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Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My understanding is that the Minister has just said that there would be parity with the situation in England and Wales. However, in England and Wales, my experience is that the royal arms are to be found inside every court and that they are certainly not going to be ripped out.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: In England and Wales a decision is made about what is best in relation to each court. So far as the outside of new court buildings is concerned, that will be exactly the same for Northern Ireland. Decisions will be made judiciously in relation to each court and what is best in terms of the outside of the court building. I referred to that when answering the question of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, on Dungannon.

Lord Glentoran: An hour and a half after we started this debate, I rise to wind up. Because we are in Committee, I will of course withdraw my amendment. Before doing so, however, I thank the Minister for her care and patience in handling our questions and contributions. I also thank all those who have taken part in this debate. The case has been made very strongly and soundly by my noble and learned friend Lord Mayhew. I do not feel able to follow him to any extent as an advocate.

I shall make two smaller points. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, that the Bill was not debated fully in another place. We have to be very cautious when referring to discussions that may or may not have taken place there. I confess that I do not know in detail—line by line—which parts of the Bill were debated and which were not.

I am definitely not convinced by the Minister's arguments, gallant though they were, for many reasons. In particular, the Government have changed their position as a result of the debate in the other place. My understanding, from what the Minister and others have said, is that the present position is that there is no need for a relevant provision in the Bill because there is no need for change. New courthouses will be built in reflection of the communities in which they are. The Minister told the Committee that some courthouses were built with coats of arms and others without them. The case has been well made that the amount of notice that is taken of the decoration and the coats of arms, either in or out, is so minimal that just to let the matter cool and not to raise it as a major political issue would be the prudent way forward. I do not believe that it is broken. The Government have not made the case that the situation is broken. The saying is, "If it's not broken, don't mend it". The system is not broken, and it does not need to be mended.

Finally, I am a little concerned about one aspect of it. If no new courthouses are allowed to carry the coat of arms, terrorists will feel encouraged to blow up courthouses that do, so that there will be a whitewash. That may be a cynical statement to make, but,

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unfortunately, in the world in which we live, that could, at some stage, become a reality, sadly. I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 232A and 232B not moved.]

5.30 p.m.

Lord Desai had given notice of his intention to move Amendment No. 233:


    Page 57, line 31, at end insert "or on the exterior of a courthouse"

The noble Lord said: First, I must apologise for not having been here. I thought we would have dealt with the matter by last evening. From what little I heard of the debate, I can say that, had I been here, a contrasting voice might have been heard. I shall not move the amendment.

[Amendment No. 233 not moved.]

[Amendments Nos. 234 to 236 not moved.]

On Question, Whether Clause 65 shall stand part of the Bill?

Lord Glentoran: I give notice to the Committee that we will object to the passing of the clause on Report.

Clause 65 agreed to.

Clause 66 agreed to.

[Amendment No. 237 not moved.]

Clause 67 [Information about discharge and temporary release of prisoners]:

Lord Glentoran moved Amendment No. 238:


    Page 59, line 21, leave out paragraph (c).

The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 238 is a probing amendment. The clause deals with the concept of making information available to victims. We all accept that that should be done whenever possible and as fully as possible, apart from cases in which doing so might compromise the safety of the victim. However, subsection (8)(c) seems to give a loosely defined and wide power to the Secretary of State—after devolution, it will be the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister—to withhold that information. Can the Minister explain the Government's thinking on this? I beg to move.

Lord Hylton: Long before the Belfast agreement and long before the ceasefire, prisoners were released, sometimes on compassionate grounds, sometimes for Christmas or at other times of the year. As far as I know, it worked extremely well, without—I believe—relatives and next of kin being informed at all. Can the Minister throw any light on that? From where has the demand come that next of kin should be informed?

