Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR AL
HUTCHINSON, MR
SAM POLLOCK
AND MR
JIM COUPLAND
20 FEBRUARY 2008
Q80 Chairman: What sort of discretion
do you have before deciding that you must begin a proper investigation?
Mr Hutchinson: Really, Chairman,
I have none. Nuala O'Loan, my predecessor of course, I think wisely
considered it and Lord Chief Justice Carswell's cited comments
in the McConville case, where she addressed the subject, and Lord
Chief Justice Carswell said there is no discretion by a public
official when guided by the statute to obviate that. There is
a practical consequence of that and we will, I am sure, talk about
the workload, the prioritisation, the matrix we have to go through,
but certainly I take the view I have no discretion and whatever
comes to me I will eventually have to deal with.
Q81 Chairman: May I just ask, before
we move on, what about your relationship with the Historical Enquiries
team? Is it a good one? There must be a certain amount of tension?
Mr Hutchinson: I would categorise
it as a good one, certainly at a leadership level. Jim, as our
new Senior Director of Operations, can perhaps speak more directly
to it, but in terms of our respective Gold Commands on any of
the particular issues we have a protocol established, which Nuala
established, and I am told that after some initial working out
of that agreement that is working very fine now. To our benefit,
I think the Historical Enquiries Team acts as a very cogent filter
for us, in other words they have collected evidence, they have
sifted through it and really when they come to us because of police
involvement then it is statutorily given over to us and we actually
have part of that front end work done for us. So it is a generally
positive relationship.
Q82 Stephen Pound: Before we move
on from that point, obviously this is an extremely significant
area. You have talked about protocols, about precedent, and you
have talked about jurisprudential rulings. What is the status
of those? When you say you have no discretion, do you have no
discretion by terms of the legislation that set up the structure?
Is it by precedent, is it by Nuala O'Loan's actions, is it by
the judge's ruling? What precisely defines and limits your discretion
or absence of discretion?
Mr Hutchinson: The statutory obligation,
first of all.
Q83 Stephen Pound: On the face of
the original bill?
Mr Hutchinson: That is right.
There is no discretion.
Stephen Pound: Fine. I think it
is very important we establish that. Thank you.
Q84 Mr Murphy: Could I ask, before
we move on, how many members of the public have actually approached
you directly?
Mr Hutchinson: I will defer to
Sam. We have about 116 cases out of historic, how many -
Mr Pollock: We have 16 public
complaints.
Q85 Mr Murphy: Is there a particular
reason why the public would contact you directly?
Mr Hutchinson: Well, again there
is an obligation. I will give you one example that is very well
in the public domain, which is in fact that the Finucane Centre
on a particular case in Londonderry would have raised that with
us on behalf of them and we have met with the complainants, certainly
Loughinisland was a public complaint, I believe. So there are
probably no precedent reasons why a particular family would come
forward, but often it is driven by families.
Q86 Chairman: How far as the creation
of the HET project impinged upon your Office and increased your
workload?
Mr Hutchinson: I suppose, Chairman,
what we have before us and what we have coming in terms of prospective
cases, on the prospective cases I am led to believe by Dave Cox
that we may have up to 300 cases coming at us that may involve
allegations of police wrongdoing. Currently we have—Sam,
correct me if I am wrong, how many do we have from HET that we
have received?
Mr Pollock: Fifty-four from HET.
Mr Hutchinson: In terms of impinging
on our workload, of course, we go through a prioritisation of
those. We have the day to day work, which may involve serious
and minor allegations and findings of police wrongdoing, as serious
as shootings by police, and then of course we have the historic
cases, roughly from 1968 to 1998, which come to us, the numbers
which Sam talked about. So there are those two broad areas which
are impacting on our organisation.
Q87 Chairman: Are you sinking under
the weight?
