Examination of Witness (Questions 429-439)
MR WHITE
AND MR
LAMONT
2 APRIL 2008
Q429 Chairman: Mr White and Mr Lamont,
could I welcome you both. You are here to speak on behalf of the
Retired Police Officers' Association. We are grateful to you for
agreeing to a public evidence session. If there are matters that
you would like to raise in private with the Committee after the
public session perhaps you could indicate to me and we will make
arrangements for that. We are allowing up to an hour for this
session but if we can get through it before then I know it will
assist you in your journey back. Is there anything that either
of you would like to say by way of opening statement before I
start the questioning?
Mr White: On behalf of the Retired
Police Officers' Association thank you for the opportunity of
having us here. It is a refreshing experience in that more often
we are an organisation or a group of people talked about rather
than talked to. We see ourselves as being major stakeholders in
all the events that are now being examined and yet there is a
paucity of contact with us. We find ourselves having to elbow
our way into the space that others occupy. Why that is we have
not yet resolved, but sometimes a good conspiracy theory can be
destroyed by our presence because we introduce such things as
fact and that may not please some people. As I say, it is a delight
to be here and if we can assist your Committee in any way we will
do so.
Q430 Chairman: Thank you; we are
very grateful to you. Could I just say that we have regular and
frequent contact with the PSNI and with Sir Hugh and his senior
colleagues in particular. This is our first contact with your
Association but I know that I speak for all members of the Committee
in saying that we have an enormous regard for the courage and
the stamina of those who served first in the RUC and more recently
in the PSNI. We know that you and your members suffered greatly
during the troubles and although no record is ever totally unblemished
the award of the GC was more than justified and we pay tribute
to you. Thank you for what you have done.
Mr White: Thank you.
Mr Lamont: Thank you.
Q431 Chairman: As you know we are
looking into the whole business of the past, how it is dealt with,
for how long, by whom, the cost, whether it is proportionate or
disproportionate, whether there should be no limit. All those
things are within our remit. How do you, as retired officers,
see the work of the Historic Enquiries Team? There have been,
from time to time, criticisms that there has not been the greatest
cooperation that there might have been, but would you like to
tell me how you see things and how you deal with that criticism
which does, from time to time, come up?
Mr White: We see the core of the
work that the HET does as a very essential requirement, and that
is the capacity to feed back to those people who seek information,
that particular information or whatever can actually be released.
In that sense we have met with Mr Cox on two occasions to ensure
that he understood that insofar as retired police officers are
concerned we would give every cooperation in that respect, balanced
against the requirement as we saw it, that whatever information
he did release he released it with a contextual dimension attached
to it because the earlier releases that were being made by HET
were simply based on the record in respect of what was written
but gave no feedback to those who were seeking information as
to what the actual policing context was or what environment we
lived in. A simple example of that was that quite often bodies
had to be left at roadsides for maybe a number of days before
they could be lifted and taken to a mortuary. To any young person
reading about that, about what happened to his uncle or his father
two decades ago, it would be offensive for any body to be left
in those circumstances. It needs to be explained to that individual
that there was immense danger quite often in recovering bodies,
especially in border areas, when the body itself would be booby
trapped and you were totally dependent on the army technical officer
saying to you that the pathway is now clear to collect that body.
We were asking of Mr Cox to make absolutely sure, when he was
bringing it home to these people, that he explained the policing
environment which perhaps foreclosed on us being able to do things
with the speed or in the manner which perhaps one would expect
of policing today. I accept that from the HET perspective and
the giving feedback of information, it is difficult, but we do
have concerns. We have concerns from the point of view that £34
million has been ring fenced and, speaking as an ex-police officer,
if you tell any police officers anywhere in a policing environment
that there is a specific sum of money to be spent I can almost
assure you that the structures will be put in place to spend that
money. What I fear now to some degree is that a Rolls Royce industry
has been somewhat created. We are told that the HET exists to
review all murder cases as such, and our members look to see what
the purpose of the review is. In part we are told it is intended
to run with prosecutions where such prosecutions are available.
We know from experience that the reality of achieving a prosecution
is extremely limited in relation to such cases, especially so
where the older cases involved as matters were investigated under
different legislation; suspects were interviewed under different
conditions, investigating officers who were in charge of those
inquiries are now deceased and forensic evidence was collected
and stored under different rules and requirements. The opportunity
of bringing all that together in 2008 to launch a prosecution
for an offence that occurred, say, in 1977 we would say is unrealistic.
What we do worry about is that there is still an element of people
within the province who look to HET in a sense to deliver up to
them justice in the form of making people amenable to the courts
for past offences. The other side of the work of HET's work is
overlaid to some degree in our mind by the political situation.
The Maze Prison was emptied under the Northern Ireland Sentences
Act and in reality we do not see politicians of whatever persuasion
seeking to refill the Maze by putting people back before the courts.
