UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1706 - i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

COMMUNITY RESTORATIVE JUSTICE

Wednesday 1 November 2006

RT HON LORD CLYDE

MR KIT CHIVERS

MR RONNIE SPENCE and MR BRIAN McCAUGHEY

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 106

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 1 November 2006

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Mr David Anderson

John Battle

Mr Gregory Campbell

Mr Christopher Fraser

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Mr Denis Murphy

Sammy Wilson

________________

Witness: Rt Hon Lord Clyde, a Member of the House of Lords, Former Justice Oversight Commissioner, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Lord Clyde, could I, on behalf of the Committee, welcome you. Thank you very much indeed for coming. We much appreciate your willingness to come and discuss this important subject with us and we are anxious to make a response from the Committee to the Government's suggestions, and so on. In your sixth report you noted the very slow progress made by the Government in bringing forward initial guidelines for the CRJ scheme. Perhaps you would tell us a little bit about that - and if you would like to make an opening statement as well, please feel free to do so - whether you were satisfied with the Government's reasons for delay and what was the impact of the delay, and so on? If you would like to just expand on those things, that would be extremely helpful.

Lord Clyde: Yes. As will be evident, I think, from my successive reports, I found the length of time which 168 was taking to reach implementation enormously frustrating. I recognised that there were difficulties and sensitivities and I had to live with that, but it does seem to me regrettable that it has taken so long even to reach this stage. When I sought reasons, I understood that there were political considerations behind the scenes which were far beyond the scope of my work, and I rested content with that, so what I was doing was trying to move the thing forward so far as I could and to try to open up discussion and consideration of any problems which might exist. In my fourth report, at p.101, I did notice one possible adverse consequence of continued delay and that was the risk of the last of the experienced volunteers within the schemes, which is experience which had been built up over the years, and if the future of the schemes was under threat then there was going to be a loss of that ability and that experience. In addition to that, it was perfectly evident from all the schemes that there was a very real sense of frustration and some lowering of morale, and that did not help in improving the relations between the schemes and the government organisations. The main fear was that of their financial sources drying up. That, I understood, became very real, I think it was last April, to the extent that I tried to take some steps to give warning at that stage of the possibility of alternatives collapsing because of lack of funding. What the position has been since then, I do not know, but I understood then that it was only a very short period that was left in which funding might be available. I think that generally would express my views about the delay, the causes and the consequences.

Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Did you yourself feel you had sufficient input into the guidelines and the subsequent Protocol?

Lord Clyde: Yes, in the sense that I hardly did. I was very conscious of the terms of my remit and that was, of course, to oversee the implementation by others of the recommendations. I did extend that remit to include facilitating the implementation, and I think from the outset that was recognised as proper and possibly useful. So I did accordingly engage in discussions about how problems might be overcome, how progress might be made, and both in the reports and in informal discussions I did suggest ways forward, but generally I felt it was inappropriate for me to take part in the drafting of documents, and in particular inappropriate for me to enter the fray on the precise form which the guidelines should take. It was very important for me, I felt, to establish and preserve my independence as Oversight Commissioner from anyone else, including the NIO, and I felt that if I entered that area then that independence might be slightly sullied. I did make, as I say, suggestions such as a pilot scheme, I encouraged conferences and I did indeed even in the first report suggest a timetable for moving the thing forward, but no timetable was ever produced. So my input has been very indirect and I deliberately did not take a conscious part and express part in the drafting or the amending of the guidelines.

Q3 Chairman: As you look back upon your period as Commissioner, do you feel that you were taken sufficient note of by those to whom you were reporting, or do you feel - the two questions are not mutually exclusive - that at any stage anyone sought to put undue pressure upon you?

Lord Clyde: I am not conscious of occasions of any undue pressure and I would have certainly resisted it if there had been any attempt in that direction. I can think of one or two occasions when there were informal conversations about how the job should be done, particularly at the outset, but that was not a matter of pressure at all. It was left pretty much to me. I am sorry, so far as the first part of your question was concerned ---

Q4 Chairman: Was your role and were your views taken sufficiently into account?

Lord Clyde: I find that a very difficult one to answer. I can think of several examples where my views certainly were taken into account, for example when I did question courteously whether it was really useful to progress a particular recommendation relating to the establishment of yet another committee or body, and that observation was taken up and the recommendation was dropped. But how far views I expressed have been taken into account, I find that very difficult to say because I was not within the counsels of those who were considering what I said.

Q5 Chairman: Just a final question from me, and it is really a follow-up to the last. Did you have, in your view, sufficient access to the people you felt you needed to have access to, or were you fobbed off to see lowly officials and things?

Lord Clyde: No, at no time. In fact, I would like to think I had a very good relationship with the senior members of the NIO and the members of the Criminal Justice Board. I engaged with them relatively regularly and the heads of the agencies. I cannot think of any occasion when I was discouraged from seeing anybody whom I wanted to see. The co-operation of the NIO was extremely satisfactory.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.

Q6 Mr Fraser: Lord Clyde, you have talked about the loss of experienced volunteers, your remit, and how suggestions you put forward were perhaps not on occasions taken up. Can you give us a picture, if you can, further to the questions you have already been asked, about the benefits of the scheme and the downside, given the problems you have had?

