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CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1005-i House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE
MR JONATHAN PHILLIPS, MR NICK PERRY and MR ANTHONY HARBINSON Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 47
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the on Members present Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair Mr David Anderson Mr Stephen Hepburn Dr Alasdair McDonnell Mr Denis Murphy ________________ Memorandum submitted by The
Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Mr Jonathan Phillips, Permanent Secretary, Mr Nick Perry, Director General, Policing and Security, and Mr Anthony Harbinson, Director of Resources, Northern Ireland Office, gave evidence. Q1 Chairman: Mr Phillips, I would like to welcome you very warmly on behalf of the Committee, and of course Nick Perry, who is very well known to us, and Mr Harbinson. You are all very welcome. Could I apologise, first of all. This is the last week of term and I am afraid it is all too evident in the fact that we have only five of us here this afternoon. Some of our Members, particularly Lady Hermon, who has just suffered a family bereavement, have very good reasons for not being here. Her father has just died and I believe it is the funeral this week, certainly, I think it is today, so I know you will excuse her and I hope you can forgive the others as well. We have obviously been following events in Northern Ireland with care and great attention to detail and tremendous interest. From your vantage point, Mr Phillips, how do you see things on the ground? How do you see the developing relationships between the Northern Ireland Office and the new ministries of the Executive in Northern Ireland? Perhaps you could just sketch it in for us. Mr Phillips: Thank you, Chairman. Can I just say it is a great pleasure to be the first Northern Ireland Office Permanent Secretary to appear before your Committee, or indeed any of its predecessors, so just at what one may hope is close to the end point, this is an interesting precedent being set. That may be a good lead in, if I may take your question less on the level of making a comment about how the political situation has developed, because I know you have had - Q2 Chairman: Yes, it is more the administration, how it is working on the ground, you and those officials of the ministries, et cetera, how you are working together, all of that. Mr Phillips: Yes. I think those relationships are developing well. It is, of course, the case that throughout the period of direct rule there have been very close working relationships between a considerable number of civil servants now working for the Executive, some of whom (a minority, clearly) have actually worked in the Northern Ireland Office at periods, and that degree of familiarity greatly helps to oil the wheels of an effective relationship. I think the relationship is further helped by the fact that of course the Northern Ireland Office itself in its current form is very largely drawn from the ranks of the Northern Ireland Civil Service; it is only a small minority of us who come from the Home Civil Service, so there is a lot of relationship there, which helps. Now, of course, it was last year, in May, a very big change in the relationship as we stood back from a very great deal of activity and a new relationship in which the Secretary of State's role is very much, if you like, to be the champion of Northern Ireland in Cabinet but not actually being responsible for the detailed administration in Northern Ireland, except in relation to the matters for which we retain responsibility, most particularly justice and policing. Against that background, I think in a number of areas, the most recent of which and the most highly profiled of which probably is the Bombardier case, there has been the most excellent working relationship. Q3 Chairman: I think we would all echo that, yes. We were delighted to see the Farnborough announcement. Mr Phillips: But I think that is reflected in a number of areas where we are trying to prepare the ground for a long-term new relationship between a very different and very small Northern Ireland Office and an Executive which has responsibility, which we will have soon, for justice and policing. Q4 Chairman: On the present situation, just remind us for the record how many you have got at the moment in the Northern Ireland Office and how many of those are based in Northern Ireland and how many here in London. Mr Phillips: I can reel off a string of numbers, if you like. The core of the Northern Ireland Office, by which I mean those people you would think of as advising ministers day to day, as opposed to those in the Prison Service or in the Youth Justice Agency, and so on and so forth, in that core we have got something over 600 and of those based in London we have up to 80, but the majority are based in Northern Ireland. Q5 Chairman: Of course, and the London ones are virtually all in Millbank, presumably, are they? Mr Phillips: Yes. Q6 Chairman: Is there much to-ing and fro-ing between those based in Millbank and those based in Belfast? Mr Phillips: Amongst a significant minority of them, yes. I, when asked where my office is, most frequently say it is in the BMI Lounge at Heathrow because that is the way it appears! Q7 Chairman: I know the feeling, yes! Mr Phillips: But both my colleagues - and several
others - Nick Perry and Anthony Harbinson, are Belfast-based but find