Lord Williams of Mostyn: I shall deal with that point immediately before answering the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran. A common criticism has been—rightly, in the opinion of many of us—that when people are released from prison either at the end of their sentence or on compassionate grounds, the victims and their family simply do not know. There was a notorious case with which I am extremely familiar in south Wales. A

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murderer was released and went back to live in his home village, but the widow of the murdered man did not know until she saw him. That is intolerable, and the pendulum has rightly shifted to the decent accommodation of those who have a reasonable right to know. I am in no doubt about the principle behind this.

As the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran implied, we wanted to avoid detailed exceptions in the Bill. We want the flexibility to set out exceptions in the scheme. I will happily give some examples that inform our present thinking. The first relates to excluding cases in which the victim is not a natural person—a corporation or some body of that sort. Secondly, there may well be cases in which disclosure would be a contempt of court. Thirdly, the disclosure of the information might be contrary to the Human Rights Act, or, perhaps more significantly, the Data Protection Act. There might be some circumstances—I recognise that one has to put this delicately—in which giving the information might be a disproportionate interference with the rights of the prisoner. That is the sort of thinking we have and we would want the flexibility to develop over time.

Lord Glentoran: I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for that explanation and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 67 agreed to.

[Amendments Nos. 239 and 240 not moved.]

Clauses 68 to 70 agreed to.

Clause 71 [Local community safety partnerships]:

Lord Glentoran moved Amendment No. 241:


    Page 60, line 37, leave out subsection (1).

The noble Lord said: Is it necessary that this power should be given to the Secretary of State once again to divide up Northern Ireland into even smaller patches for the purposes of the community safety partnerships?

Clause 71 should not be in the Bill. It is here because of the political process; because of negotiations, wheeling and dealing, with the terrorists and with Sinn Fein/IRA. I submit as background that the Patten report and the Police (Northern Ireland) Act, refer to things called DPPs. Those district policing partnerships were to be set up and funded locally so that they were allowed to employ civilian-type heavies to help keep the peace.

During the debate on the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill in another place, the right honourable Mr Peter Mandelson—then Secretary of State—decided, in his wisdom, to disallow the raising of funds by DPPs and others. That made the passage of that Bill a little easier. It downgraded the Bill as far as Sinn Fein were concerned and they did not like it, but he said that the Government would return to this issue at a later date. I believe this is the later date. The issue has resurfaced in the form of community safety partnerships and I believe that that is wrong.

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I do not believe that this clause should be a part of the Bill. It opens the door wide to the distortion of the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland by paramilitaries. I beg to move.

Lord Maginnis of Drumglass: This is a particularly important amendment addressing, dare I suggest, an issue that will come up again. Perhaps it will do so in a different form, but it will not go away.

I shall say a few words about the background to local community safety partnerships. Prior to the police Bill, we had a system that had been built up very slowly and meticulously within the community, and without a great deal of fuss. We had what were called the CPLCs, the community and police liaison committees. There were over 40 of those distributed throughout Northern Ireland, and perhaps even more. They were made up of groups of ordinary people who came together trying to understand the difficulties within their own communities, the difficulties faced by the police, and seeking to work out those difficulties in the common interest of everyone involved.

When we considered the police Bill, the CPLCs were completely ignored by Government. It was almost as though they repudiated the good work being done by the people. I name but one from the nationalist community, Monsignor Denis Faul. Over the years, while retaining his nationalist aspiration, he sought to understand the needs of both traditions within our community.

In so far as we have lost the CPLCs, I believe that we have taken a huge step backwards. We have been landed with police partnerships boards, which will be answerable or responsible to the Policing Board. They are the bodies within local areas of command that will seek to deal with policy issues on policing, and to consult with the community and the police. They are much more formal. Because of that, I think that they will find it a great deal more difficult to fulfil the role of the CPLCs.

Now we have developing—perhaps they might be seen as emanating from, or growing in parallel, or in place of the CPLCs—the local community safety partnerships. The great danger, of course, is that these LCSPs, as they will become known, will operate almost as autonomous bodies. They will not be tied, as I believe they must reasonably be tied, to the DPPs, the statutory policy and consultancy bodies in each local area of command.