Lord Clyde: At the very outset when I first looked at the Criminal Justice Review, 168 struck me at once as being a very remarkable recommendation and once I started thinking about it I began to see its enormous merit and its enormous potential. That is why, I think in the sixth report, I describe it as one of the most important ones, or something to that effect. I think it is. There is a variety of benefits which one can immediately identify. One is, of course, that these two schemes have expressly set out to provide a significant counter to the appalling practice of punishment beatings which were so current in the past, and I think it can be said that there has been a substantial decrease in such practices and I think it can be said that that decrease is substantially due to the work of the schemes. The approach of community restorative justice promotes the practice of a better way of conflict resolution, and that helps to achieve an alteration in the mindset of those who were previously minded in the way of violence as a solution to everything. Another benefit as against the state system, the youth conferencing system, as matters stand at the moment is that it deals, of course, with adults as well as young people and that is providing what the review did anticipate in the long term might become part of the state system but achieving it effectively already. Then again, I think these schemes provide a sense of community responsibility which is wholly healthy and a wider public responsibility in making people aware of the responsibilities they have both to their own locality and to the wider public. I think one of the most exciting parts of the whole approach and one of the most important ones is that essentially it serves the interests of the victim. It is a victim-led operation, a victim who does not want to have prosecution, and that spirit of it is something which I think has to be remembered when one is looking at the Protocol to see how far the victim is still calling the tune. On a practical level, yet another benefit is that it provides a simple and expeditious resolution of minor offending behaviour, and that removes a burden on the police, on the Prosecution Service and on the courts. It takes out the minor dross from the criminal justice system and achieves a very satisfactory resolution of it. Perhaps it would be just simpler if I stop on the benefits at that stage and simply note a reference to my sixth report, paragraphs 2.21 and 2.22, where I do say something about some of the benefits of it. I think I may have covered these already in that, but there is a little note on it. So far as the downside is concerned, may I answer this one in relation to the Protocol rather than the generality of the principle. So far as the Protocol is concerned, one of the concerns I have in general about it is the extent to which it seems to engage in excessive procedures. Paragraphs 9, 11 and 12 particularly set out a regime of referring and after referring, and referring back, which potentially could gum up the whole smooth working of the scheme and indeed prejudice its proper operation. I know the Protocol says that the agencies, the police and the Prosecution will seek to fast track these cases. I do not think that is good enough. I would have thought one would be looking to have this been done in a matter of hours rather than days, far less weeks. Excessive bureaucracy, excessive procedure on this simply makes burdens on the work which would make the operation more complex, or indeed, as I fear, just snarl it up altogether. One can see ways in which what is set out at length, perhaps quite properly as the kind of courses which should be followed, could be short-cut. For example, take the case of alternatives. If you go to a meeting of alternatives, you will see sitting around the table a member of the Police force, perhaps a member of the social services and others of the agencies. If there is a member of the Police Service on hand, he could immediately cope with any question which arises and, if authorised, be able to give an immediate decision to it. Equally, so far as the Prosecution is concerned, that could be dealt with in the same way, and by avoiding the passing of paper and the enormous delay which will occur if agencies have to study these things and go into them in depth, the whole matter might be resolved. That is where I think paragraph 15 is of importance, although I am not quite sure whether this was the purpose of putting it in. This is the one which anticipates that there will be a need for further discussions and agreements, because what could be done on that course is simply to arrange and structure the thing in such a way that representatives of the Police Service and of the Prosecution were on hand to give instant decisions in what are in nearly every case very, very simple questions and avoid the delays which otherwise might occur. I fear that is rather a lengthy answer to your question.

Chairman: It is very helpful. It is helping to set the scene.

Sammy Wilson: Just to follow on with some of the benefits - and I have to say, Lord Clyde, not everyone is convinced of the benefits of Community Restorative Justice Schemes, including the communities in which they operate - I would just like you to maybe outline for us, when we are trying to assess the benefits, apart from victims who perhaps the schemes put up for evidence, what evidence did you have from the communities within which those schemes operated that they were welcomed and that they were not simply seen as schemes which people had to go to because of the connections of some of the people who were involved in them? Secondly, as far as the punishment beatings are concerned, punishment beatings have fallen, but they have also fallen in a certain political climate. Have you made any assessment as to whether or not the fall in punishment beatings was due to the change in the political climate as much as due to the schemes themselves? The last question is, you have mentioned the involvement of the police, but since the police were not involved in any of the Republican schemes at present, can any of the benefits which you have suggested here today about quick decisions being made, et cetera, be attributable to the vast majority of these Restorative Justice Schemes anyway?

Q7 Chairman: Could I just ask you, as you are answering, Mr Wilson, to bear in mind comments which have been brought to our attention by the former Taoiseach, Garret Fitzgerald, who is very exercised on these issues and who did send an article which this Committee has had a chance to read in which he was very, very critical on some of these aspects and also very fearful that the wrong people would be taking charge of these schemes in many areas. Perhaps with your great benefit and the freedom, as well as the wisdom, of hindsight, you can tell us whether you think some of these fears are misplaced or whether they are accurate, whether you share them, or whatever?

Lord Clyde: I can understand them, but I came from an innocent background without the experience of the Troubles and so in a way I come with perhaps too open a mind on it, perhaps too innocent a mind, I do not know, but I did not feel, when I visited the schemes that these fears should be taken to the depth to which, certainly in some reports, they have been. I have not explored and I did not explore around the communities to see their reactions. What I did not pick up was any fear of oppression in the operation of the schemes. I did not pick up any hint that in fact people were being persuaded or were fearful when they entered them and were not giving consent willingly. On that approach, when one sees the kinds of figures of people, cases, passing through these schemes it does seem that there are quite a lot of people in the community who did find this service of value and use. That may be too innocent a view and, as I say, those with much greater experience of the past may have a much more accurate understanding of it, but that is what I picked up from the visits I made. So far as the cause for the decline in punishment beatings is concerned - and I am sure there is more than one element responsible for it - I am not in a position to assess the extent to which one influence or the other has played a part, but I was impressed by articles I have read which do suggest that the establishment of these schemes has been one significant element at least in that and I am very conscious from talking with the members of the schemes that this, of course, is one of the principal objects for which they were set up. Your question about the non-involvement of the police, I am sorry, I am not quite sure that I have caught the full significance of the problem there.

Q8 Sammy Wilson: You mentioned one of the benefits and you gave the example of the alternative that with the police sitting around the table quick decisions can be made, but since the police are not involved in the majority of schemes, can you still maintain that that is a benefit of such schemes?

Lord Clyde: I beg your pardon, I suppose I may have been answering the wrong question. I am saying it is a benefit when it is operating in the way in which 168 intended it should operate. At the moment, as you of course rightly say, the police are not deeply involved in the CRJI schemes and accordingly they do not stand as examples for what I was looking for. The merit that I was speaking of was the merit of the scheme as it will eventually be implemented.

Q9 Sammy Wilson: I just have one follow-up question. Were you aware, or did you become aware at any stage during your examination of these schemes that, to put it bluntly, some of them tout for business around the areas and when problems arise they volunteer to look after the issues for people, and that may be one of the reasons why you find the schemes to be so popular or so many cases being dealt with by them?

Lord Clyde: I cannot speak from my own knowledge as to the extent of that. As I say, I did not go around the streets to see them in action to that extent, and that would probably be the best way of discovering the position.

Q10 Chairman: Do you think you should have gone around the streets?

Lord Clyde: No, I do not think I should. I was really here to oversee the implementation by others of 168, not to explore into these matters.

Q11 Sammy Wilson: Do you accept that in the light of not having that insight, perhaps you view of these schemes could be somewhat skewed?

Lord Clyde: Of course I can accept that my view may be incorrect. I can only tell you what my view is from the experience I had about it. As I say, I came from outside to this area and that brought an innocence and brought, perhaps, an objectivity, I do not know, which may be different from those who see it day in, day out, on the ground. I would not be too worried if the members of the schemes were available in the area, not, I suppose, touting for business because I think they have got enough business to keep them going without asking for more, but being available as a means of resolving local domestic and other social difficulties arising around the streets or in the locality. I would see nothing too alarming about that.

Q12 Chairman: As a supplement to the police and not a replacement for it?

Lord Clyde: Absolutely, yes. There is no question of this being an alternative in that sense.