From our perspective the retrospective investigation dimension
of HET we see the clock is already ticking in a run down fashion
from the point of view of further investigations in that respect.
In our submission to Eames-Bradley and in anticipation that the
vast majority of people would be asking that group to look forward
to the future as such, we said that as an Association we felt
that the time has arrived for a good hard-nosed stock taking of
exactly how the work of the HET can be taken forward and in what
areas it is likely to be effective in rendering the information
people are looking for. I see from the evidence that has been
given to you, and from your visits, you met with eight different
family groups who no doubt expressed an element of satisfaction
for what they have got from the process. We have not canvassed
or looked for anything in relation to how HET has done its work,
but in at least two cases we know there has been an element of
re-traumatisation by the fact that HET has come back into the
lives of people when they had to some degree comes to terms with
those issues. I would simply caution that there are always two
sides to what HET does. It is a little bit "in a sense"
cold calling on families and inviting themselves in to make comments.
Q432 Chairman: Is it logical to draw
the inference from what you have just been saying that there should
be some time limit put on this, and that in the fairly near future?
Is it also fair to draw the inference that the logic of your argument
is that perhaps a general amnesty should be issued?
Mr White: There are two issues
there, one is how you bring some element of closure to the investigative
dimension; that is the investigative dimension I would say by
HET and by the Ombudsman's Office. Both are basically left with
the requirement to look backwards. It certainly goes against the
grain—for myself, my colleague and the rest of our Association
as ex police officers—to close the door on any crime. A
recommendation we made for consideration by Eames-Bradley was
one that we felt might offer some way forward and that was not
an absolute closing of the door, but in fact a drawing of the
line in the sand that people have asked for, and then allowing
there after a very controlled mechanism that would enable retrospective
investigation to take place as and where it was deemed to be required.
The line in the sand we saw being drawn was to keep the Sentence
Review Act as it currently stands, which designates that offences
that occurred before April 1998 as being offences for which the
maximum period of imprisonment, should you ever be found guilty,
will be two years. The Ombudsman's Office, when it was originally
set up, had a retrospective period attached to it of two years
which took it back to 1999. Our suggestion was to use the earlier
date of 1998 as a mechanism for drawing that particular line in
the sand. Thereafter we suggested that there should be looked
at what you could call a two-tier requirement. One was that there
should be credible evidence brought forward in relation to any
case that people would seek to have retrospectively investigated.
At this moment in time all you really have to do is turn up at
the office of HET or the Ombudsman or anywhere else and simply
allege collusion, conspiracy or something else. You do not have
to go into any detail as regards the evidence you wish to put
forward. What we suggested was that there should be a basis of
credible evidence, in other words that you have to establish a
prima facie case. You have a perpetrator who has made an
admission; you have eye-witnesses who have now come forward having
been silent for whatever period of time; you have turned up fresh
circumstantial evidence; something that gives a credible base
for that investigation to be launched. The second tier of that
was that it had to be in the public interest, in other words if
Eames-Bradley are told that the majority of people wish to be
forward looking, then in acknowledgement of that forward looking
dimension, it has to be asked whether it is in the public interest
that this investigation actually takes place? The public interest
may be: has this person appeared before the court on other offences?
In other words, was he convicted maybe 15 years in the past for,
shall we say, possession of a firearm that was used in a murder
when in actual fact he is now coming forward and admitting that
murder? Anything put before the Director of Public Prosecutions
or a judge would have to be considered on the basis that if the
two offences had been before him then he would have dealt with
it by way of consecutive sentences as opposed to now sentencing
the individual for a new offence. The age of the individual may
be of concern for if you are dealing with somebody who is perhaps
in their late 70s or 80s now, is it in the public interest to
go forward if you apply the two-tier test to it? The other recommendation
was that this should all be controlled through a Victims' Commissioner
with a Victims' Commission in support of him, in other words they
would take the issue on board as part of the determination as
to what a particular victim or a victim's family wanted.
Q433 Chairman: Have you submitted
this to Eames-Bradley?
Mr White: Yes, we have given it
to Eames-Bradley.
Q434 Chairman: Have you given it
to us?
Mr White: I cannot answer that.
Chairman: I am told we have a copy. Obviously
we want to take that into account.
Q435 Sammy Wilson: On the first point
where there has to be some credible evidence, is there a danger
there that it is only those families who may well have the resources
or some other backing to dig into a case and find out about it
and go and talk to witnesses or get someone to do some private
work on the case? Only those people would have the chance of getting
the case re-opened and others who did not have the resources or
some group backing them would not get access to have the case
re-opened.