I believe that the LCSPs could fulfil, in a practical sense, a very useful role. But I think that the PPBs will not have the opportunity to discuss the nuts and bolts of policing. I cite, for example, a factory having difficulty in protecting its workforce or suffering from attacks of vandalism; or perhaps how to deal with a disturbance in a specific street. All those would be useful roles and I would be the last to advocate that the community should not be involved directly with the police in terms of the day-to-day nuts and bolts of policing.

However, I fear that, as they are to be established under the Bill, the autonomous nature of local community safety partnerships will be hugely

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attractive to those groups with a very specific political agenda. They are not primarily interested in community issues, but rather in furthering their own political, perhaps subversive or pseudo-subversive, campaign aims. Therefore, as we move on to the next stage, it will become necessary to tighten up this area of the legislation. Nevertheless, I believe that the answer will be simply to conclude that we cannot have a totally separate body deciding on how areas are to be policed.

I refer specifically to "areas" because in the police Bill it was proposed that there should be a police partnership board for every district council area. That was promised by the Government, but the Government reneged on that promise in terms of Belfast where, because of pressure from Sinn Fein, they decided to chop the PPB into four, so that those predominantly in West Belfast, who are predominantly militant republicans represented by militant republicanism—by Sinn Fein/IRA—would have their own separate body to deal with the police.

I can see exactly the same kind of thing happening here. We have been told that the Secretary of State will be accountable as to what is to be an "area" for a local community safety partnership. I refer, for instance, to the rural and farming group of south Armagh. That is not its proper name; it has a very fine name that one might think would mean that it was concerned with the interests of the rural community. In reality it is a fairly one-sided, extreme campaigning group. Will the Secretary of State accord to that body the right to have a local community safety partnership? There will be very few people from the other tradition represented on that partnership, able to be on it or safe to be on it.

The reality is that, once again, the Government are manipulating the situation so that in fact they will overcome their own safeguards as far as the community as a whole is concerned. I repeat: they will overcome their own safeguards. That cannot be good legislation.

I conclude by saying that if in fact PPBs are primarily responsible for consultation and the implementation of policy overall, and if the Policing Board co-ordinates that policy, then at the subordinate level—I hope that it will be at the subordinate level—local community safety partnerships must be accountable through, and not working in conflict with, the PPBs.

5.45 pm

Viscount Brookeborough: First, I must declare an interest, because I am on the Policing Board in Northern Ireland. Secondly, I approve of the fact that this issue will come up on Report, when we can say more about it after listening to what is said here. Thirdly, I must apologise, because I have to go to another appointment, but I would like to come in on the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, that the partnerships could not be entirely independent. Looking at the situation in Great Britain, such partnerships are statutory in England and Wales and

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voluntary in Scotland and they work very well. Somebody has to look after safety, and they work well in that context.

It is interesting to see where they have gone. They have not remained entirely independent of other bodies within those areas. The initial intention was that they would be. A police research and management document from the summer of 1998 quotes the Local Government Association saying:


    "Community safety is the concept of community-based action to inhibit and remedy the causes and consequences of criminal intimidatory and other related anti-social behaviour. Its purpose is to secure sustainable reduction in crime in local communities. Its approach is based on the formation of multi-agency partnerships between the public, private and voluntary sectors to formulate and introduce community-based measures against crime."

That is a commonly used definition. It continues:


    "Any community safety strategy that is worthy of the name will therefore impact upon every aspect of the way that a police organisation conducts its business. Operational strategies that address public order, crime, road policing, meeting public demand—which is what they will do after they have done their research—and so on, will inevitably be in support of the overarching community safety framework".

Later it says,


    "The positioning of the community safety strategy within the planning hierarchy, and the management of the process by which operational and functional strategies are interlinked and integrated with it, becomes a vital consideration for police managers."

We should not forget that safety partnerships and strategies work extremely well within the remainder of the United Kingdom, but they are not considered in total isolation from such equivalent bodies—or nearly equivalent, because they do not have the same powers—as the DPPs that we will have.


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