Q13 Chairman: But you are aware, Lord Clyde, that in certain parts of the Province of Northern Ireland it is suggested that that is precisely what they are?

Lord Clyde: That is right. I have read a very large number of articles in the press saying all sorts of things about these schemes and, of course, so long as certain communities are opposed to the police, or at least are not prepared to support the police, then there is a major problem. What I found regrettable, if I am not straying too far from the question, is that where the schemes were operating with a readiness to support the police, little encouragement was given to advancing schemes in those areas. There seemed to be a policy of no movement at all until the whole picture is clear. I was not quite understanding why, for example, alternatives could not have been processed and advanced and then, even as a pilot, demonstrated as to how the system can work, which might open the eyes of others to the advantages which those areas were enjoying.

Chairman: Thank you. Can I bring in Mr Battle and then Mr Campbell?

Q14 John Battle: Forgive me, I am very new to the Committee and this ground is new to me, so if my questions are completely naive, just tell me so, but I have still not got the clear impression in my mind of how many schemes there are. I think I have got the names of two schemes, but I do not know whether there are two, ten or 20.

Lord Clyde: There are two umbrellas. One is Community Restorative Justice Ireland, which is, if you like, the Republican area and operates in the Republican communities. The other is called Alternatives and that is also an umbrella. So far as CRJI (although I have always tried to avoid these acronyms), Community Restorative Justice Ireland is concerned, they have got or had about 14 other organisations, other schemes. The alternatives have about four.

Q15 John Battle: I do not know about the people involved, but it is really about the types of offences and the scope of the Protocol. If I could just draw a quick parallel, there are real arguments in my city, Leeds, about the role of community police support officers, whether they displace the police, wandering around the community, or do the same job, what is the interface and the rules of play between them and the "normal police," but more importantly we also have this terrible acronym, the ASBO, the Anti-Social Behaviour Order, and they are very different offences from the offences the police can deal with. I am not clear in the Protocol what is the difference between low-level crime and serious crime. The CPSOs in my city cannot deal with domestic violence or child abuse, for example, they are kept clear of those areas. Are there guidelines and rules of which offences constitute low-level crime and which are serious matters? Are they spelt out in the Protocol so that there are clear directions on the ground?

Lord Clyde: No. It is a matter which has been exercising people, I think, ever since I got involved in this area at all and that is now over three and a half years, should there be a definition for low-level crime, which was the phrase used by the authors of the Criminal Justice Review. My feeling has been that there should not be, because it is extraordinarily difficult to devise a sufficient definition. I think you can identify low-level crime when you see it and provided there is a police or a Prosecution presence, they will know when they see it whether that is or is not low level crime. If one wanted to seek a definition - and I do not think one should - one might have a look, I suppose, at s.5 of the 1967 Act, the phrase about arrestable offences, which would solve any anxieties anybody may have about the application of s.5 in these cases. But I would not be favouring that course myself.

Q16 John Battle: So would there be guidelines given to the people implementing the policy on the ground? It may be clear to a court, but would it be clear on the ground?

Lord Clyde: I think it is clearer on the ground than it is to a court, and I do not think this would be a matter which would be an issue for a court in any event. I think when a neighbour sees a young person breaking a window he would say that is low level stuff. If you see them murdering someone, that is not, and if you start working through examples in most cases I think it is easy enough.

Q17 John Battle: And domestic violence?

Lord Clyde: It depends on the degree of it. Of course, it may not be into the criminal sphere at all. There is a kind of grey area, which is quite difficult to define. If there is domestic violence, almost certainly the schemes will be ready to resolve differences. That is part of the functions which they carry out, and it may even be short of crime altogether.

Q18 Mr Campbell: Lord Clyde, you have mentioned in answer to the previous question the issue of the policing, or in the context of the Republic the CRJI and the Republican groups, the lack of policing involvement. Given that the Protocols, as we understand them to be, are going to require the police to be involved, taking that in the political context where there is not yet Sinn Fein or Republican support for policing, what do you see emerging over the next few months? I know you are the former overseeing Commissioner, but given your experience, if Republicans continue not to give support to the police and we have a context emerging of Protocols which require direct contact with the police, what do you see as the possible outcomes there?

Lord Clyde: The CRJI schemes, the Republican schemes, will not be able to be recognised under the Protocol.

Q19 Mr Campbell: Yes, I think that much is clear, but the crime, low level crime as it is sometimes called in those areas, one assumes will continue?

Lord Clyde: Yes.

Q20 Mr Campbell: In the absence of those schemes and in the absence of support for the rule of law by the people who give political leadership in those areas, what do you think that is likely to lead to?

Lord Clyde: One thing which I hope it would not lead to is the vacuum which I expressed concern about in past reports. I do not have the confidence to make a strong forecast of what is likely to happen, but I can certainly envisage a situation in which the CRJI groups would carry on as they are and the alternative groups would be, as it were, brought into the fold in partnership with the state system.

Q21 Mr Campbell: So how would you see the CRJI schemes continuing, as they are?

Lord Clyde: Provided they have got the financing. If they do not have any financing, then they will wither and die and a lot of good work and good people will be lost.

Q22 Mr Campbell: We understand that previous funding which CRJI would have had access to is now about to be discontinued. If that were the case in the context we are currently talking about, then they would wither and die, as you have said?

Lord Clyde: Yes.

Q23 Mr Campbell: Then coming back to my question, what is likely to happen in those areas in the context of people who give political leadership in those areas continuing not to give support to the rule of law, to the police?

Lord Clyde: I would be very alarmed at that situation, because that is the kind of vacuum which could well open the way to going back ten years and just opening up the very kinds of practices which these schemes were created to counter. So that is a doomsday scenario which I hope is hypothetical. I took some comfort from reading the report of the St Andrews statement (if that is the appropriate way to describe it), which did indicate that perhaps at last there is a breakthrough on the policing issue.

Q24 Chairman: Lord Clyde, if there is not a breakthrough on the policing issue - and I devoutly hope there will be - is there any place for a continuation of schemes which are in fact alternative policing in communities which do not recognise the police?

Lord Clyde: You are, Chairman, if I may say so, to an extent taking me outside the areas with which I have been concerned. I am dealing with recommendation 168. That requires the schemes to be working in partnership with the state and that was the end object of the review.

Q25 Chairman: I appreciate that, but the fact is that some of them are not working in co-operation, and should they continue to work if they continue not to co-operate?

Lord Clyde: By the standards which are set by the review, no, that is right, and I think, as I am understanding it, the problem of financing (of which I was aware as a possibility) is perhaps now more real than it was even six months ago. Then there is a possibility that they will fold of their own accord. As I say, I think that would be a real loss.