Mr White: We saw the opportunity
being fairly flexible, in other words it was all based on the
fact that we were envisaging a one-stop shop for everybody that
considered themselves to be a victim. If you came along to the
particular body that we envisage within the Victims' Commission
and they, having the capacity through their legal representatives
to note the detail of what was required, the Victims' Commissioner
would then commission from HET from the PSNI or from the Ombudsman
an initial look to see whether there was a credible body of evidence
there, taking on board whatever the family was able to submit.
The problem at the moment is that the system is totally open.
You do not have to establish any credibility in order to make
the allegation of collusion for the issues to be examined. It
was trying to bring in some element of order to the process but
in such a way that you were not allowing every case to invite
itself to be opened up. We have acknowledged that we have not
gone through the minutia, it was simply put forward as a possible
tender for consideration as a way forward, not to close the door
entirely on criminal offences, be they committed by police, the
military or paramilitaries.
Q436 Lady Hermon: I wonder if I could
draw your attention to some of the work of the HET in particular.
At every stage you have, as we have just heard, indicated to the
Director, Dave Cox, that the Retired Police Officers' Association
are perfectly willing to work with them, provided that there is
a confidentiality that is attached to information you might give
that might lead to disclosure of the identity of the source. Is
that right?
Mr White: In relation to the identity
of sources we did not have any discussion with HET. Our concern
with HET was simply to say to people you have to be more fulsome.
In other words, rather than simply giving people the benefit of
a written record what we were saying was that we, as retired police
officers, are a resource and on occasions, if you wish, we are
prepared to meet with the relatives and explain to them what the
policing environment was in 1979 or 1982 or whenever if that helps
them fulfil their job. We made the offer but, to date, it has
not been picked up on in any shape or form.
Q437 Lady Hermon: You have not been
asked to speak to any of the families?
Mr White: We have not, although
I think Mr Cox has amended the practice and they are trying to
put a contextual dimension to it.
Q438 Lady Hermon: Can I ask the view
of your Association on the other aspect of HET which did, I must
say, come as some surprise to me. I thought HET was actually looking
at unsolved deaths in Northern Ireland but actually it is looking
at all deaths in Northern Ireland since 1968. Does the Association
have a view about the re-opening of all RUC investigations, even
those where people actually served a term of imprisonment?
Mr White: It is entirely a matter
for the chief constable and the HET as to how they structure themselves
in what they review. We live off it—as most of the public
live off it—simply on the documentation that HET has released
as regards its role. If I can go back to what I said before, this
is where some of the confusion seems to exist. HET is all things
to all people. Some people look on it for the primary task of:
will these people make somebody amenable for the atrocities that
were visited upon our family? Others are quite content to simply
see inquest papers or to ask very simple questions in relation
to why it took so long for the release of a father's body or the
collection of it. The HET in those circumstances, if nobody has
been charged, obviously cannot give the identity of the people
who were responsible but they may be able to indicate an organisation
or something of that nature. We have not had any further views
or engagements in relation to HET. The one question that our membership
by and large ask of us is: what is the output of HET? We constantly
look to see what cases are under investigation at the moment.
I think the evidence given to yourselves indicated that eight
cases have been referred for advice to the DPP and one case has
been referred for possible charging out of some 900 that have
been examined. We balance that against the 48-odd cases that have
already been handed over by HET to the Ombudsman for investigation
and there are 300-odd possibly in the pipeline that might have
some connection with police activity. Our people ask: where is
the balance in terms of what actually has been done here? The
focus does not seem to be on the 2,000-odd murders that were carried
out by the paramilitaries in relation to the Republicans or the
1,200-odd that were the responsibility of the Loyalists. When
they add to that the public inquires that are taking place, the
perception is that they are not focussed on anything else other
than the alleged misdoings of the police service. We have already
mentioned the inquests which again are totally focussed on it.
People ask within our Association: when does closure come in relation
to the police officers who served on a daily basis and who dealt
with the outcome of atrocities? We are not automatons; we have
lived through these things. We have somewhere in the region of
5,000-odd officers identified as having suffered from post-traumatic
stress. If we are going to go on continuously without a deadline,
trawling the most dark recesses of the past, then people in their
late 60s and 70s are to be invited back to revisit the minutiae
of how they dealt with those incidents. We now have a retrospection
industry growing up in Northern Ireland in terms of people looking
backwards and we feel that most of that retrospection, including
a large proportion of HET, is looking proactively at what you
would call alleged police misdemeanours. We have an element of
HET, as I am sure you are well aware, which does not serve in
Northern Ireland but seems to serve here in London looking at
intelligence papers as opposed to reviewing old offences.
Q439 Lady Hermon: We heard when earlier
evidence was given to us about a proposal to amalgamate because
there is obviously duplication between the work of the Police
Ombudsman's office and the HET. What is the Association's view
about the proposal that the historic investigations of the Police
Ombudsman and HET should be merged?
Mr White: The merger, is that
under the umbrella of what you are calling a historical Ombudsman
or simply HET?
|