themselves in Q8 Chairman: How many have been seconded over this last year since the establishment of the Executive, seconded from you to the new Executive ministries? Mr Phillips: There is no one, I think, seconded from us to them. I will double-check with Anthony. No one is the answer. The bulk of those 600 people, and many more in the civil service units which are part of the wider NIO, are drawn from the Northern Ireland Civil Service. We would tend to say they were on loan to us. Q9 Chairman: Yes. We know pretty clearly, I think, how the relationship works between the Secretary of State and his ministerial colleagues at Stormont. How does it work on the ground between respective officials? Mr Phillips: In the situation which has existed since last May with the Executive taking formal responsibility, we have and they have wanted to be very clear that our relationship is business-like and no longer in its previous manifestation. So the way in which we maintain those relationships and do the business is in one sense a formal one. Meetings are arranged and there are regular meetings between colleagues who have matters in common. For example, in Nick Perry's area there are a number of issues which do require close coordination with the Executive. A subject in which this Committee has been very much interested, organised crime, is not a matter which is exclusively for the NIO. Otherwise, I think I would put it this way, that we take care very much to keep friendships in good repair and I have maintained a pattern of regular meetings with the head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, recently retired, but I shall develop that with his successor, and that happens at other levels. Q10 Chairman: Similarly, good relationships with Dublin? Mr Phillips: I think relationships with Q11 Chairman: We have been very encouraged, and it is going to be part of the subject of our next inquiry, so I am particularly interested in your answer there. Without wishing to involve you, which would be quite wrong and very, very unfair, in the political debate, you have talked of policing and justice and clearly we have a great interest in that because it is the big remaining thing for which we have responsibility. How do you see it developing over the next year? Mr Phillips: As you rightly say, it is a
matter for political decision when it occurs, but I think it is legitimate for
me to say, as the senior manager in the organisation, the current NIO, that
from that perspective the sooner it happens the better. It is for this particular reason: certainly since May 2007 we have had a very
major programme preparing the current office for that transition, which will
see the bulk of its functions and staff forming a new Chairman: It is a very fair answer to the question. I rather think, politically, your wishes are not going to be immediately fulfilled, but we are, of course, equally interested. I would like to bring in Alasdair McDonnell because one of the things he is particularly interested in, as of course is the Committee because we produced a very major report on it, is the Prison Service, and I know he has some things he would like to ask you about that. Q12 Dr McDonnell: The recent Prison Service report was fairly scathing in parts. Perhaps I am rushing you. Perhaps you may not have had time to absorb most of it, it was only out recently, but do you have any views as to how you might resolve some of the issues involved there? Mr Phillips: I do absolutely accept that
the situation at Hydebank, because that is what you are referring to, presents
the Prison Service with many challenges. As you and this Committee are well
aware, those challenges are one group amongst a large number, given the nature
of the Dr McDonnell: There are just a couple of
points I would make. The first one is
that certainly we alluded to some of the issues which were raised in our
efforts there, but we were perhaps too polite and too genteel about how we
approached them. What struck me was that
these issues had been raised by us and I was surprised that perhaps they had
not moved a little sooner, because we were there probably twelve months or so
before the research was done for that report.
The other thing is, is there any possibility of us beginning to change
the culture in the prisons? What I mean by that is that I was very struck, on a
visit to Wheatfield Prison in Q13 Chairman: It is more for Robin Masefield, really, is it not, but would you like to comment on it? Mr Phillips: I never avoid the opportunity for a comment! I think Robin and his senior team (Robin in particular but I engage his senior team in the remark) would share your broad view that there needs to be a culture change. I think myself the culture is one aspect - and it is a vitally important one - of a more wide-ranging change, which this Committee has commented upon itself in its report, which is already underway. The pay and workforce strategy, which has been devised, is another aspect of it and is one way of moving the service forward from its historic past. I think we should be clear, it is not an easy thing to do in circumstances where the natural wastage (if I can use that rather horrible technical term about people working in the organisation) is slow. That simply reflects the facts of the demographics. But I have no doubt that what you describe, or what I characterise in your remarks as a desirable direction of travel, is very much in Robin Masefield's priorities. Chairman: It is, of course, one of the
legacies still of the Troubles. It is
inevitable, and we were conscious of this when we were visiting, but we were
greatly encouraged by many of the things which we saw and heard, and I would
just put it on record that the Committee, I think, was unanimously impressed by
Robin Masefield. We thought that he was
a very dedicated public servant who was seeking to do his best in difficult
circumstances with a difficult service.
