Examination of Witness (Questions 400-419)
MS JANE
WINTER
2 APRIL 2008
Q400 Lady Hermon: How many cases
would you have had of families coming to you and saying that the
Police Ombudsman has failed to keep them informed? What sort of
numbers are we looking at?
Ms Winter: I am sorry I am not
very good at giving you numbers; it is simply that we do not count
them.
Q401 Lady Hermon: It would be helpful
if you would send us a note.
Ms Winter: What I can say is that
the majority of people who come to us—as I say only people
who are unhappy about something come to us—have complained
about these long patches of time where no information is forthcoming.
I have met with Dame Nuala O'Loan when she was Police Ombudsman
and discussed this issue with her. What she said to me was that
their difficulty was that they were often waiting for information
from other people and did not really have anything to tell the
family. That is a view that I absolutely understand, but from
the family's point of view silence means that nothing is happening
at all.
Q402 Chairman: If the train comes
to a halt the passengers like to know why, even if they are told
repeatedly that they cannot establish the cause.
Ms Winter: Yes. Or just to know
that the Police Ombudsman has been doing something but they are
being held up by somebody else.
Chairman: You make the point very well.
Anything you can do to flesh out that answer would be helpful.
Q403 Kate Hoey: I probably should
know this, Ms Winter, but who actually funds you?
Ms Winter: We are a registered
charity and about 90% of our funding comes from other charities
who make charitable donations and those would include the Joseph
Rowntree Charitable Trust, the Oak Foundation, the Hilda Mullen
Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies. About 10% of our funding
comes from individual charitable donations.
Q404 Kate Hoey: You have said quite
a lot about the Lord Saville inquiry and you say here that Lord
Saville wanted to conduct a "thorough and impartial inquiry,
and by and large it would appear that he has succeeded in doing
so, although his final report will be the ultimate measure of
that". You are an organisation that actually represents everyone's
human rights; how are you going to assess this very interesting
term that it will be the "ultimate measure" of whether
it has been thorough and impartial inquiry. Is that because you
have already decided what you would like it to say?
Ms Winter: I have no idea what
it is going to say. I am very perturbed by the fact that it is
taking so long to say it, as indeed are the victims. No, I am
not prejudging the issue at all. What I meant by that was that
our contact has primarily been with the victims and their families.
Most of them were initially very cautious and suspicious about
the new public inquiry and I believe that Lord Saville and his
team won them over in the way he conducted the inquiry. Many of
the relatives have said to me that whatever the outcome they feel
as though they had a fair hearing. However, from our point of
view, given that the Widgery report was so highly criticised,
Lord Saville has expressed some consciousness of this and he knows
that he will be judged at the end of the day on the product he
produces. That is all that I meant about this.
Q405 Chairman: So we must not read
anything too sinister into your submission.
Ms Winter: Not at all; I did not
mean it in a sinister way.
Q406 Mr Hepburn: In your opinion,
from your experience and the work you have done in the world of
human rights in Northern Ireland over the years, how widespread
do you think collusion actually was in Northern Ireland? Was it
just the high profile cases that we have seen or do you think
it went on to a greater extent?
Ms Winter: I wish I knew the answer
to that question.
Q407 Mr Hepburn: Do you have an opinion
on it?
Ms Winter: I suspect that it was
quite widespread—I think the Operation Ballast report which
came out with a catalogue of things in that instance that Special
Branch were doing wrong—because it strikes me not just from
reading that report but from having worked on other cases where
I have seen some of the same things happen, those were ways of
working, those were policies; they were not rotten apples in the
barrel, as it were, they were shortcuts in lots of cases that
should not have been taken. I tend therefore to think that that
was systemic.
Q408 Mr Hepburn: At all levels, from
your bobby on the beat to senior levels; it was just part of their
every day work.
Ms Winter: I think it was possibly
more certain parts of organisations, whether it was within Special
Branch or within the army rather than the whole organisation.
I think there were plenty of ordinary coppers on the beat doing
their best to do a very good job, but when intelligence was not
being handed to them by those who had that intelligence then they
could not use it to prevent crime or detect crime. I have spoken
to many police officers who felt as if they were operating with
one hand tied behind their back. I am not saying that this was
a complete culture but I think there were methods of working which
made it more difficult for those who really just wanted to get
on and do a good job to do their job properly.
