RESOURCES
69. The Chief Constable has made a clear public
commitment to supporting the work of inquiries.[137]
The purpose of our work has been not to question that commitment,
but to examine whether the PSNI is adequately enabled to fulfil
its obligations without compromising its ability to police the
present. The PSNI estimated that its costs relating to the inquiries
for 2007-08 would be £2.05 million, with a further £2.75
million projected for 2008-09 and £0.5 million for 2009-10.[138]
No specific additional funding for this work has been provided
by the NIO. Whilst these are significant sums, they represent
a relatively small proportion of the entire PSNI budget but the
Chief Constable told us that the biggest impact was in the loss
of expertise in key areas of policing where intelligence was currently
critical. He explained that the PSNI had only a small pool of
appropriately skilled officers able to search intelligence information
and identify which parts could be used to identify covert sources.
He had had to divert key staff from current policing priorities
to historical work and as a result there was a risk that the quality
of current policing could be compromised. He said that, "…
we cannot just recruit anyone to do this; (a) it is deeply sensitive
and (b) the corporate memory goes over time and trying to get
that back is difficult."[139]
He went on to explain the consequences for the PSNI:
… what I am having to do, if I cannot find it
externally, is use some of my key players who will be delivering
some of my most sensitive operations today to look to service
historic inquiries. … all the inquiries and all the inquests,
all [are] coming into a fairly small hub of experts.[140]
70. The Police Federation stated that "We
consider that this pressure on police resources should be a matter
of concern to be shared at the highest level of Government. Ineffective
policing will not help to stabilise the still bedding down political
institutions of Northern Ireland."[141]
The view of the Policing Board was that:
the efficiency and effectiveness of the police service
in preventing and detecting crime should not be compromised by
dealing with various commitments to historical inquiries …
It is the responsibility of Government to ensure that the police
service be provided with adequate funding to deal with 'policing
the past'.[142]
71. The Minister of State acknowledged the pressures
on the Chief Constable:
I have a lot of sympathy with the Chief Constable
in this. Where he is faced with public inquiries, inquests and
so on, it is officer time tied up with going back through files,
often very experienced officers going back through files, coming
up with the information, sharing it and so on. I acknowledge that
is a pressure but it is a pressure that, in his own redoubtable
way, the Chief Constable gets on and deals with.
However, he stated out that the PSNI's resource allocation
was "substantially more than comparable forces across the
rest of the United Kingdom"[143]
and that the Chief Constable and the Policing Board had confirmed
that they had balanced the budget for the current year.[144]
He also accepted that the pressures on the PSNI were "significantly
and substantially different from the pressures in other police
force areas in the United Kingdom" and explained that was
reflected in the PSNI's budget settlement.[145]
72. The Minister of State told us that he believed
it was necessary to fund the statutory inquiries in order to help
people achieve resolution and to build public confidence, and
also to fund practical projects which helped people to rebuild
their lives.[146] He
explained:
I genuinely believe that they [inquiries] can help
to build up public confidence as well as to deal with individual
circumstances. I am not pretending … that they are a perfect
and complete answer in themselves. There are many issues and difficulties
associated with them and, in and of themselves, they do not produce
the final answer which Northern Ireland as a whole will need if
it is to move forward.[147]
73. The very high annual cost
of inquiries into past events is financially unsustainable. We
note with concern that the latest estimated cost of the Saville
Inquiry alone is £183 million and that inquiry is still not
completed.[148]
The cost to organisations such as the PSNI that contribute to
the statutory inquiries is also considerable, in terms of money
and resources. The PSNI estimates that its costs for working with
the inquiries over the next two years alone will come to over
£6 million. We fully accept the Chief Constable's concerns
that the diversion of experts from their current duties is bound
to impact upon effective policing in Northern Ireland. The cost
of inquiring into the past is an issue that, at some point, will
have to be faced. Such inquiries cannot become a permanent feature
of life in Northern Ireland. We recommend that the NIO take further
steps to control the costs of Northern Ireland's statutory inquiries
and that inquiries other than those already under way or announced
should only be established if agreed by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
74. The statutory inquiries
place significant demands on the PSNI at a time when police officers
are still subject to attacks from dissident terrorists. No other
police force in the United Kingdom is required to operate in such
an environment, and at the same time to service the demands of
the extensive range of historic investigations which are underway
in Northern Ireland. The NIO must continue to ensure that the
PSNI has a budget sufficient to fulfil its operational remit and
to meet its legal obligations with regard to servicing the statutory
inquiries.
89 
