Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
RT HON
SHAUN WOODWARD
MP, MR NICK
PERRY AND
MS HILARY
JACKSON
30 JANUARY 2008
Q20 Chairman: You are dead right!
Mr Woodward: I have to say I entirely
share your view and therefore I can only repeat again that it
is because I share your view that I am working with officials
to see whether or not it may be possible to ensure that there
is a more effective way of being able to ensure that we are able
to bring those involved in this before the courts and actually
put them away.
Q21 Kate Hoey: With the greatest
respect, Secretary of State, I am glad you said you were not complacent
because, quite honestly, your opening remarks on this were complacent
and gave that impression. The reality is that this is a kind of
litmus test for ordinary, decent, law-abiding citizens of Northern
Ireland of whether the law is being effectively carried through.
It seems that you are saying almost that HMRC has a particular
view. You are the Secretary of State. You have heard how strongly
people feel about this. If you need stronger measures and you
need the law changed, is it not your job to come forward as quickly
as possible with those requirements?
Mr Woodward: That is why I said
in my opening remarks, and I am very happy to underline it again,
I am looking at whether or not we may be able to bring forward
a specific offence which would make it easier to prosecute people.
I think there is a view among some at HMRC that actually the figures
of prosecutions are satisfactory to serve the public interest.
I think that is an important discussion that we are having with
the HMRC at the moment, because it is perfectly clear to me and
has been perfectly clear to me that this is not a satisfactory
rate of prosecutions, but again, one word of caution: it is not
going to be easy to make dramatic progress on all of this. This
is something that we have to do incrementally. We all know the
dangers of trying to over-sell this, so I do not want anyone to
walk out of here this afternoon thinking that I have made a guarantee
to introduce an offence that is going to dramatically change the
position.
Q22 Kate Hoey: Why?
Mr Woodward: Because I do not
want to mislead people. There have been too many people who have
thought that all you have to do is announce an offence and you
end the problem. If we could simply do that, we would have no
knives on the street and no guns on the street. It does not work
like that, as you well know. One other word of caution here: this
is not the only criminal practice that worries people in Northern
Ireland, so let us not turn and fetishise this into being, as
you described it, your own phrase, the litmus test.
Q23 Kate Hoey: A litmus test.
Mr Woodward: This is an indication
of an area where we need to make progress but an area that I know
this Committee is going to want to come on to. Just as there are
injustices here, there are injustices in other parts of the system.
When you see, as some people have characterised, a prison system
that puts away many, many people for not paying fines on the scale
they do in Northern Ireland, there are other injustices to remedy
as well.
Chairman: There are. We are grateful
for what you said but your motto at the moment seems to be festina
lente, "make haste slowly". Just substitute it for
festina, "make haste".
Q24 Lady Hermon: Secretary of State,
it is not very long ago since you formally and officially opened
the Woodlands Juvenile Justice Centre in my constituency in North
Down. You will be well aware, I am sure, from the media coverage
that there was a very serious incident involving a young offender
who injured three members of staff. Could you kindly give us an
update on the state and condition of the three members of staff,
whom we all wish well, and also the young offender himself?
Mr Woodward: The first thing I
would say to you is that the members of staff, I believe, are
now at home, having received treatment. This is a very serious
event to have happened. You and I share a view about the new centre
which we opened together. It is an outstanding facility. It does
not give me any pleasure to tell you that the staffing arrangements
over the weekend when the incident took place were not unusual.
It did not take place because unfortunately we were low on staff
that weekend. We were not. There were normal staffing arrangements
in place but the event nonetheless happened. What is taking place
now inside the centre is an investigation into why the incident
took place and as soon as we have the findings of that we will
take the steps to remedy it if there are lessons to be learned.
I do not know whether or not this was an isolated incident which
occurred due to a series of aberrational circumstances or whether
or not there are truly lessons to be learned. My mind is open
on that and I do not want to prejudge the outcome of an internal
investigation, except to say that we take it very seriously, and
obviously we are concerned about the staff.
Q25 Lady Hermon: Obviously concerned
about the staff. I am very pleased to hear that. What additional
support and perhaps training have been offered to the staff since
the incident?