Q26 Mr Hepburn: Where does the authority come from to make the schemes work? For example, in the rest of the country we find it hard to believe that law and order can be stamped on a community without the work of the police, so when we hear about areas like the Republican areas where the police are not involved, where does the authority come from? What I am getting at is, what role do the paramilitaries play in this? Obviously this scheme is going to be working towards gaining greater confidence in the police and at the end of the day hopefully getting Republican areas working with the police. How do you see the scheme bringing that about at the end of the day?

Lord Clyde: I hope I am understanding the anxieties correctly. There can be no question but that actual persons engaged in paramilitary activities cannot be allowed to take part in these schemes. The Protocol says that, and that must be right. I can see a much more difficult question with former paramilitaries. If there has been a conviction and one is dealing with an ex-prisoner, then one could, I think, accept that they may after perhaps a reasonable time or something of that kind be trusted to be acting responsibly and in a reformed and positive way, but I hope that this is a matter of history which will fade in time. I do also suspect that the views which I am trying to express are views which the schemes themselves would immediately accept. I am not sure I understood the second question.

Q27 Mr Hepburn: How do you think the schemes at the end of the day will get these areas in the mainstream policing? How will they build confidence that policing actually works? Do you see it as a role of those particular schemes to build that, or to lead to that?

Lord Clyde: Yes. That is part of it. I find confidence a very difficult thing to deal with, in fact I made some observations in the sixth report, if I could just briefly give a reference, paragraphs 2.8 to 2.11, trying to analyse how confidence works. I do not think it is easy. One essential, if it is a matter of public confidence, is that the public understands what the system is and how it works and there may be some uncertainties or even misunderstandings about the policies and practices of the existing schemes even. Information is one thing for it. I do not think that if the general principle is understood the merits of it can be recognised. I think there are very few people who are denying that restorative justice as a principle and as a process is not a very sound approach to dealing with minor offending in particular cases. So there should be no difficulty about confidence in the principle or the philosophy of the approach, although it is novel, so that may frighten some people. The particular difficulty of the existing schemes and the feared connection with past paramilitaries, of course, is a real one and understandable, but if it can be shown that all the persons engaged in this work are innocent, have a responsible approach to the problem and do not have baggage brought with them which would give even the appearance of injudicial or partial behaviour, then I would hope that there would be sufficient confidence created. Then if one can show and demonstrate that the schemes are working and that they are working effectively and well, that should just secure the confidence which they deserve.

Q28 Mr Anderson: Given what you have just said, that we would get there, can you comment on the suitability of staff who would be recruited? In the consultation which went on, 26 of the respondents actually said they believed that people should be at the same level as if they were joining the PSNI, which I would have thought was a very, very high level for anybody to meet. Do you think that the Protocols they put in place will actually make it possible to recruit sufficient numbers of people to actually carry out the job properly?

Lord Clyde: Yes. At the moment, the schemes do have their standards of staff. They have training procedures and they have accreditation for the staff, so all that is already in place. Particular standards, if somebody thinks they are not high enough, can be imposed or suggested and introduced, but I have not been aware of any anxieties of shortcomings on the part of those who are actually working in these areas. One thing I would have thought was certainly undesirable was to have some procedure set up to the appointment by the state of people who had participated in the voluntary sector. These schemes are part of the voluntary sector of the whole criminal justice system and it is not appropriate, I would suggest, for the state sector to be going to a voluntary body and saying, "You are to improve your standards." The voluntary bodies which operate, such as NIACRO and the many other bodies which are voluntary organisations which help in the criminal justice system have their own independence, their own standards and their own procedures. If they are not good enough, then the state will not employ them.

Q29 Chairman: I accept what you say about voluntary bodies, I am sure we all do, but in the United Kingdom in general voluntary bodies, particularly those which register as charities, for instance, have to abide by certain rules and if they do not then they are no longer allowed to officiate. If you are dealing with voluntary bodies which are going to be involved with the resolution of crime, however low level, then unless those people manning those voluntary bodies are of a sufficient standard and that standard is monitored, surely their validity is in question?

Lord Clyde: I think I, and the schemes, would immediately agree with that. Yes, indeed. I am just wondering what is the shortfall or deficiency at the moment in the staffing arrangements.

Q30 Mr Murphy: To go back to the policing issues, if it was not possible to resolve politically the policing issues, in your view, Lord Clyde, would you still prefer the funding to continue in those areas without the police being involved?

Lord Clyde: From charitable sources?

Q31 Mr Murphy: Yes.

Lord Clyde: Well, I take the view that these bodies are contributing something to the locality and recognising the dangers and possibly the past histories which may be involved in them, that is certainly a danger or a disadvantage, but I think their disappearance would be far worse a fate, because in their vacuum I would not know what would take their place.

Q32 Sammy Wilson: Could I just take you, Lord Clyde, back to the point you were making about voluntary bodies and that you would not like to see interference in the employment practices, or whatever, of those voluntary bodies? These are no ordinary bodies. First of all, they are involved partly in the criminal justice system itself, a very sensitive area. They have assumed unto themselves a role in many places as an alternative to the police and I must say I am surprised at the complacency you have demonstrated about the suitability of some of the people who are involved. We have received evidence, for example from the McCartney sisters, that some of those who were involved in the cover-up of the murder of their brother are actually involved in the Community Restorative Justice Scheme. Does that not give you some cause for concern about the guidelines which are required to ensure that only suitable people are involved in these and does it not also give you some cause to think that maybe some unsuitable people have already crept into some of the schemes?

Lord Clyde: Of course I would share that concern, that must be right, and that is why I say there is absolutely no question but that those engaged in paramilitary or terrorist activities cannot sit on these bodies. That is absolutely right. I am only going by what I have seen and I did not meet, so far as I was aware, but this may be an over-innocent view, people who were currently engaged in undesirable activities who were actually at the same time sitting on these Restorative Justice practices. I may be wrong. If there are, then I quite agree, they should not be.

Q33 Sammy Wilson: Would you not also agree then that given the concerns which have already been expressed, and some of the evidence which has been produced, that there is a need for interference in the employment practices of these groups even though they are, as you have described, voluntary bodies because of the sensitive nature of the work?

Lord Clyde: I am certainly accepting, if you like, interference. I am certainly accepting that those who are, I hope, going to work with the schemes will want to be satisfied that the people who are operating the schemes are responsible and appropriate people. That is certainly so. What I would hesitate to say is that the state must appoint the people who are doing this because this is an operation which is in partnership with the state; it is not part of the state side, as it were. This is not another agency in the criminal justice system on the state side.

Q34 Sammy Wilson: Should a state agency have the job of vetting those whom the groups decide to recruit?

Lord Clyde: I would have no difficulty, and I do not think the schemes would, if there was a concern raised and the question was asked.

Chairman: I will just bring in David Anderson for the final question.

