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Session 2009 - 10
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General Committee Debates
Delegated Legislation Committee Debates



The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chairman: Dr. William McCrea
Boswell, Mr. Tim (Daventry) (Con)
Burgon, Colin (Elmet) (Lab)
Carmichael, Mr. Alistair (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Crabb, Mr. Stephen (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
Donaldson, Mr. Jeffrey M. (Lagan Valley) (DUP)
Drew, Mr. David (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Goggins, Paul (Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office)
Joyce, Mr. Eric (Falkirk) (Lab)
Luff, Peter (Mid-Worcestershire) (Con)
McCarthy, Kerry (Bristol, East) (Lab)
McGrady, Mr. Eddie (South Down) (SDLP)
Mactaggart, Fiona (Slough) (Lab)
Marris, Rob (Wolverhampton, South-West) (Lab)
Robertson, Mr. Laurence (Tewkesbury) (Con)
Slaughter, Mr. Andy (Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush) (Lab)
Twigg, Derek (Halton) (Lab)
Mike Clark, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee

Ninth Delegated Legislation Committee

Wednesday 3 March 2010

[Dr. William McCrea in the Chair]

Draft Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 (Renewal of Temporary Provisions) Order 2010
2.30 pm
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Paul Goggins): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 (Renewal of Temporary Provisions) Order 2010.
I welcome you to the Chair, Dr. McCrea. I am sure that the Committee feels deprived, because you will not be participating in this debate in the same way that you took part in one on a similar issue in the Assembly on Monday. None the less, I am sure that you will keep us in good order.
This renewal order continues the temporary provisions for the appointment of police officers and police support staff for a further, final year to March 2011. There are two main reasons for the renewal order. First, the Government remain committed to achieving our target of 30 per cent. Catholic composition within the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Secondly, we need to ensure that appointments from the most recent recruitment campaign, which began in January, are made on the same basis and under the same provisions as any remaining appointments from earlier campaigns.
I recognise that some have principled misgivings about the policy and have been vocal in their opposition to it. I also sympathise with those individuals who, though qualified, have not been appointed as a direct consequence of the provisions. It is important to remember, however, that the vast majority of applicants who are unsuccessful are unsuccessful because the demand to join the PSNI is extremely high.
Let us take the latest recruitment campaign as an example. It was launched on 14 January this year, less than a week after the murderous attack on Constable Peadar Heffron. When the campaign closed on 12 February, there had been 9,008 applications. That is a clear and welcome indication that the sentiments of the minority who carry out such attacks and who remain intent on disrupting the peace process are not shared by the majority of people in Northern Ireland, who want peace and want the politics to work.
In the 16 competitions since the PSNI was formed in 2001, there have been in excess of 107,000 applications from across the community. An average of 37 per cent. of those have been from the Catholic community, which is significantly higher than the 23 per cent. Catholic application rate in the last campaign before the introduction of the temporary provisions.
No one should underestimate the tremendous progress that has been made since the temporary provisions were introduced. At the time of the Patten report, Catholic composition within the police was 8.23 per cent. Today, it stands at 27.88 per cent., with 3,807 officers having been selected for appointment under the provisions. It is clear that the provisions are achieving their aim of a more representative police service within the time scale set by Patten.
This is the third renewal of the provisions. Much has changed since the first renewal in 2004. At that time, some elements of Northern Ireland’s community remained uncommitted, unsupportive and unco-operative with the police service. Today, the climate is noticeably different. All the main political parties support policing and the rule of law, and all take their rightful place on the Policing Board and the district policing partnerships. Indeed, such is the level of confidence in policing that we can now all look forward to the Assembly vote on 9 March, and to the devolution of policing and justice powers on 12 April.
Of course, the community in Northern Ireland is becoming increasingly diverse. The PSNI has implemented a number of outreach measures aimed at encouraging recruits from ethnic minority backgrounds, including attendance at community events such as the Belfast mela. The average application rate from ethnic minority applicants is 2.27 per cent. There are currently 32 ethnic minority officers in the PSNI from a variety of backgrounds, including Indian, Chinese and black Caribbean.