Mr Woodward: I cannot tell you
about that. I am very happy to write to you about any additional
training. I should think realistically though at this stage what
we are looking for is making sure that the staff are home and
are making a good recovery, that actually the work with those
who are detained there is not interrupted by this—and I
have no reason to believe that it has been—and making sure
that the staff receive sufficient areas of support and confidence,
and again that is happening. Whether or not this will lead to
different training patterns, again, I think we have to wait until
an investigation has been undertaken and completed because we
have to make a distinction between whether this was an aberrational
set of circumstances or whether or not truly there are lessons
to be learned and, if there are lessons to be learned, they will
be.
Lady Hermon: But there is clearly not
a deficiency in staff numbers.
Chairman: Can we move to more general
matters.
Q26 Lady Hermon: Sir Patrick has
indicated, and other Committee members have also indicated, that
in fact the Committee has just completed its inquiry into the
prison estate in Northern Ireland and, Secretary of State, you
have already alluded to the great injustice that is actually perpetrated
against a large number of people who are kept on remand for a
very lengthy period of time in prisons in Northern Ireland and
also the very high percentage of prisoners who are actually fine
defaulters. How is the Northern Ireland Office proposing to deal
with both of these issues?
Mr Woodward: I think first of
all you have to become properly aware of the problem and, in the
context of only having been there for six months, it is certainly
an issue which I am now more than confident to say I think this
is a very real problem that I believe as Secretary of State we
need to address. For as long as I am there, we will now really
begin to tackle this area. A parallel that I would draw was when
I became aware of the problem with waiting lists in Northern Ireland.
People were waiting for six years in the Health Service and when
I left after 12 months they were waiting 12 months. We will tackle
this area. I cannot promise to deliver great results overnight
although that is a very tempting thing to do. Somebody the other
day said to me it is almost Dickensian to think that we have prisons
with these volumes of numbers who are effectively debtors. I can
see why it is hard to disagree with that judgement in some ways.
It does seem to me to be ludicrous that we are spending millions
of pounds locking people up for what might only be a period of
three or four days for fine defaulting on sums of less than £600
by and large and in many cases less than £200. It is a difficult
issue to tackle. Again, we have an institutionalised problem and
we have to do this by achieving a consensus. I can promise you
that it begins with a will from me to want to address this and,
whatever cynicism there may be by some, I do have a track record
in the Health Service of having dramatically changed waiting times
and I am prepared to sit down over the coming months and look
at this problem and realistically see how we can address it. The
problem of remand is, I think, a much harder problem to tackle
but it does begin with a will to want to address it. We have seen
an improvement; we have seen a small reduction this year and that
is progress. The work again that Minister of State Paul Goggins
is doing on this with the Justice system is extremely important
but I think there is no substitute for us giving a very clear
lead on this issue. It is unacceptable that we have these incredibly
long delays in the justice system in Northern Ireland, and I think
it is unacceptable and I think it is a huge waste of resources
to see people being locked up on the scale that they are in Northern
Ireland for defaulting on fines. There are many other remedies
available, from community service to other measures that can be
taken, some of which we are now looking at but we need to accentuate
that and we need to make progress on it and we need to make progress
on it with haste.
Chairman: Absolutely, yes. That is very
important.
Q27 Lady Hermon: Secretary of State,
you did mention the phrase "institutionalised" problem".
Which institution is to blame? Is it the Prosecution Service,
is it the PSNI, is it the prison regime, is it the legislation,
is it the Northern Ireland Office for not bringing forward legislation
when we have known about the problem for such a long time?
Mr Woodward: I do not think we
will actually make a huge amount of progress by singling out any
one of those institutions. I think it is a collective problem,
and I think it is a collective problem which, if we actually approach
with a view to finding a collective solution, we will make progress
on.
Q28 Mr Grogan: I have just one question
on organised crime gangs and so on. In our report on organised
crime we said that we saw a continued role for non-jury trials
in certain circumstances. What would be the view of the Northern
Ireland Office?
Mr Woodward: The view of the Northern
Ireland Office on non-jury trials has already been made clear.
Northern Ireland presents a very special set of circumstances
precisely because of its very difficult troubled past. I would
love to tell you that I could see a future next week when we could
dispense with any of those sorts of arrangement. Regrettably,
that is not on the immediate horizon but the progress that we
are making towards that is huge. If one takes the whole principle
of non-jury trials and compares numbers of those now with those
of 10 or 15 years ago, the difference is truly dramatic. We are
making progress and I only wish we were making the same kind of
progress in dealing with some of the other issues that we have
discussed this afternoon as we are with that.