Q35 Mr Anderson: My concern on this was that I attended a meeting earlier this year in this place hosted by the Member for South Belfast, but he is not here today, with some of his constituents who had actually gone through this process and they were very, very concerned about some of the people they were working with and who were officially the representatives of the CRJ in their area. Do you believe, as we have been advised, that the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults Act will form the basis of this? Do you think we can avoid that happening in the future? Do you think what has been put in place will work?

Lord Clyde: I think these schemes can work, yes, and I would have thought that disclosure for working with children and others who require particular care was perfectly appropriate. I cannot say with accuracy precisely what qualifications are sought at the moment, but those are the quite appropriate requirements in amongst the various ones for saying who were the appropriate people to sit, or not.

Q36 Chairman: Lord Clyde, I think we could pursue this for a great deal longer, but we are grateful to you for coming. We have some other witnesses to see, and of course you are most welcome to stay and listen to the other sessions if you wish. I infer from what you say that you do believe these schemes have a real place, but you also do seem to accept the absolute necessity of high standards and an equality across the community so that you cannot have some schemes which are masquerading as the police and others which are genuinely supporting and upholding the police. That would not, I hope, be putting words into your mouth, would it? Well, it would, but I hope it would not be misinterpreting you.

Lord Clyde: My only hesitation, with the greatest of respect, Chairman, is in relation to the last part, if it is suggesting that one has to stand back and wait until everybody is ready. If every area has a scheme and every scheme complies with the high standards, I do not see why one can start and find some area, or even start a new one, which would give a demonstration of whether this does work or not, or how well it works, or how badly it works. It would be, I suspect, an example to all the others of what can be achieved and it would be, I think, a matter of very great distinction for Northern Ireland if this exciting and innovative kind of process could be part of the criminal justice system.

Chairman: Thank you very much, and thank you for what you have sought to do for Northern Ireland. We are grateful to you as a distinguished public servant. Thank you very much indeed.

Memoranda submitted by Mr Kit Chivers and

Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland

Examination of Witness

Witness: Mr Kit Chivers, Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, gave evidence.

Q37 Chairman: Mr Chivers, we are delighted to welcome you. Thank you for coming. You have heard what Lord Clyde has said and the answers to the questions which he has given. Before I ask you specific questions, would you like to take up anything Lord Clyde has said?

Mr Chivers: No, I think we can proceed straight to fresh questions, Chairman.

Q38 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Give us your assessment of the existing CRJ schemes and what you see as the main risks and the main opportunities.

Mr Chivers: Before I answer that question, Chairman, could I emphasise the difference between the current schemes, the schemes as we know them, and the schemes as they would be under the Protocol, because the schemes as we know them were devised for a different world, a world which hopefully is now moving into the past, and the Protocol is designed for schemes in the future in a regime in which there is full community with the police in all parts of the Province. I think the calculation of the costs and benefits, the risks and opportunities of the schemes is completely different in the two scenarios, so anything I could say about the schemes as they were would not necessarily bear on the schemes as we are looking to the future. If I could then answer your question, or rather fail to answer it. I fail to answer it because inspectors generally only talk about things which they have actually inspected, and I have not inspected the schemes. I have had some conversations with representatives of the schemes, but I have quite deliberately stood back from them and not inspected them for maybe three reasons. Firstly, because it was not in my authority to inspect them. Secondly, because there would be a danger, if I had gone in and purported to inspect them, that I would have been appearing to endorse them. I do tend to go around expressing interest and enthusiasm, and so forth, and that could have been prejudicial and could have raised false expectations in the schemes. It could, likewise, have prejudiced views about the role of the inspectorate because I have to be a dispassionate inspector. At the time when I am asked to go and inspect them, I must be seen to be doing so with complete neutrality and without any partiality to the schemes. So for that reason I have stood back, I have not inspected them. I have listened very carefully to things which Lord Clyde has found out about them, I have listened to things which the Independent Monitoring Commission has said about them, and other people who have commented on them, but I have not myself, as it were, taken evidence on them.

Q39 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. You talked about the difference between what we hope is the past and what we hope will be the future. What are your overall impressions, therefore, of the provisions contained within the draft Protocol and do you think that if these provisions are implemented we will have the sort of scheme which is necessary in an increasingly normalising Northern Ireland, if I can put it that way?

Mr Chivers: The schemes as envisaged in the Protocol, I share Lord Clyde's fear that they are likely to be quite bureaucratic. Part of the advantage of the schemes as they were was the informality of the approach, the fact that you could handle cases, very low level cases, quickly and do some good, hopefully, in that way; whereas if you move to the perfectly safe position which is created by the Protocol with all its legal provisions in it you lose the opportunities, maybe, which the schemes would offer, but the advantage is clearly that you have a watertight scheme which provides complete control of the police and the Prosecution Service of all the decisions which are being made and there is, therefore, a different calculation of costs and benefits.

Q40 Chairman: Are you suggesting that you would prefer not to have a Protocol?

Mr Chivers: I am not. I can see advantages in the schemes in the new highly regulated form, and indeed that must be the world that we prefer to move to. So definitely that will be a good thing, but I think we have to be careful that we do not lose the distinctive character of the schemes as Community Restorative Justice Schemes just because we are making them fully police compliant and an integral part of the criminal justice system.

Q41 Chairman: Just expand on that a bit for me. If we are going to lose, what would you most regret about what you think would be lost? Just give us examples, if you can.

Mr Chivers: Yes. I used to be the Chief Inspector of the magistrates' courts in England and Wales and I have a long-running concern that the way we administer criminal justice is over-legalistic in many ways, that we bring in lawyers at every stage, and bringing in lawyers is not the only way of protecting people's human rights and ensuring that justice is done. You do not have to do that in an adversarial context, and the thing which really made my spirits sink in the Protocol is the idea that legal advice is going to be available at every stage with every minor dispute which comes into the context of these things. It is good that all decisions under the new regime will be taken by police officers. We would not want people in the schemes to be taking quasi-judicial decisions, even if they are decisions not to regard something as a crime. We all know that what is a crime and what is not is potentially a fuzzy area, that you could regard every playground scrap as an assault and every bit of minor criminal damage as crime. Police officers all the time exercise discretion about these things. It is absolutely right that if anyone is going to be exercising discretion it should be police officers, but if you are bringing things into this structure you have got to retain that degree of flexibility and responsiveness because the great advantage of this is that you keep things outside the formal criminal justice system. Once things get into the formal criminal justice system it can take four months for a police officer to give a caution to a child and the purpose is completely lost on the child. What I am constantly striving for is a system which produces genuine, legitimate summary justice; not kangaroo courts or anything, but summary justice which is administered quickly and flexibly and actually responds to the needs of the community in relation to particularly delinquent young people. I am not sure that we have actually got a structure here which provides those sorts of benefits. We are guarding against the risks, which it is perfectly right to do, but are we losing some of the potential benefits.