The proportion of women in the PSNI has also increased significantly since 2001. At the time of the Patten report, female composition stood at just 12.6 per cent. Today it is 24.87 per cent. The PSNI gender action plan will ensure that measures are put in place to retain those female officers and monitor their progression through the ranks.
The benefits of a more representative police service will be felt by all people in Northern Ireland, as the PSNI engages consistently and effectively with all sections of the community. The Government’s policy is wholly in keeping with the intention of the Patten commission. That envisaged that Catholic composition could be quadrupled over a 10-year period by the implementation of the 50:50 provisions. It anticipated that that would mean reaching a range between 29 and 33 per cent., which would represent a critical mass capable of ensuring
“that a minority does not find itself submerged within a majority organizational culture.”
I believe that the PSNI is set to achieve that aim. The numbers are important, but the most important change is the cultural change that makes the police service a shared space for officers and staff from all community backgrounds. Renewing the provisions for a final year will ensure that the 30 per cent. target is achieved within the 10-year model suggested by Patten.
The commission also recommended that, in the light of recruitment experience and other developments, a judgment would need to be made after 10 years on whether special measures were still needed. Having considered the high numbers from all sections of the community who are now applying, and the widespread support for policing across all communities, we have concluded that we should maintain our long-standing commitment to the 30 per cent. level—a commitment that was re-affirmed in the St. Andrews agreement—and then bring the special measures to an end.
2.37 pm
Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con): I welcome you to the Chair, Dr. McCrea. May I echo the Minister’s comment that your points in the debate will be sadly missed? However, I do not doubt that there are others on the Committee—especially the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley, should he be fortunate enough to catch your eye—who will make an extremely good speech.
The order is one that I have spoken to many times, in almost five years in this job. I have had deep misgivings about it and demonstrated great reluctance to go along with it. However, I recognise that the Government are the Government and that they have information. This Minister is always willing to share whatever information and knowledge he can, but there are perhaps issues that the Opposition are not aware of, and we have to rely on his judgment. That was particularly the case when we debated the amnesty order, which, until last month, allowed time for paramilitary organisations to hand over their weapons. I came out with some very strong words at the time, when we agreed with that order. I said that it was on the Minister’s own head if that went wrong. That was very strong language, but progress was made and we supported the Minister and the Government at that time.
I want to make a number of comments that might appear not to be supportive, but it is important that we make those comments. The Minister referred, I think four times, to this being the final year that the order will be in operation. As I understand the legislation, that is not necessarily the same case as with the amnesty order. The amnesty order would have required primary legislation to extend it further, but I do not think that that is the case with this order. It could be extended further and I think that the Government have the ability to extend it for three years. The order allows for one year, but I do not think that this is necessarily the final year.
The Committee ought to be aware that this might not be the final time that this so-called temporary provision, which has lasted a long time, will be extended. That is the first point that I want to make, because the Minister touched upon the final-year point four times. If the House of Commons Library and I are incorrect in our analysis of that point, I will stand corrected, but that is how I understand it.
The real concern is that all of us in the Committee and in the House of Commons want to see Northern Ireland move towards becoming a normal society, but it cannot be a normal society if, when one applies for a job—in the police service, it is perhaps best described as a career—one is asked what one’s religion is. That cannot be right; it is not normal by any stretch of the imagination or by any measure. It will not be a normal society—in the schools, the police service or any other aspect of Northern Ireland—until we move beyond that to a point at which it does not matter whether one is Catholic or Protestant. If a Protestant fell down with a heart attack while walking down the road in Northern Ireland, he would not be concerned about the religion of the doctor or paramedic who turned up in an ambulance to treat him. That, and not this order, is a measure of normality. This is difficult to accept.