Q29 Mr Grogan: But you would see
circumstances—what sort of circumstances?
Mr Woodward: Again, let me be
really frank about this. One of the things I hope is that this
is a decision we will not be making. One of the things about the
future shape of the judicial system and the criminal justice system
in Northern Ireland is that it frankly ought to be being decided
by those politicians who were elected in Northern Ireland. What
I would like to do is to hand over a criminal justice system in
as good a state as it can be for the period we have reached in
Northern Ireland, given the background and the troubles Northern
Ireland has had. These are decisions that should be reached by
politicians there and I hope that what we will pass over will
be a system that people can work with and evolve and appropriately
make local for people who live and work in Northern Ireland.
Q30 Lady Hermon: Secretary of State,
the Northern Ireland Office has responsibility for the criminal
justice system until devolution of those powers. At the present
time there is the availability of non-jury trials where there
is intimidation of witnesses or where there is the possibility
of jury tampering. Is it your belief that in fact non-jury trials,
given the mention of the Paul Quinn incident and a key witness
there and also the Robert McCartney case, which of course has
not also been fully dealt with, are those appropriate for non-jury
trials?
Mr Woodward: What Nick is saying
of course is it is a matter for the DPP, and it is, and you are
inviting me to have a view on it. Ultimately, it is a matter for
the DPP but what I want to see, whether it is about Paul Quinn
or any other area, is the people responsible for the murder of
Paul Quinn or the attempted murders of police officers coming
before the courts and serving time. I want it to be part of a
judicial system which the public across the piece, both sides
of the communities, can respect and believe is fair. I want to
be careful here about just taking advantage of my position before
this Committee this afternoon to say what I would like to see.
What I want to see is the people who did these crimes put away.
We have to recognise the special circumstances of Northern Ireland,
so I think it will depend upon when those convictions hopefully
can be secured and I think we have to recognise that we are moving
into a different frame in Northern Ireland. We are not yet there
on some of these things but of course, the really interesting
thing on this, as the Chief Constable has said, is the volume
of co-operation that they are now getting from the community.
It is not the same as saying that we have a level of co-operation
which is going to see every one of these witnesses going into
the witness box. We have to nurse people into that position. We
have to deal with that climate of intimidation but we should not,
in our concern about that, fail to recognise the progress that
is being made, and there is real progress being made.
Chairman: I want to move on now to looking
at the past. Before we deal with some of the really tricky issues,
there is one legacy issue that Stephen Hepburn wants to ask about.
Q31 Mr Hepburn: It is the future
of the redundant military sites. Can you give us your view on
whether they should go for full market value and the money go
to the Treasury or do think it should be passed over to local
communities as some sort of community asset?
Mr Woodward: Let us again just
put the facts on the table. We have the five sites that were gifted
in 2002, and then we subsequently have an ambiguous phraseology
in the 2003 joint declaration about further sites which "might"
be gifted. As you know, the Government has been absolutely steadfast
in its commitment on the first five and those have been transferred.
Note to everybody: in advance of people asking for more sites
to be gifted, it would be quite good to see, for example, resolution
on what is going to be done with the Maze achieved. This is something
to which I hope very much there is a satisfactory resolution quite
soon because if it had been able to have been used as a national
stadium in the run-up to the Olympics, it would have been a fantastic
symbol to the rest of the world for the future of Northern Ireland.
It is a great shame that it has spent eight months being caught
up in an internal debate between the political parties. That is
a matter for the political parties but it is quite hard for me,
in trying to bring pressure to bear on other members of the Cabinet,
whether it is in the Treasury or the MoD, when talking about possibilities
of any help being given on other future military sites if they
see the kind of internal wrangling that is taking place over the
Maze. As you know, there are two particular sites in Omagh that
have attracted interest. I am meeting Pat Doherty—Sir Patrick
wrote to me about this—next week. I think this is a really
ingenious proposal for the site. As you know, DSD have been in
negotiation with the MoD about this for around 24 months now without
yet achieving a satisfactory resolution themselves. I am in discussion
with my colleagues in the MoD and the Treasury about this. Again,
I raise no expectations as to what the outcome may be because
there is no agreement to gift further sites beyond those of 2002.
However, there is equally a commitment by the Government to do
all it can to help in Northern Ireland and I will continue and
endeavour to do my best but, as I say, it would certainly help
me if we could get an early resolution on the Maze.