That is not in any sense a criticism of those within it, who have had to
do the most difficult job themselves in prisons in the whole of the Q14 Mr Hepburn: One of the legacies also of the Troubles is that prison officers - and we learnt this when we were over there - are a lot better paid than their counterparts in the rest of the UK. Do you have a target for achieving parity on that particular section of staff? If you do, how are you going to go around to try and achieve it? Mr Phillips: If you would just permit me
to say one thing about Robin Masefield, because I am very grateful for the
Chairman's remarks, and I do share the view you have expressed and I know the
Secretary of State does, and he has referred to that in his evidence to you
last week. On the pay disparity, you are
absolutely right, and I think you will appreciate how difficult it is to move
forward on that kind of issue. I think
the progress which has been made with the earlier initiative in relation to night
custody guards and somewhat more recently with the Prisoner Escort Service,
which of course is operating in-house but with freshly recruited staff, both
signal a real determination to try and get to grips with that, and the pay and
workforce strategy to which I referred does see over the CSR period a
significant improvement, in the terms of your question, in the position. If you ask me the question, is there a target
date for achieving parity between Q15 Mr Hepburn: On the industrial relations side, it is very difficult because obviously you have got one sector of the workforce who came through the Troubles and quite rightly achieved that additional money, and then you are bringing somebody in alongside them on new terms and conditions. How does that work in practice? Mr Phillips: Both the schemes which I have mentioned are about bringing in people to take specific roles - and the titles of the schemes indicate what they are - which require a lesser range of skills and experience, which releases people who were previously in those roles (and perhaps in terms of this conversation therefore being overpaid in relation to those roles) to fill other positions in the Prison Service. The situation is not going to be fully resolved until the demographics help us, I think, to get to a position where both culturally and in terms of preserved rights in terms of income there has been a significant change. But as I say, in a whole number of areas specific schemes, reviews of particular allowances, the Prison Service is very much alive to the same sort of considerations which have been borne in mind by the leadership of the Police Service of Northern Ireland as they sought to make the transition from the Troubles to a normalised environment. All that having been said, I need hardly remind this Committee that Maghaberry in particular is very far from being a normal prison and I think it is correctly described as perhaps the most complex prison environment in the UK. That is not a justification for paying people more, but it is an explanation of the difficulties of managing an inherited situation. Chairman: I think we would endorse those remarks, too. It is truly unique, yes. Q16 Mr Hepburn: More to the point I intended to make, one of the difficult situations we saw was the prisoner separation, which in itself was horrendously costly and still means that even though it looks like the 2008 target will be met, it still is significantly higher than the cost per prisoner in the rest of the UK. Are you satisfied with the way the costs are reducing, and have we a timescale to see when parity will be reached? Will this be a continuing process? Mr Phillips: It will be a continuing process and I am absolutely at one with this Committee, as I understand your collective views, that the cost per prisoner place target is not, in its current form at the very least, a satisfactory comparative measure as between Northern Ireland and England and Wales, or Scotland, or anywhere else for that matter, substantially because of the point you make. No one would be more pleased than I if we could reach a position ere long in which the separated regime could be a thing of the past, but as someone who was around at the time of its introduction I am equally sure that had we not gone down that route at that time, predecessors, or even I, might have been sitting here in a much more difficult position answering questions about why certain events had occurred within that prison estate. Q17 Chairman: I think we would accept that, but we also believe very strongly, and we made the point in our report, that you will never have proper normality until you have got rid of this, and that is why we are keen to see it go. We are not so stupid as to think it can to tomorrow. Mr Phillips: No. Q18 Mr Anderson: I can understand what you are saying about the move from prison officers to night support officers and to prison escorts, but what are the plans where you are replacing like with like, so when prison officers retire and you need to replace them doing full prison officer jobs is there a programme in place then which has a differential between new staff doing a full job and people who retire? Mr Phillips: What there is is an agreement between the Prison Service and the main union concerned about staff reductions over the period associated with a pay deal, which helps over the period. I do not want to exaggerate the impact of this, but it helps over the period to start moving in the direction which you and your colleagues have identified as the correct direction of travel. It of course follows that new entries to the main grade officer cadre come in at a much lower level on the relevant scale, but that is not to say, because I do not want to mislead you, that there are two different scales in operation creating, if you like, a dual market because it simply has not been possible to negotiate that.