| Police (Northern Ireland) Bill
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Mr. Andrew Hunter (Basingstoke): I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) that the amendments cover wider issues than the Minister's arguments suggested. Like my hon. Friend, I have no intrinsic quarrel with the Government amendment, and no objections to its inclusion in the Bill. The Minister said that the new provision would be included for anti-discrimination purposes. It would demand, in today's jargon, ``equality of esteem'' for all political and religious beliefs. I support that. The Minister dismissed the inclusion of the word ``impartial'' or ``impartiality''. He said that such a word would create difficulties in law enforcement and in definition in court, and that its inclusion in the Bill would not necessarily serve the needs of natural justice. If that is the case, perhaps the Minister should reconsider the draft principles. The first principle uses the word ``impartially''. There is another dimension to impartiality, a concept with which the Minister found a quarrel after first describing it. ``Impartial'' not only means even-handed; it implies operational independence. Clause 1 establishes the continued existence of the Police Authority. We are now considering its general functions. The mechanism used to deal with them is the replacement of section 1 of the Police Act (Northern Ireland) 1970. According to the notes on clauses the purpose of clause 2 is to set out the general functions of the authority more clearly than the 1970 Act. I do not quarrel with that objective, but I would argue that the acceptance of amendments Nos. 16, 18 and 26 would help the Government achieve it. It would give the statement of the general functions of the authority even greater clarity than in the Bill as drafted, even with amendment No. 52. I support the three amendments primarily because they are intended to be helpful rather than hostile. The 1970 Act obliges the Police Authority to make sure that there is an ``adequate and efficient'' police force. Subsection (3) replaces that phrase with ``efficient and effective''. I do not quarrel with that change. The word ``adequate'' is now generally used in the context of resources--adequate financial resources, adequate manpower and so on. ``Efficient'' and ``effective'' are wider terms which encompass the concept of community policing, for instance, and the currently fashionable practice of objective setting. All that is in the mode of present-day thinking on police matters and is acceptable. The amendments only marginally extend and expand the Government's thinking. Amendments Nos. 16 and 18 use the word ``impartial'' and amendment No. 26 includes the demand for the RUC to be ``free from political interference''. On reflection, I would have preferred amendments Nos. 16 and 18 to have used the word ``independent'' rather than the word ``impartial'', because it is nearer to that wider concept for which I argue. The essence of the arguments for amendments Nos. 16 and 18, and likewise for No. 26, is that the police force in Northern Ireland and the police service--or department, as I prefer it to be called, but that is a matter for later debate--should be operationally independent as well as impartial in the more narrow sense. It should be free from political influence and impartial in upholding the law. Unless there is operational independence and impartiality, neither the police force not the police service will be able to command confidence. It therefore seems logical to place in the Bill that statutory obligation or requirement on the Police Authority to maintain an independent--or impartial, efficient and effective--police force. Just as in subsection (3), there would be a statutory obligation that the service as a whole should be effective and efficient and, as amendment No. 26 would have it,
The Bill is weakened by the absence of that obligation in clause 2(1) and by the incomplete obligation in clause 2(3). I therefore argue that the Bill would be a better Bill if, along with Government amendment No. 52, the other three amendments were accepted too. Mr. Seamus Mallon (Newry and Armagh): I should like to raise one point on this matter. It derives from the contribution by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) relating to operational independence, which I fully support.