Q32 Kate Hoey: I think it is important
that the Secretary of State is challenged a little bit on that.
I do not want to go into the whole Maze project but I think it
is important that perhaps the Secretary of State should be aware
that if this had been handled differently from the beginning and
the people of Northern Ireland, in the sense of the real supporters
of sport in Northern Ireland, had actually been involved and to
try and almost use it, as you are using it now, as a form of blackmail
really, that you are almost implying that if they do not get the
Maze sorted out, we are taking our ball away. The reality is the
money should be there for sport in Northern Ireland and for the
sports governing bodies and for the people of Northern Ireland
through their elected representatives and their parties and the
Finance Secretary in Northern Ireland to decide how they are going
to go forward on that.
Mr Woodward: Kate, I think that
is a bit of a travesty of what I said. There is no blackmail here
at all. What I am simply saying to you is that it would help my
case when discussing this with colleagues if we could actually
see progress in terms of the sites we had gifted, particularly
the Maze, because of the Olympics and the opportunity it represents.
It would be particularly helpful to me, and that is a very different
phraseology from the one that you just caricatured of what I said.
Q33 Sammy Wilson: Secretary of State,
you did single out the Maze. Girdwood Barracks, for example, has
not been decided on yet. Why particularly use the Maze?
Mr Woodward: Because the Maze
is being used by politicians in Northern Ireland for reasons we
all understand as something of a political football and it is
constantly appearing in the headlines. As I say, there is a fantastic
opportunity to be taken here.
Q34 Kate Hoey: Yes, but it may not
be the right site for a national sports stadium, as this Committee
in fact commented on.
Mr Woodward: This, of course,
is a matter for politicians in Northern Ireland. I am simply saying
that it would help me in making a case to others if it were possible
to actually demonstrate that this would not be the subject of
wrangling but actually is a subject for purpose.
Chairman: It would help us a little if
you would refresh your memory by looking at our report on to tourism,
where we did in fact make a recommendation on this. Maybe you
could just look at that.
Q35 Stephen Pound: Good afternoon,
Secretary of State. Before I ask my question can I just quickly
say, in your preamble you mentioned attacks on Orange lodges.
Firstly, I am not a frequent visitor to Orange lodges but I have
read the reports. Do you feel, from your position, from your vantage
point, that there is an element of co-ordination in these attacks,
or is this the sort of mindless vandalism that we tend to see
throughout the rest of the United Kingdom?
Mr Woodward: It is certainly very
tempting to conclude, as some have done, that there may be a level
of co-ordination. The First Minister and others had a meeting
with the Chief Constable just before Christmas, and indeed I had
a meeting myself with both parties and indeed members of the Orange
Orders as well to discuss this. The Chief Constable does not believe
there is a co-ordinated campaign taking place. There is no question
that, with 67 attacks since April of last year, this is a significant
and dramatic increase in the number of attacks in previous years,
which were in the low double figures. So this is a serious issue.
I fear that what we are seeing here is more copy-cat than co-ordination.
There is absolutely no reason to believe—and I quote here
the Chief Constable—that this is the work of any kind of
concerted paramilitary campaign. Nonetheless, for those who are
victims of this crime, it is appalling, and it is cowardly as
well because of course they do it in places where they are least
likely to be caught. They do it in the middle of the countryside
in the middle of the night. The Chief Constable is taking action
on it, has increased resources, has increased the numbers of patrols.
It is very difficult. We remain in contact with those who are
most concerned about this but, again, one of the things I think
is important has been to note the condemnation that has come across
the political spectrum and one of the fiercest proponents in terms
of criticism is the Deputy First Minister, who made it unequivocally
clear how strongly he condemns the attacks on the halls and how
much he wants to see the perpetrators of this caught and brought
to justice, as I do.
Q36 Stephen Pound: Thank you for
that. Moving forward to the past, the independent Consultative
Group on the Past was set up in June last year with your predecessor
as the progenitor, if not the godfather. How do you feel the infant
is doing?
Mr Woodward: This is a Herculean
task. There is no question, and you will have taken evidence and
spoken to the Chief Constable as a very good example of this,
about just what an understandable but nonetheless burden it represents
on police time dealing with the past, the numbers of officers
the Chief Constable has to deploy to deal with the past. Having
said that, I believe it is absolutely right that we deal with
the past. We cannot possibly move forward into a new and secure
shared future in Northern Ireland without recognising that the
past is something we are all going to have to come to terms with.