[1] Mr Anderson: Can I raise something else in the same area? When we were there, it was just the start of the health provision in prisons being provided from the Health Service as opposed to being internal. Can you please tell us where you are on that now? Q19 Chairman: Yes, is that working smoothly? Mr Phillips: It is certainly working smoothly in broad terms, yes. It is a transition which only took place a few months ago formally - Q20 Chairman: And it was much delayed. Mr Phillips: -- and it was delayed and there was a lot of work done to try and see that the transfer would be as smooth as possible. I think it is fair to say, as I said to the Chairman, in broad terms it is working smoothly, but as you would expect there are all sorts of day by day little problems to iron out. But at this point, I think Robin Masefield would say that it was going as well as could reasonably have been expected in this timescale. Q21 Mr Anderson: So there might be operational issues, but it is not bureaucracy problems or resistance? Mr Phillips: I will just check with Nick Perry, because he is the best person. (Pause) Yes. Q22 Chairman: Looking at various statistics and things, yours appear to show that over the last three years public confidence in the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman increased by a modest 2%. How precisely you evaluate that I am not absolutely sure, but are you happy with this degree of public confidence? What measures do you have in mind to increase it? You will know that we have recently been looking at aspects of policing in the past and the role of the Ombudsman, HET, and all the rest of it. How do you see these things and how do you see the frequently claimed criticism that under-resourcing remains a problem? Mr Phillips: Let me take the statistical point first and then I will come to the resourcing point, which I think relates particularly to the Police Ombudsman's Office. On the statistics, I would not want to appear complacent but I am not unduly troubled by those numbers. It seems to me that, unsurprisingly, both the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman started off in a very different position in terms of public confidence from PSNI, deriving its confidence levels from the RUC. So we should have expected, and we did indeed see a major rise in confidence in PSNI. Frankly, if an independent office, independently staffed - and I am here thinking about the Police Ombudsman - by someone of the obvious independence of the recently retired Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, did not stand high in public confidence I would be surprised. So I think, actually, to say it has only increased by a couple of percentage points is not something that troubles me. On the resourcing question, again I am aware of your most recent report and the remarks you make on it there, and I know that the current Police Ombudsman has put his views to you, as indeed he has to us. Q23 Chairman: He came to the launch of our report and both he and Sir Hugh felt that we got it about right on those comments. Mr Phillips: We are, of course, giving very careful consideration to your report and Ministers will respond in the usual way. I think it is fair to say - and I know that both the Secretary of State and the Minister of State have said this - the appropriate time for us to think about the structure of the investigative apparatus, and the resourcing of it, is when we have got Eames/Bradley, and to anticipate that would be inappropriate - I think on this point the Government and the Committee are in exactly the same position. Q24 Chairman: Yes, and we made that point. Mr Phillips: We are in exactly the same place, so at this point I do not want to say that we think we should be resourcing to a particular level, but let us simply say that that will form part of the response to Eames/Bradley. Q25 Chairman: What about another source of resourcing and something which has always been subject to some contention within the province, and this is the Catholic representation in the Police Force. There is still quite a way to go to meet the 30% target for 2010. How do you see that? How necessary do you see this in the wake of welcome recent developments? I am sorry that my colleagues from the DUP are not here, because I know they would have particular questions to ask you in this context, and doubtless Dr McDonnell will, but I would like your general overview as to how you see it. Mr Phillips: I am deeply grateful that I have only got one! Mr Murphy: I'll bet you are! Q26 Dr McDonnell: Jonathan, I can assure you I am on your side! Mr Phillips: I am on everybody's side, of
course! On the target itself, the target
itself has a huge political importance on which it is not for me to comment. I will simply say that I am confident that on
the basis of the commitment to 7,500 regular police officers in PSNI through
the spending review period we (meaning we and they, and more importantly they)
are on target to achieve that 30% by the due date. The current position, I think, is about 24.5%
and that is the appropriate staging post which we were expecting in order to be
able to say, yes, we are on target.