However, I understand the background and that there were unacceptable abuses of Catholics going back a number of years. I also understand that the 8 per cent. representation of Catholics in the then Royal Ulster Constabulary was unacceptable, given the make-up of the population in Northern Ireland and the historic tensions. I understand the background, but I had hoped that we would now be in a position where we and Northern Ireland politics and society had moved forward to a point where that did not matter.
I attended last night’s all-party Northern Ireland group meeting, during which the new Chief Constable gave a speech and answered many questions. It was very engaging and interesting. I asked him—there were no Chatham House rules; there never are in these things—not whether he supported this measure, but about his general attitude towards the proposed situation. I want to quote a particular word that he used in his response: he said that he was “nervous” about it because, in his words, Protestant applicants who were turned down last year for no other reason than because they were Protestants—they were perfectly able and capable, but were turned down because of their religion—would reapply this year. What is he to do with those perfectly good applicants? He will have to turn them down again because they are Protestants.
Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): Would my hon. Friend not agree, following the figures quoted by the Minister in relation to applications, that one of the many sad effects of the current recession is that it is likely to aggravate the number of applicants, which is welcome in some respects, but equally, particularly while quotas continue to be applied, it is going to increase the number of disappointed applicants who would otherwise be admirably qualified?
Mr. Robertson: I thank my hon. Friend and I am delighted that he has joined us on the Committee. He makes a very strong point that will probably add to the Chief Constable’s nervousness about the situation. That said, the Chief Constable has something of a cop-out—again, I am advised by the House of Commons Library, which is excellent on these issues—in that even if the Assembly votes to devolve policing and justice next Tuesday, and even if the House of Commons subsequently endorses that a couple of weeks later, as I hope it will, the recruitment policy, as I understand it, will not be devolved. The Minister may correct me, but the advice that I have received is that the policy will not be devolved. Therefore, when we talk about devolving policing and justice, we are devolving only some of it, not all of it, and we are not devolving a crucial aspect. That is what I am advised. I would like to hear the Minister’s remarks on that.
I have referred to the fact that I want to see schools, the police service and all sections of society in Northern Ireland move away from the situation in which we have to ask what someone’s religion is. South Africa used to have the Population Registration Act 1950, which required people to determine what nationality they were. In Rwanda, people had to state what background they were. We have that situation in Northern Ireland. We have state-sponsored sectarianism, and I use that term having thought about it for quite a while. If the state requires sectarianism to exist, how on earth can we get rid of it? We must move on.
I am deeply concerned about passing the order today, for the reasons that I have given. Hon. and right hon. Members on this Committee might ask, “Why aren’t you going to tear the walls down?”, “Why aren’t you going to force a vote on it?” or “Why aren’t you going to vote against the Government on it?” This is the last time that we will come to it and the last time that I am prepared to go along with it. I understand that the Minister is determined to get the figure over 30 per cent., and we are almost there now. However, if the order is necessary to get us above that figure, how do we maintain the figure if we are not going to extend the order beyond another year? Surely, if the order is necessary to get us to 30 per cent., it is necessary to keep us there. I am not supporting the order; I am returning to my first point—that the order may not be only for a year.
What if the figure goes to 31 per cent. and then drops to 29 per cent.? What do we do then? Do we reintroduce this discriminatory order? I hope not. I hope that society will have moved on to the point where it does not matter whether someone is a Catholic or a Protestant. That is the kind of Northern Ireland that I want to see, and I do not believe that we will have a normal society or make the proper progress in Northern Ireland that we all want to see until we get to that position.
2.48 pm
Mr. Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD): I will not detain the Committee for long. Like the hon. Member for Tewkesbury, I have been through a number of these Committees over the years and they have not always been the measured and thoughtful proceedings that we have heard today. I share many of the misgivings that the hon. Gentleman has outlined, which are now well on the record. Like him, I have come to the conclusion that as the Government are determined to pursue and have pursued this course, it would be wrong of us to obstruct them unnecessarily, with the destabilisation that would result. On the basis of the undertaking that the Minister has given that when he reaches his 30 per cent. target it will be the end of 50:50 recruitment, I am prepared to see the order go through today. I hope that this will be the last time that we are here.