Q409 Chairman: Bearing in mind the
population in Northern Ireland is not a lot different from the
population of greater Birmingham or Staffordshire, would you not
think that any police force confronted with the repeated atrocities
that happened during that period by whomsoever committed—IRA
or Loyalists or whoever—would have been overwhelmed, particularly
bearing in mind that police stations were continuously being targeted.
We discovered when we were there that one of the reasons why evidence
was in short supply was that there were 87 bombings of police
stations, there were two very significant attacks on the forensic
laboratory. It was a very real battle against the odds, was it
not?
Ms Winter: It was, and I think
we acknowledge that in our submission. For example, we mention
1972 when I think nearly 500 people were murdered in one year.
No police force could cope with that adequately and for that reason
I think that some of the criticisms that have been made of the
RUC are not fair because any police force would have had difficulty.
I would also, if I may, add to that that any police force anywhere
in the world—I think human rights groups all over the world
would back me up on this—will say that the less scrutiny
you put your police under, the less well they behave. It is true
that for a long time there was very little scrutiny in Northern
Ireland. That has changed a great deal.
Q410 Chairman: They are probably
the most scrutinised police in the world.
Ms Winter: Possibly. Certainly
Sir Hugh Orde would say so.
Q411 Dr McDonnell: Before I start
my questions on the Cory inquiry, I would like to commend you
for your discretion and your diplomacy around Widgery because
words like "whitewash", "dishonest" and "scandal"
come to my mind. Have you any opinion on the Cory public inquiries
and what benefits might we expect from the outcomes?
Ms Winter: Again it is always
hard to anticipate. Things have already happened in the Billy
Wright inquiry which is the most advanced which we would never
have expected, so it is hard to anticipate exactly. I do not believe
there are going to be any more public inquiries in Northern Ireland
so these are significant for a lot of people. My hope would be
that they will fairly and properly conducted, that they will not
be obstructed which really does appear to have been a problem
with the Billy Wright inquiry both by the prison service who destroyed
800 prisoners' files knowing that there was going to be a public
inquiry. My hope would be that state agencies will not be in a
position to stop an inquiry set up by the state; that should not
be allowed to happen in a democratic society. If that does not
happen and those inquiries are able to come to the truth about
what happened in those cases, then I think that will do a lot
to restore people's confidence in the public administration of
justice.
Q412 Dr McDonnell: What do you see
as the ultimate end point in terms of benefits from these? How
do you feel that benefit relates to the cost? We heard many times
that a lot of money had been poured into the Saville inquiry and
the suggestion is that there will be no satisfactory outcome or
no satisfactory conclusions and no closure.
Ms Winter: That would be a tragedy.
I must say that is not my expectation of the Bloody Sunday inquiry
from having seen how it was conducted. As we were all acknowledging
at the outset of this session, inevitably not everybody is going
to be satisfied, not everybody is going to find out exactly what
happened to their loved one and that could be the case in any
of these inquiries. This is a process of an honest endeavour to
come to the truth, done in the public gaze, for anyone to scrutinise
for themselves, particularly in Northern Ireland where there has
not been enough of that in the past. Remarkably the Saville inquiry
was only the second public inquiry ever to have been held after
Widgery and now we have another three (in my view there should
be a fourth into the case of Patrick Finucane but that has not
yet happened).
Q413 Dr McDonnell: Do you feel that
with the high costs of these there is a cost benefit there? Would
we not be better, as some people suggest, to hand the families
and surviving victims of these situations a large sum of compensation
rather than spend it on an inquiry.
Ms Winter: I certainly do not
think that the families would accept financial compensation in
lieu of proper investigation. I do not think that would bring
them any closure. From their point of view this is not an exercise
that is about money and very often the publicity that is generated
by the inquiry makes it sound as if the families are somehow raking
in huge sums of money whereas of course they do not get any money
out of a public inquiry. What they are looking for is the truth
and some resolution and, crucially, they do not want what happened
to them to happen to anybody else. That is a thing that we find
over and over again, whether people have an inquiry or not. What
people say to us more often than not is that there is nothing
they can do about what happened to their loved one but they do
not want it to happen to anybody else.