There can, of course, be a political conversation around this. There might be a political conversation
around it post the devolution of the powers on policing and justice, but I feel
that the Government will have done all it can to live up to that commitment
which was given on the back of the Patten Report, as you know, and it is for
others to argue about whether there is a consensus to do something different. My own personal view would be that the
revised composition of PSNI has played a vital role in helping to raise public
confidence and it must be, as a matter of principle, right that any police
force attempts to be representative of the community it serves. That is not a Q27 Dr McDonnell: Just anecdotally, yes, I agree with the target. I agree it is essential until we get to the 30%. Yes, I would rather there was a better way of getting there, but anecdotally I just want to add a rider question, if you like. Are you aware of how damaging flags at this time of the year are to the trust and the confidence in the police, and indeed it may, in the words of some, be the single biggest issue in terms of how police deal with flags inappropriately flown? Mr Phillips: I had not heard it put quite as starkly as that, in terms of being the single most significant issue, but it is an issue which I have heard about anecdotally too, and of course it raises very difficult issues in terms of the interaction of PSNI with particular local communities. Chairman: Can you give us a specific example for Mr Phillips to comment on? Dr McDonnell: A specific example is that anecdotally - and indeed talking to senior policemen about this they would agree - that the action by the police, the PSNI, in dealing with loyalist paramilitary flags in places like Larne had a massive impact on raising confidence, and I was just wondering if any of the statistics you have there maybe reflected that? Certainly I know from my own perspective that in areas like Finaghy, at the one end of my constituency, or the likes of Newton Park at the other, are touchstones and the police's handling of those situations has certainly helped greatly to improve confidence, trust, dialogue, and all the rest. So I just wondered if it had percolated through to any significant level. Certainly, Larne was the one issue where they dealt with - and I am talking particularly of the loyalist paramilitary flags - but it can also be a question of using the Union flag totally inappropriately and in a way so as to be provocative and offensive, just as the Provos at times can use the Irish flag to be provocative and offensive. Q28 Chairman: There is a proper place for that, yes. Mr Phillips: I think the straightforward answer to your question is that the measures of confidence that we have do not have that degree of granularity - I am not aware of them anyway - being able to pick up on that kind of detail, but I do take the point. I think the more dialogue there is through political representatives, through DPPs, and so on, about the local situations where confidence can be improved in that way, the better. Q29 Chairman: Can I look at something else from your report? I cannot pretend I am always enamoured of targets and public service agreements, and all the rest of it, but your Justice for All does include targets for time to trial, elapsed times. The Ministry of Justice, with the rest of the UK, uses one measure, offences brought to justice, and you seem to have followed a different approach in the province from certainly England and Wales. How fair a criticism is that, or is that a misreading on my part of the report? Mr Phillips: When one comes before a
Committee like this one feels vulnerable on a number of issues and the
Committee may spot them. I do not feel
in the least vulnerable now on the delay target. I feel reasonably vulnerable to the criticism
that the delay in the system in Q30 Chairman: It is yet another way of dealing with the legacy? Mr Phillips: Exactly. Chairman: Although you did make a lovely sort of throwaway remark. You said that when you come before a select committee there were things that you felt vulnerable on. Let us into the secret! What do you feel vulnerable about? Mr Murphy: Can I just pick up on that? I am just trying to help on this, to be honest. Chairman: That is unusual! Q31 Mr Murphy: Just to pick up on that point before we leave it, and again the way the numbers are collected, on re-convictions apparently there is an assessment made by the number of people who re-offend against a predicted rate rather than actual. Why is that? Mr Phillips: That could be a small vulnerability, but I am glad to be able to say that in the current CSR period we are moving to the same system as the Ministry of Justice, which bases its targets on re-offending rather than re-conviction. The advantage of using re-offending rather than re-conviction is that re-conviction relates to the commission of a further offence but it is measured as to whether or not there is a conviction within a fixed time period, which limits its validity, candidly, whereas with re-offending you obviously have the re-offence but you take the measurements irrespective of the period when the conviction occurs. You get a better