Examination of Witness (Questions 360-379)
MS JANE
WINTER
2 APRIL 2008
Q360 Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome.
Could I also, on behalf of the Committee, thank you very much
indeed for agreeing to come and give evidence. You are of course
aware that this evidence is, although not being broadcast on the
television, is available on the internet and of course everything
is taken down and there will be a full published transcript. Are
you quite happy about that?
Ms Winter: Yes, I am.
Q361 Chairman: Fine. You have been
the Director of British Irish Rights Watch for how long?
Ms Winter: Since 1995.
Q362 Chairman: So you have done a
good stint. Before we move onto the questions, is there anything
that you wish to say by way of opening statement?
Ms Winter: Only to thank you very
much for inviting me here today.
Q363 Chairman: You know that we are
looking into the past, the historic enquiries, the work of the
Ombudsman, the cost and whether it is proportionate, how long
this should go on and all the rest of it. We will be making a
report to Parliament which will of course be published and we
will publish it with a press conference in Northern Ireland towards
the end of June/early July time. We are about half way through
now. We took evidence in Northern Ireland a couple of weeks ago
and we shall be taking further evidence in Northern Ireland early
in May. Did you hear the evidence we took in Northern Ireland?
Ms Winter: I have not, no.
Q364 Chairman: Have you read it?
Ms Winter: I have not yet, no.
I have read some of the testimony you have taken here in London
but I have not caught up with that from Northern Ireland.
Q365 Chairman: Can you give me by
way of opening your views on the work of the Historical Enquiries
Team? We have visited it; we have seen it at first hand. In your
opinion is it achieving what it set out to do?
Ms Winter: That is actually a
very difficult question for me to answer because my organisation
is involved in quite a few of the cases that the Historical Enquiries
Team is looking into.
Q366 Chairman: How many?
Ms Winter: It would be hard to
give you an exact number, but somewhere between 30 and 50 I would
think, spread across the whole time period that they cover, so
some of them are more recent and some of them are quite old.
Q367 Chairman: Is your time span
the same, 1968 to 1998?
Ms Winter: No, our time span is
1968 to today, but we have cases that coincide with their time
span. So far we have not seen a final report from the HET on any
of our cases so it is difficult for us to judge whether they are
in fact delivering what they promised. However, we are obviously
aware of other cases that other NGOs have been involved in where
there seems to have been a somewhat patchy response. Some people
have been very, very pleased with the work of the HET and feel
that they have really achieved some closure to the loss of their
loved one and others have been critical about mistakes in the
report and so on. The one thing we have always found is that the
HET are very, very family friendly and if they do make a mistake
and it is pointed out to them, they will do something about it;
they do not insist on their version of events and they will look
at it again. They do make real efforts to involve families in
the work and to try to keep them informed.
Q368 Chairman: That very much bears
out what we saw because we met a few families, obviously confidentially
and we would never name them, but we did get the impression that
the matter was being dealt with meticulously, that it was being
dealt with sensitively and that even those families who could
not be entirely happy with the outcome at least respected the
integrity of the operation. That would seem to accord with your
general comments.
Ms Winter: It certainly would,
yes. As you say, for many families the truth is never going to
be discovered. People are quite realistic about that, they do
not usually have huge expectations that somebody is going to be
prosecuted after 30 years or whatever. The families that we work
with feel that the Historical Enquiries Team is doing its best
to get to the truth and is also prepared to share with them as
much information as they are legally allowed to share which, for
many families, is a new experience.
Q369 Chairman: When we were in Northern
Ireland we also went off to the Ombudsman's office where again
we met with senior officials and we also met with representatives
of some families. We had evidence which you will have read because
it was here in London from the Ombudsman himself in which he expressed
very great anxiety about being submerged in the past as far as
his operations are concerned and about his ability to deliver
what he believes the Ombudsman should be delivering now and also
coping with the past. What views do you have on that?
Ms Winter: It is all a question
of resources at the end of the day. I was having a look at the
budgets available to the police, the HET and the Police Ombudsman
and just on last year's annual figures it would appear that whilst
the police have £2 million a day to run their operation the
Police Ombudsman has only £24,500 and the HET has only £15,000
which are minuscule by comparison, and yet some of these historical
cases are very, very difficult and they would, in my view, be
a major crime operation if they were to occur today and yet neither
the HET nor the Police Ombudsman has the resources to deal with
that sort of work.
Q370 Chairman: What is your answer
to that? Would you do as the Ombudsman has said he would like
and have the operation divided into two so that there is not a
drain on the resources for current work? Would you keep them together
under his general oversight? How would you deal with that?
Ms Winter: I am well aware that
Dame Nuala O'Loan, his predecessor, has proposed that there should
be one unit which is made up of what is now the HET and the historical
aspects of the Police Ombudsman's Office and that is actually
quite an attractive proposition with some provisos. It is attractive
because it would do away with any duplication between the two
organisations of which there is inevitably some. It is attractive
from the Historical Enquiries Team's point of view because it
would get round the fact that it is the police investigating the
police and therefore they are not compliant with article 2 of
the European Convention in terms of independence. It would also
overcome the problem that the Police Ombudsman has which is that
his remit is limited to police misconduct and he cannot look at
the bigger picture. From all of those points of view I think her
idea has merit. The provisos would be that it must have the resources
that it needs, the powers that it needs and hopefully it would
not lose the learning that both the Police Ombudsman's Office
and the Historic Enquiries Team have already amassed, which is
quite considerable. One would hope that they would inherit the
staff who had been doing the work anyway.
Q371 Chairman: You said very honestly
that you could not deliver a verdict on HET apart from expressing
a general satisfaction with the modus operandi. What about your
experience of the work that the Ombudsman's Office has done? Are
you well content with that or do you feel it has not been well
done?