Q42 Chairman: Have you made these views known to ministers?

Mr Chivers: No, I have not yet, Chairman.

Q43 Chairman: Well, you are doing now. You realise that, do you not?

Mr Chivers: Indeed.

Q44 Sammy Wilson: Could I just follow up on that. I agree to a certain extent with the need to have flexibility, but given the fact that in many areas these groups are simply seen as an extension of paramilitary organisations, almost vigilante groups with some kind of formal structure to them, do you not agree that if we are going to remove some of the bureaucracy then there needs to be two things? First of all, there needs to be even closer involvement of the police in the schemes and not, as the Government envisages on some of the schemes, a very loose involvement of the police, and secondly there needs to be strict vetting of the people who are involved in administering and operating these schemes. If those two things were tightened up, would you accept that that may well be a balance to the involvement of solicitors or barristers, or whatever, at every stage of the process?

Mr Chivers: Chairman, in fact I think the Protocol does actually provide for that. It is very clear there will be vetting of people working in the schemes and the police will be fully involved. In the original guidelines, if you remember, they were constructed in a world in which it was a question of trying to build little walkways across to the police and maybe working through intermediaries, and so on and so forth. That is not the case in the new Protocol. It is very clear the police will be directly involved in the administration of the schemes. All the decisions will come before police officers and be referred to the Public Prosecution Service where necessary.

Q45 Sammy Wilson: I am not quite sure that that is the case, because my understanding is that 80% of the cases which these groups deal with currently will be outside the Protocols, they will not be subject to the guidelines, and therefore you will not have that degree of involvement. That is one of the concerns I have, and I have got great concerns about the scheme anyway in many areas, but with 80% of their work being outside the guidelines then of course you do not have the kind of involvement that you are talking about.

Mr Chivers: Mr Wilson raises a very important point, Chairman. There is a question in the Protocol about whether I should inspect the non-criminal activities of the organisations as well as the criminal and I have always taken the view - I did on the original guidelines and I shall do in my submission on the new Protocol - that it is essential I should look at both, because this borderline is crucial. There will be cases when people will come to the schemes and register that something has happened, apparently criminal, but will be prepared to make a statement to the scheme and will not want to make a statement to the police, and we shall need to be crystal clear that anything you say to the scheme is also repeated to the police. There can be no question of the scheme deciding that something falls below the level of what needs to be reported to the police, and that is something I would very much want to inspect, because that could vitiate the whole process.

Q46 Chairman: You are making it plain now, clearly, and we are grateful for that, but you intend to make this a major point of your official submission?

Mr Chivers: I think it is an essential point, yes, Chairman.

Q47 John Battle: I think we get a very clear impression of that interface between the discretionary element and the formal element, if you like, and your appeal for common sense. I just think that the difficulty to me seems to be the difference between what you described as summary justice turning into rough justice, and if you are dealing with a drug dealer under a shop awning that is very different from dealing with a litter lout somewhere on the ground, and I think there could be real challenges with the interface, even for the person who is accused of the offence having the proper back-up procedures. I think there are whole areas there around the Protocol. Who did the Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, your services, consult when developing your draft inspection proposals back in January? Who did you go to to get such a strong view that you express here?

Mr Chivers: I have a team of inspectors who are full of thoughts on these subjects and I did not need to go any further than that to do it, but I did in fact share the draft you have seen with the schemes and with their professional adviser, Professor Harry Mica, who has done a great deal of work in this field. I offered them the opportunity to comment on them, but in fact there was no comment.

Q48 John Battle: Would you intend to have closer contact with the schemes to see how they were working, the inspections and the rest, in the future to get involved in them in detail?

Mr Chivers: Certainly, if the Secretary of State authorises me to do this work I shall, particularly in the early stages, devote considerable resources to doing this. It would be essential. It would be essential first of all to do a pilot study in which there were some actual first-hand observations of what the schemes are doing because it is poorly documented at the moment. Professor Mica has done a lot of work on the subject and published some articles on the subject, but in terms of actual statistics or numbers of people being dealt with, satisfaction and the views of the community, systematically gathered views of the community, checking out that people are satisfied with the way the schemes are operating, there is no public information on that.

Q49 Chairman: Do you have enough inspectors? You want to do this. Do you have enough inspectors to do it?

Mr Chivers: It would certainly stretch my resources to start with. It would have to be prioritised.

Q50 Chairman: How many do you have at the moment?

Mr Chivers: I have a deputy inspector, five inspectors and two assistant inspectors.

Q51 Chairman: A pretty small team?

Mr Chivers: It is a small team.

Q52 Chairman: If you were going to prioritise this, would other aspects of your work, in which also the Committee is obviously interested, have to suffer?

Mr Chivers: Things would have to be put back. We would have to make room for it if the Secretary of State asks me to do this. It is clearly a subject of great public and political concern, so I would prioritise it, but I must say I would be reluctant in the long term for this to consume a large part of my resources because it would be an odd way to use a small team, to devote maybe a third of my resources to this tiny aspect of the criminal justice system.

Q53 Chairman: This Committee, of course, can decide to recommend that you have more people, if it wants to. Would you like that?

Mr Chivers: It would be more work for me, Chairman, but no, I do not. I have always tried to run the inspectorate - when I say "always", for three years I have tried to run it as a very economical outfit with a very small team. Northern Ireland is a small place and I think we would do better to have a small, highly motivated little team. I would not want to expand it unless I absolutely have to.

Q54 John Battle: I get the strong impression that you and your inspectorate wants to make this scheme work. Am I right, that you have a passion to see it through in a way?

Mr Chivers: No. I come from the Treasury, in which the word "enthusiast" is a term of calculated abuse! If the Secretary of State asks me to do something, I shall do it, and I have said that whenever I inspect an organisation, if I have been asked to do it, I inspect it in a supportive way. So if I am asked to do it and these schemes are running and the Secretary of State has asked that they be running, I would inspect them in such a way that I help them to improve, rather than setting out to destroy them, but that is the limit of my enthusiasm.

John Battle: That is not unhelpful.

Chairman: Perhaps I can ask Mr Fraser to probe your restrained enthusiasm.

Q55 Mr Fraser: That is a marvellous answer. I like your candour. You have given us candid views on the schemes. I wrote down "schemes envisaged in the Protocol are bureaucratic"; that was one of your points. Another point was that there are advantages in the scheme in a regulated form, and a positive point you made was the fact that you felt it was good that the police officers take decisions under the new scheme. Given all that you have said and given your reluctance to go further in terms of help with what you are trying to do, how do the schemes as they currently are proposed help you fulfil your role, which is primarily to enhance public confidence in the criminal justice agencies? How do they help you?