measure. I think we are getting better - Q32 Mr Murphy: There is an element of massaging the statistics there, is there not? Mr Phillips: I think you could argue that we had been, although I genuinely do not think it was massaging. I could leave with you the research paper which sets out the statistical methodology behind the re-conviction target. I think you would be impressed by its thoroughness, and I genuinely do not think it was an intent to massage the statistics when it was set up. Q33 Chairman: That is a beautifully agile answer. Mr Murphy gave you a chance to get yourself off the hook a little when I asked you what the vulnerabilities were. You have now had time to think a little bit more about them. Where do you feel most vulnerable? Mr Phillips: I feel most vulnerable in terms of the issues covered in the departmental report, I think, about the complexity of the transition between the way we measured our delivery activities in the previous period and this period. I think to try to explain to you how we get from the CSR04 and its objectives and targets and measurements, to how we get to the set which we devised for 07 - I could attempt it, if you would like, and I am sure I would make a reasonable fist of it, but I think it is not an easy task. Q34 Chairman: Well, have a go then! Mr Phillips: Right. Can I ask you to turn to our Report, otherwise this does not - Q35 Chairman: Yes, we have all got our copies. We will get it autographed when you go! Mr Phillips: If you look at p.129, which is the CSR07 Departmental Strategic Objectives, I think that is a reasonably coherent attempt to describe what our key priorities are and to send the messages that each bit of the Department is acting in cooperation with another. To take a simple example, it is quite clear that the Justice For All PSA, which is the yellow bit in the middle, embraces the Prison Service, criminal justice policy, other agents in the criminal justice arena and, of course, PSNI. If I were to go back to CSR04, I would be describing to you targets around confidence in policing, confidence in the criminal justice system, the upholding and the maintenance of the law, lessening the impact of crime, ensuring that supervisory and custodial sentences were properly delivered and ensuring a cost-effective Prison Service, which I think were too silo-based, and I think you could reasonably have said, "Were you properly integrating your various levers in the delivery chain?" I think we are in a much better place in CSR07, complicated though this remains, but the complexity of its description here, I am bound to say, reflects the CSR framework as a whole. Q36 Chairman: This is not exactly making government intelligible to the people, is it? Mr Phillips: Well, it is not a framework devised by the Northern Ireland Office. Q37 Chairman: I am sure it is not, but you have adopted it here. Would it be possible for you to devise something, because one of the things I always feel - and I think my colleagues will have some sympathy with me - is that ordinary people feel cut off from government because they do not understand government-speak and government presentation. This is very beautiful and it is on good quality paper, but is it really going to mean anything to anybody in Northern Ireland? Mr Phillips: I do agree with you. I would not myself attempt to use that page as a presentation of what we are trying to do, except at the most general level, but I think if you turn the page and look at the list of priority actions, the second column down, I think you will find a list of things which are much more meaningful and which people would respond to. Q38 Chairman: Yes, I take your point. They would certainly respond, I think very positively, to some of your aims here, "To ensure that 87% of prisoners..." and all that sort of stuff, but I still do not think this is presented in a form which would grab their attention. I am just wondering whether you might not produce something - I do understand and I am not trying in any sense to make fun - but I think you could probably produce a leaflet or a document which would communicate more readily to intelligent laymen. Do you not think so? Mr Phillips: I think we could, and I think if I was sitting in front of this Committee and I expected the Northern Ireland Office in its current form to be alive and in operation significantly further into the CSR period, I would very willingly take away the task of trying to do that. I am a little reluctant to try and do it on this point because I think - and I know this is an "if" - if we devolve justice and policing powers soon, then I perhaps ought to come back, if you will allow me, on the real timescale because I think there are some points I might make about the real timescale which are not political. Q39 Chairman: Of course. Please do, yes. Mr Phillips: I think it must be for the
Executive to set out its further vision for this kind of thing. If I can illustrate that, I think in this