Ms Winter: We are in a better
position to comment on that because his office has been around
for longer and we have seen more cases that we have been involved
in come to fruition. The outcomes there have been patchy. I think
it very much depends on the quality of the individual investigating
officers. Some of them are excellent and do a very, very thorough
job and they explore every nook and cranny of the complaint; others
seem to be much more superficial. As an institution certainly
up until now we have found the Police Ombudsman's Office much
less family friendly than the Historical Enquiries Team. They
are much more concerned with confidentiality and not wanting to
disclose more than the bare minimum of information to families
which can be very, very frustrating because families are much
more often interested in finding out the truth about what happened
than in making a complaint against an individual police officer.
Q372 Mr Campbell: In your submission
you talked about HET being given the tools it requires to finish
the job. Can you put some flesh on that? What does that actually
mean?
Ms Winter: As you know they have
been given six years to try to cover all the murders that took
place been 1968 and 1998. It is obvious when one looks at the
sums and the number of cases they have managed to close so far
that they are going to overshoot that target; they are not going
to make it in six years. What I was trying to argue in my submission
was that now that this enterprise has been started so many expectations
have been raised amongst those families who come within the remit
of the HET that it would be devastating for them if their case
does not get looked at. I am arguing that they should be given
the resources that they need to finish the job, even if it takes
longer than originally anticipated.
Q373 Mr Campbell: You also said,
"It is crucial in our view that whatever the cost, the HET
should be allowed to continue its work", the relevant quote
being "whatever the cost".
Ms Winter: I can see why those
who hold the purse strings might not enjoy that phrase. I obviously
do not mean that they should not be cost effective and that they
should not be accountable for their money, but what I was trying
to imply was that costs should not be the final arbiter in this
exercise. This is a unique exercise, it has never been done before
and, as I say, it has raised many expectations and to shut it
down on financial grounds I think would have more detrimental
effects than any benefit from saving money.
Q374 Mr Campbell: You go on a bit
further than that and you have said, "If HET was not allowed
to complete its work the expectations of a large number of victims
would be dashed and public confidence in the police and the criminal
justice system would be dealt a body blow from which it may never
recover". Is that not a rather extreme statement to make?
Ms Winter: I do not think it is.
I think it can be underestimated, particularly by people from
outside Northern Ireland unlike yourself, how difficult a job
the RUC had during the conflict. The reason why it was not able
to deal with what we would think of as ordinary crimes a lot of
the time was because all of its resources and energy were focused
on an almost unmanageable situation. We have found in our work
right across the community that people on all sides have felt
they have not had a decent service in the past. The Historical
Enquiries Team, because of its openness and its willingness to
engage in dialogue with families is, I think, helping to restore
confidence in modern policing and some of that thinking is also
taking root within the PSNI who are themselves becoming more family
centred, better at family liaison than they used to be and so
on. So there is a kind of symbiotic relationship there and I just
think from the families we work with who have been engaging with
the HET, if the HET rug was pulled from under their feet then
they would lose faith in the police altogether.
Q375 Mr Campbell: I do not doubt
what you say about the work of the HET. Everyone that I have spoken
to and the Committee have spoken to speak very highly of the work
of HET. However, are you saying that the work of policing in 2008
in Northern Ireland would be dealt a body blow from which it may
not recover because of the attitudes of a number of people to
investigations into events of some 30 years ago that were not
satisfactorily concluded?
Ms Winter: Yes, I am saying that
because there is a historical continuum. It is not true that this
is now and that was then. For people who lost a loved one where
there has been no resolution to the case it is as if it happened
yesterday. Now that there is some glimmer of a possibility of
some resolution and some closure to that, if you took that away
that would affect, I think, people's attitudes towards the police
now. That is partly because the HET is seen as part of the PSNI,
which of course it is. Dave Cox is answerable to an assistant
chief constable. It is part and parcel of the police and people
are well aware of that; they do not see it as a separate organisation.
One of the HET's difficulties is that it is not seen as being
sufficiently independent by some people.
Q376 Mr Campbell: In terms of day
to day policing where people are now phoning the police more and
more in relation to antisocial activities, criminal activities,
car theft, all of that where some people say they are achieving
excellent results, some people say it could be improved, but the
fact is that they are reporting to the police which historically
they would not have done. Are you saying that all of that would
be jeopardised for all the hundreds of thousands of people over
a period of years from now on who have to report criminal activity,
because of an uncompleted HET investigation the bulk of which
relates to the 1970s and the 1980s?
Ms Winter: I am not sure that
it would all be jeopardised but I think it would create a huge
hurdle for the PSNI to have to get over. It has been building
public confidence, as you rightly say, and people are much more
willing to engage with the police now than they used to be. When
somebody is murdered there is a ripple effect. It does not just
affect the immediate family of that victim, it often affects an
extended family and sometimes a whole community. People who were
not directly involved in that murder nonetheless are intensely
interested in the investigation and the outcome of that investigation.
I do not think that should be underestimated. It is for that reason
that I feel that to just disband the HET in the middle of its
work would do more harm than good.
Q377 Mr Campbell: The Ombudsman and
some other witnesses have suggested that it might be possible
to hive off all of this work to separate agencies. Do you have
a view on that?
Ms Winter: As I was saying earlier,
I think that is what Dame Nuala O'Loan has been recommending.
I certainly think it does have some attractions to it from the
Police Ombudsman's point of view that he could get on with the
current complaints system.
Q378 Chairman: That is very much
his view.
Ms Winter: Yes.
Q379 Mr Campbell: Cost would a secondary
factor as far you are concerned.
Ms Winter: As said earlier, it
would need to be sufficiently resourced. It would need to be at
least as good as what people have now.
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