Mr Chivers: One of the great challenges, the great challenge probably, in Northern Ireland is extending policing to the whole of the community and this is being tackled on a great number of fronts and Community Restorative Justice Schemes have all along been seen (by the Independent Monitoring Commission amongst others) as one of the means by which you can spread the influence of law and order into areas where it has not been present before. It is a question of building up confidence in parts of the community where it has not been. I know these schemes have a reputation, which means there is a risk of losing confidence in other parts of the community, but the crucial thing, I think, is to begin to make approaches, to bring people into the family of law and order, to bring individuals who are natural leaders of the community into the fold in so far as you can do so by properly checking that they are no longer involved in criminal activity. Some of these people need to be brought in and this is a way of doing so.

Q56 Mr Fraser: So from 2003, which is when you were appointed, to this meeting today have you achieved that objective of enhancing public confidence in criminal justice agencies, given the even-handedness you would like to see between the communities as well?

Mr Chivers: I have done no work in relation to Community Restorative Justice Schemes. I hope that some of the other reports I have done have helped to increase public confidence. I have done work on police and prisons, forensics, et cetera, which I hope have helped to improve confidence, but as yet I have done nothing in this field.

Q57 Mr Hepburn: How does the relationship work in practice for people who are not involved in this area, between the police and the schemes in forms of communication and daily contact? How does it work? To give us an idea, can you compare each side of the community.

Mr Chivers: What sort of contacts they would have, you mean?

Q58 Mr Hepburn: How does the relationship work in practice in the Republican area and how does it work in the Loyalist area?

Mr Chivers: In the Loyalist areas the Northern Ireland Alternatives has a representative of the police on its board and so there is direct contact with the police. In Republican areas it is not the case that there are no contacts. There are police officers operating in west Belfast particularly, and north Belfast, who will have informal contacts but obviously in the current political environment there are great obstacles to that on both sides and it has to be done with great discretion and care. The question is how you develop those contacts and actually move into a world in which these problems are eased and everyone can have full support for the police.

Q59 Mr Hepburn: When you say "on both sides," from the reports we have been getting the impression I got was that it was the Republicans who were certainly reluctant to get involved with the police, but you say there is reluctance on the Loyalist side when you say "both sides"? With low level crime I did not think that would be an issue in the Loyalist areas.

Mr Chivers: There are certainly Loyalist communities where the police are not very popular either. I think wherever you are dealing with working class estates, poor estates, in any area there will be areas in which the police find it more difficult to operate. I think it is a constant struggle for the police to establish trust and confidence in areas of this sort. There are areas of great deprivation in some Protestant parts of Northern Ireland, as you well know.

Q60 Sammy Wilson: Chairman, Mr Chivers used the phrase that he saw one of the roles of these schemes to bring people into the family of law and order. Could I just ask, given first of all the evidence which we have had to date - Women's Aid, for example, in Foyle have indicated that the CRJ there indicated that they would only refer cases to their organisation if they promised not to involve the police. There is a considerable amount of evidence - and I am talking about Loyalist, because I know some of the schemes in the Loyalist areas better than I would in the Republican areas, but it comes through in both - that many of them see themselves (I used the term earlier on) touting for business as alternatives to the police and will actually go to people and say, "We will deal with this, rather than the police." That is hardly bringing people into the family of law and order. There is resistance to involving the police in the schemes, and indeed the Government had to be dragged screaming and kicking to even include direct involvement with the police under the guidelines because of resistance from these groups. Many of those who are involved in them have got, if not current paramilitary involvement, past paramilitary involvement. Given all of that, is it really not a bit optimistic to say that any of these schemes are likely to encourage people to come into the family of law and order? They see themselves as an alternative to the existing law and order system, and indeed some of them are politically motivated as well to ensure that people are pushed away from law and order as exercised by the state.

Mr Chivers: Yes. That is exactly the challenge, Chairman. The challenge is a challenge to the community. It is not just a challenge to the scheme, it is a challenge to the communities. If they want involvement with the administration of justice to be devolved to the local level, all concerned in that process will have to be acceptable people to deal with that. That is why rigorous processes are envisaged, not just for new people coming into the schemes but for existing people, people who are at present working with the schemes. It is proposed that all of them should go through a rigorous scrutiny process to establish that whereas they may have had paramilitary offences in the past, because all manner of people have had paramilitary histories in the past, in the Troubles, and were released under the Good Friday Agreement. It must be absolutely clear that they are now committed to the path of peace and are proper people to engage in these sorts of activities.

Q61 Sammy Wilson: I know that you have not done any inspections of these schemes, you told us that at the very outset, but you have had conversations with people about them. Given the kind of background which you have accepted there and given the fact that this is largely about turf wars as well, that they want to justify their own existence, what do you base any optimism on that these schemes can actually achieve the objective which you have said you would like from that, that is to integrate people who are currently alienated into the family of law and order?

Mr Chivers: I believe in setting people challenges and I think that inspection is a way in which you do that. If they do not meet the criteria, then I write adverse reports about them and they get de-accredited. It is as simple as that. We set the criteria and we are very clear about what are the conditions on which this is an acceptable thing to do. The Criminal Justice Review was very clear about it, Lord Clyde was very clear about it, the Independent Monitoring Commission likewise. We all understand what are acceptable things to do. Exilings are not acceptable things to do. Extorting money from people with threats and menaces is not an acceptable thing to do. Turf wars and protecting drug dealers are not acceptable things to do. All these things are unlawful, for heaven's sake, they are not just bad practice. All these things are unacceptable. We shall inspect without fear or favour and we shall report publicly and frankly what we find about them.

Q62 Chairman: Will you publish the criteria against which these things are judged?

Mr Chivers: I think the criteria are well set out in the guidelines. They are not my criteria in that sense.

Q63 Chairman: You are happy with that?

Mr Chivers: Absolutely, but I would be happy in a sense with whatever criteria were set. The policy is not for me. Whatever the criteria are which the Secretary of State establishes, I shall inspect against them and I shall report publicly and openly what I find.

Q64 Chairman: Does your Treasury background, which prevents you being an enthusiast, allow you to be an optimist?

Mr Chivers: I do believe that people are redeemable, yes. I do not think it is my Treasury background, but I have a profound belief that people are redeemable.

Chairman: I share that view, yes.

John Battle: That is technically an economic expression!

Q65 Mr Murphy: I understand, Mr Chivers, that currently there are approximately 18 schemes operating, 14 in the Republican areas and four elsewhere. Given the fears which have been expressed and given the conversations you have had, is there not a real danger when the Protocol comes into action that quite a large number of the current schemes will disappear?