I do not believe this is about drawing a line under the past.
It is about coming to a place whereby we can live with the past
without it gripping us and not being able to go forward. I think
the Commission therefore was an inspired idea, and I think it
was inspired because it was necessary and it was important that
it was not the British Government or the Irish Government coming
forward with a proposal. It had to be independent but, in being
independent and in seeking people's views and in holding public
inquiries, you will inevitably court all sorts of sensationalist
responses from people. So when they have a public inquiry and
people come forward and say they think there should be an amnesty,
I absolutely understand why people, some of them in this room,
immediately come forward and say to the British Government "Can
we absolutely have a guarantee that you will not have an amnesty?"
It is understandable that people are going to put forward these
ideas, and that is the value of having an independent group at
this stage. It is valuable precisely because they can actually
go and see whether or not there is a consensus. It may be there
is no consensus. It may be that it is too early yet to find a
way to settle on some of these issues which, very understandably,
tear people apart. We still have nobody effectively having been
held to account for the Omagh bomb, the worst atrocity in the
whole of the troubles. You can understand how this tears communities
in half but equally we can understand how living with communities
being torn in half ten years ago meant that we could make no progress.
So people did make progress because clearly we had achieved a
moment when it was possible to go forward. The work of the committee,
and I think it is being brilliantly led, is very difficult. I
do not know whether they will come to us at the end of this year
or the summer of this year and say there is a consensus. It is
perfectly clear to everybody in this room that there is a group
of issues for which it is going to be very difficult to find any
consensus, but maybe the first question we need to ask is whether
or not there is a consensus yet on whether or not people want
the past to be addressed. It may be there is not, and if there
is not a consensus even on the issue of, "Do you want the
past to be addressed so we are not just gripped by the past?",
we will have to recognise that the work of the Consultative Group
will be much more difficult and take much longer than we anticipated.
Q37 Stephen Pound: Secretary of State,
you talked about the impact on the PSNI. Could you, just for the
record, give us some indication of the level of funding provided
by the NIO for this specific purpose of Historic Enquiries?
Mr Woodward: £34 million
was the amount of money that we set aside for the Historic Enquiries
Team. They have spent a proportion of that and they are currently
dealing with cases which, as you know, are in chronological order
by and large up to the mid 1970s. We believe that in itself will
be enough, but let us put this in the context of a policing budget
of a billion pounds. Let us put that in the context of a very
difficult past. Let us put that in the context that there are
some 4,000 families related to people who lost their lives in
the Troubles, many of whom have no basic information about the
circumstances of the murder that took place. One of the things
that I think was extraordinary about the work of the Historic
Enquiries Team, which I believe is appropriately funded, was when
it revealed to me the work it did with the family of a young British
soldier who was killed in the 1970s. It was only last year that
the family learned the circumstances and learned about the fact
that when the young man was shot in the streets of Belfast—he
died two days later in hospital—it was Catholic passers-by
who tried to save his life, who took him to the hospital. They
had no idea about that and yet the family had nursed for 30 years
a hatred of the Catholic community in Belfast. The material was
sitting in a box. The material was put together by the team and
they shared it with the family. It has changed that family's view
of the past considerably. I would be very surprised if the work
of the Consultative Group on the past in any way moved away from
the work that needs to be undertaken by the Historic Enquiries
Team. I think much of that is rightly about giving people information
they do not have and it is very basic. I think the bigger issues,
the kinds of issues that have attracted huge media attention in
the last few weeks, are undoubtedly issues that will be hugely
divisive. I do not know whether they can find a consensus on that.
It is not for me to judge. It is not for me to provide a running
commentary, but, perhaps like everybody else, I hope it will be
possible to find a consensus but I certainly do not underestimate
the task involved in that.
Q38 Stephen Pound: Do you anticipate
that there will be a drawdown from the PSNI budget to service
Eames/Bradley?
Mr Woodward: To service the Historic
Enquiries Team?
Q39 Stephen Pound: Sorry—that
separate strand.
Mr Woodward: Given that we have
given them a separate £34 million budget to fund it, it would
be remarkable if at this stage, having spent less than 50% of
it, they now needed to draw down on it, and, given that we have
managed to secure for the Policing Service in Northern Ireland
an extremely good settlement for the future, I would be very surprised
if they felt they needed to do that.
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