Mr Hutchinson: I have used in
informal session, Chairman, the phrase "tipping point"
and I have become very concerned. I have now been three months
on the job and I am concerned about quality, the impact, our capacity
for the future, and strategically looking at it we could come
to that point where we will be sinking. I have asked Jim on an
urgent basis to start putting together a business case. Fundamentally,
it is put on a premium model, which I think is the HET model.
Of course we are independent from that, but very shortly we will
probably be going to Government with a provisional idea of what
that might cost us, and it probably will be significant to deal
with that prospective work which is coming at us.
Q88 Chairman: Are we talking seven
figures or eight?
Mr Hutchinson: We are looking
at possibly 20 or 30 new staff, new quarters, because we are on
the maximum quarters, maybe 2 to £3 million cumulative per
year just for the additional historic works.
Chairman: Just for that, yes.
Q89 Kate Hoey: In other words, the
costs are going to go up and up and up, and you are putting a
plan to say, "We need more money to deal with this."
Do you think we will ever come to a stage where you might actually
be really radical and say, "Look, hang on, enough's enough.
This whole thing's costing far too much and it's achieving very
little"?
Mr Hutchinson: As I pointed out
to Mr Pound, I do not think I have any legal out on this, if you
will. What I am doing—and perhaps we will discuss that in
other questions, but I view it as a severable unit, in other words,
when Northern Ireland comes to a resolution of how it can deal
with the past (1968—1998). I think part of it is evidence-gathering.
HET is doing part of it, we are doing part of it, inquests, enquiries
are doing another part of it. There is a piece of work there to
resolve the issues in Northern Ireland. I am looking at it as
to our piece of that could be severable. In other words, when
I ask for funds it is to grow my unit, because in fact I am very
worried about the impact on the present policing and the present
police organisation, that bleeds over from the past to the present.
So I think it has to be done, that we have to advise Government,
"This is what we think as a professional Police Ombudsman
organisation, what it will cost to deal with the historic enquiries
that are coming at us," and I will put that in. It will be
on the paper and we will start to draw down in that process just
to deal with the workload that we have, but I am absolutely convinced
I have no discretion except to do that the way the law is written.
Q90 Mr Fraser: You say about the
costs and funding the problems you have got with that and you
say you need more staff. One of the comments you pass is that
there is a lack of availability of suitable staff. Is that because
you have not got the funds to tool them up to do the job and train
them appropriately, or that the wrong people are coming forward,
or that there just is not the pool of the right people?
Mr Hutchinson: We really have
three categories of staff. We have the developed internal staff.
They are not necessarily police officers but they have developed
professionally through experience and university training. We
have seconded police officers from other police services outside
of Northern Ireland, and then we have contracted police officers,
primarily to do the historic crimes. There is a cost to each one
of those levels and on our last trawl to get seconded police officers
in broadly the United Kingdom we had one reply from one service.
What is impinging on that, of course, is that all police services
are suffering in terms of recruiting and the demographic needs
and police chiefs are very reluctant to second their police officers.
So we are left with a pool of contracted police officers availability
and ironically that pool is probably growing as the police demographics
change and more and more people retire, but again there is a very
expensive premium to that. On the other hand, direct recruit—logically
as a public official I cannot hire permanently staff not knowing
which way this issue will go and whether or not it is severable.
It is just that you cannot hire experienced criminal investigators,
senior investigators.
Q91 Chairman: Are you able to recruit
from your own former force?
Mr Hutchinson: Well, no. That
is an issue of confidence in Northern Ireland. The HET, for example,
has recruited from the former force, but they are doing very routine
issues. We have the former police service in Northern Ireland
doing some of our enquiries, but -
Q92 Chairman: You had your police
training and career in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as I
understand it?
Mr Hutchinson: I did.
Q93 Chairman: Are you able, or is
there a bar on your going to other Commonwealth forces like that
to recruit?
Mr Hutchinson: No, there is not,
other than practicality, familiarity with the law. Certainly my
experience as a police officer is that the police officers in
Northern Ireland, certainly Great Britain, are as confident and
capable as they would be in Canada because it is something you
gain over a period of time dealing with people.