list there is a reference to the production of a vision for policing in Q40 Chairman: Yes. One of the other problems here is that the print is so small; I have got to take my spectacles off to read it! Mr Phillips: Yes, I agree. The current view amongst those involved in that discussion between PSNI, the Policing Board and the Department, is that it really would be pretty inappropriate for the Secretary of State or the current actors to launch a vision which got in the way of the Executive formulating its own view, we hope in the not too distant future. That is, I think, my more general point. I entirely take the force of your comment about easy and clear communication, but in terms of high level messages, I am not sure that now is the right time to be sending a comprehensive message. Q41 Chairman: But surely it is always the right time to be as intelligible as possible to as many people as possible? I mean, the more I look at this document, which is so beautifully printed, the more difficult I find it. Maybe my colleagues disagree, but I just think that this is an exercise in technicolour obfuscation rather than clarity of description. Mr Phillips: Do you find that in relation to p.130? Q42 Chairman: Yes, because of the size of the type, you see. It is very difficult to read. I do not think my eyes are all that bad, but I do find that difficult. Mr Phillips: I can assure you that we do produce this in different formats and we can certainly make available to the Committee a much more easily approachable version of this, which will of course refer in substance to these points. That is easily done. If I might just revert to the devolution of justice and policing timetable, the point I wanted to get across, as someone who has an important role in delivering this at the practical level, is that once there is a political agreement that this is going to happen in a particular timescale everyone involved needs to recognise that there is a necessary time interval, partly for legislation, and that it will be defined principally for legislation, both in the House of Commons and in the Assembly. We estimate that it is a minimum of three months to accommodate the necessary legislative measures, assuming that the Assembly is willing to itself adopt an accelerated procedure to get its bit of the jigsaw done. Q43 Chairman: This is actually very, very interesting and very relevant to the Committee's work. So what you are saying is that if, on 1 October, Mr Robinson and McGuinness were able to say, "We have cracked it. We have agreed," we are then talking of a minimum of three months before it could come into effect? Mr Phillips: Exactly. Q44 Chairman: Nobody has put that to the Committee as precisely as that and we are very grateful for that, because the Secretary of State has made it quite plain that he very much wants to see this. We understand that. Sir Hugh Orde has made it quite plain that he can deliver when asked to deliver, but nobody has put it with that clarity and it is rather nice to be able to congratulate you on that, having just made a few comments about this. It is very helpful to us to have that. So we are talking of a minimum of three months, and that is three months if the Assembly agrees to an accelerated timetable? Mr Phillips: Yes. Q45 Chairman: If it did not agree to an accelerated timetable, what are we looking at, more like six months? Mr Phillips: Yes. It is difficult to put a precise figure on that, but I should have thought so. Q46 Chairman: That again is very, very helpful. Are there any other points on that which colleagues wish to raise with Mr Phillips? We are moving towards the end of our session because I notice that the Government Minister who is due to wind up this debate, which will be followed by a division, is now on her feet. Does anybody else have any points on this to ask? Are there any other things, Mr Phillips, which you would like to draw to our attention? As you said, this is the first one. I hope we will see you again, although not too often because we both share your desires and ambitions, but are there any other points this afternoon which you would like to draw to our attention? Mr Phillips: No, I do not think so. I was particularly keen to make sure you understood the logistical aspect of the devolution programme, which is very important. Otherwise, on that point, I think I would simply say that we do feel well prepared for that change, if and when it is agreed. We have been working very hard on it. Q47 Chairman: At the risk of making him blush, we have always been very impressed by the thorough professionalism of Nick Perry and his colleagues and we felt that those who are serving the Province as permanent officials do a very good job and I would like, through you, to thank them, and to thank you as well, and wish you success as the year unfolds. Let us hope that we can have at least one more session with you, but thank you very, very much indeed this afternoon, and for fielding all the questions, although you have obviously had two henchmen upon whom you could depend at any moment! Mr Phillips: Thank you very much, Chairman. I am grateful for your remarks and I know my colleagues more generally will be also. Chairman: Thank you, and again I apologise for the small attendance, but those of us who have been here have enjoyed the pleasure of your company and appreciated the evidence you have given. Thank you very much indeed. [1] See Ev 23 |