmental report, I think,
about the complexity of the transition between the way we measured
our delivery activities in the previous period and this period.
I think to try to explain to you how we get from the CSR04 and
its objectives and targets and measurements, to how we get to
the set which we devised for 07—I could attempt it, if you
would like, and I am sure I would make a reasonable fist of it,
but I think it is not an easy task.
Q34 Chairman: Well, have a go then!
Mr Phillips: Right. Can I ask
you to turn to our Report, otherwise this does not -
Q35 Chairman: Yes, we have all got
our copies. We will get it autographed when you go!
Mr Phillips: If you look at p.129,
which is the CSR07 Departmental Strategic Objectives, I think
that is a reasonably coherent attempt to describe what our key
priorities are and to send the messages that each bit of the Department
is acting in cooperation with another. To take a simple example,
it is quite clear that the Justice For All PSA, which is the yellow
bit in the middle, embraces the Prison Service, criminal justice
policy, other agents in the criminal justice arena and, of course,
PSNI. If I were to go back to CSR04, I would be describing to
you targets around confidence in policing, confidence in the criminal
justice system, the upholding and the maintenance of the law,
lessening the impact of crime, ensuring that supervisory and custodial
sentences were properly delivered and ensuring a cost-effective
Prison Service, which I think were too silo-based, and I think
you could reasonably have said, "Were you properly integrating
your various levers in the delivery chain?" I think we are
in a much better place in CSR07, complicated though this remains,
but the complexity of its description here, I am bound to say,
reflects the CSR framework as a whole.
Q36 Chairman: This is not exactly
making government intelligible to the people, is it?
Mr Phillips: Well, it is not a
framework devised by the Northern Ireland Office.
Q37 Chairman: I am sure it is not,
but you have adopted it here. Would it be possible for you to
devise something, because one of the things I always feel—and
I think my colleagues will have some sympathy with me—is
that ordinary people feel cut off from government because they
do not understand government-speak and government presentation.
This is very beautiful and it is on good quality paper, but is
it really going to mean anything to anybody in Northern Ireland?
Mr Phillips: I do agree with you.
I would not myself attempt to use that page as a presentation
of what we are trying to do, except at the most general level,
but I think if you turn the page and look at the list of priority
actions, the second column down, I think you will find a list
of things which are much more meaningful and which people would
respond to.
Q38 Chairman: Yes, I take your point.
They would certainly respond, I think very positively, to some
of your aims here, "To ensure that 87% of prisoners ... "
and all that sort of stuff, but I still do not think this is presented
in a form which would grab their attention. I am just wondering
whether you might not produce something—I do understand
and I am not trying in any sense to make fun—but I think
you could probably produce a leaflet or a document which would
communicate more readily to intelligent laymen. Do you not think
so?
Mr Phillips: I think we could,
and I think if I was sitting in front of this Committee and I
expected the Northern Ireland Office in its current form to be
alive and in operation significantly further into the CSR period,
I would very willingly take away the task of trying to do that.
I am a little reluctant to try and do it on this point because
I think—and I know this is an "if"—if we
devolve justice and policing powers soon, then I perhaps ought
to come back, if you will allow me, on the real timescale because
I think there are some points I might make about the real timescale
which are not political.
Q39 Chairman: Of course. Please do,
yes.
Mr Phillips: I think it must be
for the Executive to set out its further vision for this kind
of thing. If I can illustrate that, I think in this list there
is a reference to the production of a vision for policing in Northern
Ireland. It is the sort of mauve colour in the third column. If
you take the columns across, one, two, three, the third tier down,
"A strategic vision for policing".
| 