Q414 Chairman: What do you say about
people like Sir Kenneth Bloomfield who said to the Committee a
couple of weeks ago in Belfast that the only people who get rich
out of inquiries are the lawyers? We really do need, whilst recognising
all the sensitivities, to have some alternative to just enriching
the lawyers. How do you respond to that?
Ms Winter: I would certainly agree
with you. I think that there are cost benefits to holding public
inquiries, but whether the costs that are incurred are justified
or reasonable is a different question. Judge Cory himself came
up in his reports with several suggestions for ways of capping
the costs and also making sure that things happen in a timely
fashion instead of dragging on and on, which I am not sure have
been taken fully to heart by the inquiries, although it may be
early days yet especially since two of them have not actually
started work yet.
Q415 Dr McDonnell: Is the public
inquiry the only way to pursue the issues involved, or is there
an alternative that might bring closure to the families and might
bring closure to the victims who are left behind?
Ms Winter: I think it depends
on whether you are looking to the past or to the future. If we
look to the future there is a very cost effective way of ensuring
that there is no need for a public inquiry, which is often really
an admission of failure; everything else has not worked and you
end up with a public inquiry. The way to avoid that is to have
effective investigations in the first place. We are moving in
that direction; we are getting better at it I think. That is by
far and away the cheapest way of bringing closure and of dealing
with serious crime. Of course you cannot make right the past where
that has not happened. As I say, I do not think we are going to
see any more public inquires in Northern Ireland although there
are many families who are calling for public inquiries. Many people
feel they deserve a public inquiry and should get one but I do
not think it is going to happen, so it is important that the ones
that are happening do it right.
Q416 Dr McDonnell: Is it a good thing
that there will be no further public inquiries?
Ms Winter: Not for the individual
families; for them it is a tragedy. I have been using the word
public inquiry rather loosely but of course inquiries under the
Inquiries Act are not really the same as public inquiries like
the Saville inquiry was. I think it is generally felt that public
inquiries are not the best way of dealing with things. When everything
has gone wrong to have a hugely expensive, very time consuming
public inquiry does not seem to be the best way of dealing with
it. It cannot be beyond the wit of human kind to come up with
something better.
Q417 Dr McDonnell: What do you say
to those who suggest that the reputation being built for the PSNI
is being undermined and damaged by some of these inquiries even
though they are inquiries into the activities of the RUC as it
was then?
Ms Winter: I think that that is
currently a matter which is in the hands of the PSNI itself in
that if they are seen to act properly now and if they also make
it very clear to the public that they operate very differently
nowadays than the RUC used to, then it is a hearts and minds exercise
that they have an opportunity to win. I also think that if people
come to a public inquiry and give an honest account of what happened,
however wrong what took place may have been, that does actually
reinforce public confidence because they say, "Well, at least
this person is being honest; we are now getting to the truth,
we are getting to the bottom of it and we can put it in the past
where it belongs".
Q418 Stephen Pound: Good afternoon,
Ms Winter. Thank you very much for finding time to come and see
us. We seem to be spending so much time talking about costs that
I think I would say that many of us respect the fact that you
set up British Irish Rights Watch on an entirely voluntary basis
and for the first five years you did not even get paid for it.
You said something extraordinarily interesting a moment ago. You
said, "It is not beyond the wit of human kind to come up
with a better way of doing it". Could I refer you specifically
to the issue of historic inquests? There are about 100 historic
inquests outstanding and about half of them could reasonably be
classified as contentious. Sir Hugh Orde has said that his concern
is that every one of those could end up as a mini public inquiry,
particularly because of the requirements of disclosure. Bearing
in mind that you have talked about article 2 earlier on and bearing
in mind there have been rulings on about six of those cases, could
you apply the wit of human kind to come up with a better way of
addressing that issue? Do you think that those inquests, if addressed
through the Winter mechanism, would provide what you referred
to earlier on as closure?
Ms Winter: I am afraid that I
probably need the collective help of some other bits of human
kind to come up with a proper blue print.
Q419 Stephen Pound: Give us a clue.
Give us the shape of it. Who would it consist of? Would it be
people from Northern Ireland or would it be people from outside?
Ms Winter: Your question was about
inquests specifically but you seem to me to be asking more about
something like a truth commission perhaps.
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