2.50 pm
Mr. Eddie McGrady (South Down) (SDLP): Thank you for calling me, Dr. McCrea. You may suffer a severe case of dÃ(c)jà -vu this afternoon in terms of your massive contribution to the debate last Monday in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which I read with interest. It will not surprise you to know that I will not be near the same wavelength from which other Members will be contributing. I agree with the Minister in his opening statement that the provisions for 50:50 recruitment have been effective in achieving a more representative police service. However, there is a significant way to go before we have a representative police service, not only in respect of the officers—which we are always talking about—but more particularly the serious situation in the civil employment in the PSNI, which is very much behind schedule and has not been addressed in the same way.
I do not want to rake up old history, but it sometimes has to be done to put in context where we are today. I remind hon. Members that 50:50 was a compromise. The history of policing in Northern Ireland was so abominable that the demand was for the abolition of the previous Royal Ulster Constabulary. It was a compromise that that would not be done, in spite of all the history and in spite of all that went before. The compromise was that we would keep the existing officers in place, although there were many charges against many of them. Many other officers were genuine, serving, honest, hard-working men and women, but there was a definite unacceptability, generally speaking. The 50:50 was the compromise to allow time for change to take place and not to have the radical approach. In fact, we as a party were bitterly opposed by people then engaged in violence—parties now not engaged in violence, who would not accept that as a compromise—but we forced it through and we worked with it. So let us get the context right.
The Minister said in his opening remarks that he seeks a renewal for a final year. He underscored the words “final year” and then went on to underscore them even further by saying that he would come back before whatever date it was that he mentioned—I think it was February next—if he was satisfied that approximately 30 per cent. had been reached, and he quoted the figure of nearly 28 per cent. at the moment. I feel, and my party feels, that there are compelling reasons for the renewal of the order, not just now but possibly in the future, because one of the basic tenets of Patten at the time, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, was that it should be a police service that
“commands the confidence across the community.”
That is an essential function. Patten did not target 30 per cent. as the ultimate and the appropriate. He said—in fact, the Minister quoted it earlier—that he reckoned that 29 or 30 per cent. would be a critical mass at which point it was conceivable that the PSNI would not be totally deemed to be, let us say, one-sided under one direction. But that was not the ultimate, because he went on to say, and I would like to quote this paragraph which is never used:
“We have not taken our model beyond ten years. As we have said in the previous chapter, we would expect the question of the size of the police service to be revisited by that time. In the light of recruitment experience and other developments between now and then”—
not then and now—
“a judgment would need to be made as to whether special measures were still needed to achieve a police service representative of the community or whether this could now be expected to develop organically.”
I emphasise that he said:
“Either way we envisage that the composition of the police should continue to move towards a closer resemblance to that of the community as a whole.”
That was the thesis of Patten and that is what people across the community endorsed as a way forward, some with reluctance, some with compromise and some with enthusiasm.
Have we arrived anywhere near that? The 2001 census figures state that the Catholic community is 44 per cent. and that the Protestant community is 53 per cent. The figures are not, therefore, 72 and 28 per cent. There are still huge variations in that community representative and proportionality role. That is why this process was needed and why it is possible, and, with due consideration in time, it might have to continue. I have referred to the question of civil employment in PSNI, which is miles behind where we are at in terms of police officer recruitment. It has not been successful—I will say no more than that—in its presentation.
I know that this is not an ideal situation, but we did not come from an ideal situation. We came from a horrible situation and we are trying to address it. Of all those people who are now saying that this is wrong, discriminatory and everything else, not one of them suggested at the time how we could go from where we were to where we hope to be. There is opposition to everything all the time and this is the compromise. The proof of the pudding is that the compromise has worked and is working.
 
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