11 amThere is one question that goes deeply to the heart of experiences in the north of Ireland. Are there any circumstances in which wider and greater responsibility to the entire community transcends operational independence? In certain circumstances that wider responsibility demands that there not be complete operational independence. This goes to the heart of our discussion on Tuesday about the core element of political responsibility for policing. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Basingstoke about operational independence but, in a divided society, that wider responsibility cannot be met by the simple definition ``operational independence''. Mr. Ingram: rose-- Mr. Ken Maginnis (Fermanagh and South Tyrone): I apologise, Mr. Jones, that I was not quick enough on my feet to rise before the Minister, but I would not like him to respond without having heard all the arguments. The Minister leaves us in some difficulty as regards the issue of the Police Authority, in so far as he has yet to tell us what he wishes to achieve with the authority. It appears to us who know at first hand the workings of that body and its relationship with both the Northern Ireland Office and the Royal Ulster Constabulary that there is a move to lessen its influence and responsibility. The Minister told us that the measure had nothing to do with finance, yet he has also said that he wishes to achieve financial efficiency. Governments have always supposed that they know best how to achieve financial efficiency. Hence the efforts apparently being made to claw ever more responsibility directly to the Government for functions being undertaken by the police division of the Northern Ireland Office. If that happens, the Chief Constable will be told at the outset that he has responsibility to account for every penny of the police budget. I remind the Committee once more that we are discussing a police constabulary of more than 13,000 men and women. That figure may in future be reduced to perhaps 7,500 men and women, but in any event that responsibility will be a major task for the Chief Constable, without the Bill thrusting upon him ultimate responsibility for directing the way in which police stations and other physical resources are provided for the RUC. It is wrong that at this time the Police Authority should be divested of responsibility for about 14 per cent. of the budget. It means that although he will account to the Police Authority, the Chief Constable will be totally dependent upon the good will--I see, Mr. Jones, that you are uneasy that perhaps I am not sticking to the proposal being discussed. I assure you that it is not my intention to move away from it. The Chairman: I can help the hon. Gentleman. We are discussing impartiality; the matters to which the hon. Gentleman has just referred will be discussed in later amendments. Impartiality, please. Mr. Maginnis: Yes. I will take your guidance, Mr. Jones, and return to the matter later. I was showing that impartiality will be impossible if the RUC is brought closer to the Secretary of State, because of the Chief Constable's financial dependence upon his good will and sufferance. Having said that, I again suggest to the Minister that he must tell the Committee the basis on which the Government will make financial judgments in that respect. The Minister avoided the question on Second Reading and at our previous sitting. I put it to him again that he does not have substantive information from the Police Authority or from the Chief Constable to enable him to make a judgment. One of the difficulties concerning impartiality derives from the problem of the relationship involving a political master, which may in future be not a Secretary of State but someone who has been elected to a Northern Ireland assembly. It may be the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon)--and I know that the Secretary of State's parliamentary private secretary has inclinations in that direction. It may be my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Walker), or even the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, modest though I am in promoting my own interests in that respect. Mr. Mallon: Or the Member for Mid-Ulster (Mr. McGuiness)? Mr. Maginnis: The great difficulty in the future policing of Northern Ireland has been identified by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh; I was coming to that matter. Peculiar and strange influences are being given a considerable position in the political life of Northern Ireland. The influence that could be exercised by people such as the Members for Mid-Ulster and for Belfast, West (Mr. Adams), who have no real, long-term commitment to law and order, is terrifying. I press the point on amendment No. 26 that the Bill's primary responsibility is to ensure that we have a police force that is
I have no difficulty with any of the other amendments. Impartiality is something that every member of society has a right to expect from the RUC. I believe that there is impartiality in every police force in the United Kingdom. One has only to look at the Royal Ulster Constabulary's record in bringing the most evil people to justice to realise that that impartiality has been manifested in a practical and tangible way throughout 28 difficult years. I once did a study of terrorist murders committed in my constituency, and then applied that principle to one or two other constituencies where there had, sadly, been many murders. I discovered that 48 per cent. of murders committed by so-called loyalist terrorists were resolved through the courts, compared with only 8 per cent. of murders committed by republican terrorists. That did not suggest to me any partiality by the RUC in pursuing the republican terrorists who had carried out acts of violence against my constituents, but rather that one tradition did not have the same readiness to co-operate with the RUC as the other tradition did. We should concentrate on encouraging people from both traditions in Northern Ireland equally to face their responsibility to ensure that their Protestant or Roman Catholic neighbours are not done to death by the terrorists who have pervaded our society for the past 28 years. [Miss Ann Widdecombe in the Chair]As I said, I have no difficulty with the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire. Impartial, efficient and objective are exactly what we want the RUC to be, but it will not be that first and foremost if increased authority is directly imposed on it by the Secretary of State, or by whoever it may be in future. The Police Authority's integrity, independence and responsibility must be protected throughout the Bill, so that we do not have to cope with one tradition or the other withholding its support for the RUC on the basis that it is a police force governed comprehensively and directly by someone with a specific political interest.
11.15 amFor that reason I and my right hon. and hon. Friends who tabled amendment No. 26 wish to press ahead with it and would support a similar approach to amendments Nos. 16 and 18. Pursuing matters in that way will impose on the Minister a responsibility to explain why he has any reservations about amending the Bill so as to free the Royal Ulster Constabulary from political interference and direction.
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| ©Parliamentary copyright 1998 | Prepared 12 February 1998 |