Q94 Mr Fraser: Can I just come back
on that point? Given the difficulties you clearly face and which
you have explained to us here and in your submission, that is
affecting public confidence in your Office, surely?
Mr Hutchinson: I believe it is.
Our satisfaction levels, according to surveys, are starting to
slip. Now, I would not say that that will be maintained. Certainly
it is my objective to keep the confidence level up, but there
is no doubt it is impacting on our current delivery of cases because
what we are doing is taking the experienced police officers, investigators,
and putting them onto historic crimes investigations because that
is where we need the quality, and these are multiple year-long
investigations in some cases.
Q95 Sammy Wilson: Can I just ask
a follow up question? According to the brief you have given us,
Mr Hutchinson, you indicate about 21% of your costs now, your
staff costs, are directed towards historic enquiries?
Mr Hutchinson: They are.
Q96 Sammy Wilson: The Chief Constable
told us in relation to the police that it was not so much even
the percentage of total costs, but it was the specific areas where
he had to take expertise from, where in some cases he was saying
60% of his serious crime resources were being absorbed into this.
Are you finding the same in your organisation? It is not just
the kind of global or bottom line figure, but it is specific parts
of your organisation that are feeling the strain?
Mr Hutchinson: I suppose that
provides an apt analogy because that is really what I am saying,
that we are taking our experienced police officers, former police
officers, seconded police officers who have that senior investigating
officer experience and putting them into the major cases, which
are very complex. They range from—well, we talked about
Loughinisland in Ireland, but some are multiple linked allegations
of murders, the Stalker affair, you know, the very complex cases
that have a big public impact in terms of outcome. We have to
deal with them honestly, fairly and independently and that requires
a great deal of skill. That is our cadre of experienced people.
Q97 Chairman: How much extra work
from the public inquiry is piled upon you?
Mr Hutchinson: Not a great deal.
For example, the Wright inquiry, I enquired over the impact on
us and of course we have primarily derivative intelligence, not
exclusively but pretty well derivative intelligence from the security
agencies, primarily the police, and we would have to trawl through
that, checking with the host/owner of the information and make
sure that everything is synchronised as well. We might have our
own intelligence that is acquired through interviews and a number
of situations. So we have to pay very close attention. The Wright
inquiry took three senior people three days to trawl through the
information we have on that just to make sure that it met the
requirements of law, met the needs of the inquiry and certainly
had the sanction of the owner agencies of the information.
Chairman: Can I move on with Mr
Wilson, please?
Q98 Sammy Wilson: I want to really
explore the impact your work has on the PSNI, obviously when cases
are referred to you. I suspect that if the Historic Enquiries
Team refers cases to you they have not done a lot of preliminary
work other than to identify there might be some wrongdoing or
an allegation of wrongdoing by the police. So you are probably
making requests then from the police for files and evidence. How
do you find the promptness of the police in responding to those
requests?
Mr Hutchinson: I will go back
to Sam, but generally from my short-term experience here I have
had no difficulty, have heard of no difficulty at the present
time. I think there might have been some start-up issues. Nevertheless,
for example, it is publicly known the Stalker referral came in
and the police had about 70 boxes of evidence available for our
review, apart from the documentation that we got on the original
case. They have to maintain that, catalogue it, hold it securely
for us until we get a chance to examine it. That would be at the
top end of the spectrum. Other cases where HET would have collected
the information, they called around the police stations and certainly
identified officers. A lot of that material is available. But
of course, we would—as is your point—have to go back
and query officers. We would have to look for records on all the
retired officers who were available and really that would be a
piece of work for the police.
Q99 Sammy Wilson: Apart from collecting
the information, is there any other sifting work you would require
the police to do before they hand over material to you?
Mr Hutchinson: No. We would take
the view, because of our independence and impartiality, that we
would really take the whole basket of goods, but again, recognising
the police have collected it, we would have to go back and query
them on particular cases and particular files. But we would not
demand of the police that they do any work. I am not sure if that
is what you are implying.
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