Mr Chivers: It is certainly possible. I think there are great challenges for the schemes because the demands on them will be very great. It will involve all their people going through a vetting process, which will not be a popular thing. The Government is not offering any funding to the schemes actually. Unless the schemes are able to obtain funding from other agencies or from charitable sources, which seems increasingly unlikely, it may be that some of the schemes go out of business just because there is no funding, and it may be a less attractive environment for volunteers to work in. At the moment they have depended very heavily on volunteer support. What you are looking at under the Protocol is much more like a professional part of the criminal justice system and whether you can get people to volunteer to do that, I am more doubtful. So I do think there are big questions. I think it is quite possible that some of them will disappear. Like Lord Clyde, I have met some good people in this business and I think there are some volunteers there whom it would be sad to lose and I hope that the good will survive and will survive inspection and regulation and all the tests we impose upon them.

Q66 Chairman: Could I be so impertinent as to ask you a personal question? You referred to your implicit beliefs, and so on, a moment or two ago. I see from the biographical notes which we have been supplied with that you have had extensive experience, before you went to Northern Ireland three or three and a half years ago, in one of the more difficult areas of London. You have dealt with aspects of multi-racial community problems, and so on. Does your last three and a half years in Northern Ireland lead you to the judgment that the problems there are comparable, far worse, or not so serious as the ones you had to deal with south of the river?

Mr Chivers: Oh, totally different, Chairman.

Q67 Chairman: I appreciate that.

Mr Chivers: Totally different, in that Brixton, where I worked in my spare time for many years, was certainly in the latter years a very prosperous area, an area in which there was great economic opportunity, so the background environment was one in which the large minority community was very well placed to advance and not just survive. I think the challenges in Northern Ireland are challenges of inequality and deprivation, which are much more difficult to tackle and which need serious continued attention.

Chairman: That is very helpful and a very sobering thought. I think we are all very grateful to you for what you have said. I hope we will be able to meet you wearing other hats, because we do want to look at the prisons in Northern Ireland, and when Anne Ayres came to see us she strongly recommended our talking to you and obviously we wish to do that. There are only so many things we can do at once, but thank you very, very much for your evidence. If there are other points which occur to you, obviously let us know, and please feel free to stay and listen to the third set of evidence if you would like to do so. Thank you very, very much indeed.

Memoranda submitted by Mr Spence and PBNI

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Ronnie Spence, Chairman, and Mr Brian McCaughey, Chief Probation Officer, Probation Board for Northern Ireland, gave evidence.

Q68 Chairman: Welcome, Mr Spence, and welcome, Mr McCaughey. Mr Spence, you are the Chairman of the Probation Board and you, Mr McCaughey, are the Chief Probation Officer. As there are two of you - we have had single witnesses up until now this afternoon - you have heard it all, would either of you like to comment on what we have heard and to reflect on the observations either of Kit Chivers or of Lord Clyde?

Mr Spence: If it would be helpful to you, I might say a few words by way of introduction. The Probation Board's view is that restorative justice is a good thing, provided it is done well. It is internationally recognised and respected as an appropriate way to deal with certain types of offences, bringing victims, offenders and communities together to create appropriate positive action, but it has to be complementary to and supportive of the formal justice system. It must not be seen to be or treated as an alternative. That is a very fundamental part of our position on it. The Probation Board already uses restorative justice principles and practices in dealing with offenders at present where that is appropriate. We believe it has the potential to enable us to work more effectively with even more victims and offenders. We see restorative justice as an integral part of our general philosophy and trying to work effectively with the community, and we have a history of doing so with a fair degree of success, including gaining community acceptance for the work we try to do. We have over the last few years tried to work constructively with the Northern Ireland Office and those promoting Restorative Justice Schemes to try and work our way through consideration of the very tricky issues involved in developing the approach to Northern Ireland. The present set of proposals which the Northern Ireland Office has been bringing forward are a response to the existence of the two umbrella organisations and that response reflects the context from which the two umbrella organisations come. We have tried to be as supportive as we can of what the Northern Ireland Office has been seeking to achieve. We are very strongly behind them in their emphasis in doing things in a way which gains community confidence. The Board itself has made responses to the earlier guidelines and we will, towards the end of this week, be considering our detailed response to the Protocols, and indeed I think it is fair to say that we share some of Kit Chivers's concerns about how all this will work in practice. Will it be too complicated? Will it be too bureaucratic? Will it actually work smoothly enough? In our view - and we have said this very clearly in one of our responses to the NIO - we have made it very clear that if we enter restorative justice approaches, particularly in the very difficult conditions in Northern Ireland, if we introduce them in a way which fails that will devalue the whole process and will make it very difficult to introduce restorative justice quickly. In an ideal world we would not want to be starting from here, but Northern Ireland is very far from being an ideal world. You can make that statement about many aspects of life in Northern Ireland, but I think it is valid for us to say that if we had had a blank sheet here we would have been arguing that the Probation Board should have been given the central role in taking forward restorative justice. We would have seen that as part of our work, part of all we have been trying to do over the years, to work with adults to reduce offending and re-offending.

Q69 Chairman: Could you still do this?

Mr Spence: That is certainly a possibility. We see restorative justice approaches as a natural development of our long history of working with offenders in the community and seeking to re-integrate them and seeking to help victims. Our hope would be that if the present approach being promoted by the Northern Ireland Office proceeds and works, then we will work with them to try and make sure that it does. It should be seen in a sense as a pilot approach, as a response to the particular circumstances created by the emergence of the umbrella organisations. Our hope would be that in due course if the present approach is introduced and is seen to largely work, we can then step back and say what should really happen generally. We can, over time, maybe within the next five years get to a situation where we would have a comprehensive approach to restorative justice solutions which could operate right across Northern Ireland, not just in areas which have suffered from paramilitary influences, and you could see restorative justice approaches being applied in other areas, including those which currently we would not be considering, including middle-class and settled parts of the community. That is our position.

Q70 Chairman: Thank you for that. I intervened briefly when you said what your ideal would have been and could you do that still, and your colleague, the Chief Probation Officer, nodded vigorously at that point. Could you? Would you like to? Are you going to make it part of your submission that you should?

Mr Spence: No, I think we are where we are. A lot of work has gone into the analysis of the issues and the development of proposals which might be an acceptance. I think the right thing to do is to put that in place and try it. But if it works, I think we should try to look at a more comprehensive approach, which would place restorative justice techniques in the right context as just one of the tools which the Probation Board would and should use.

Q71 Chairman: So accepting that you are accepting the reality, and also recognising that you have not yet made your formal submission, would you like to tell the Committee a little bit about how you would ideally see the Probation Service playing a part in the new scheme?

Mr Spence: If we are talking about the blank sheet situation and we have not got the problem of dealing with organisations which have come up with a paramilitary background, we would see a situation in which we would, on a regular basis, advertise and invite applications from organisations which wanted to develop community restorative justice approaches in their community and we would get responses, we would hope, from Loyalist communities, Republican communities, from middle-class towns and from disadvantaged communities, it would not be confined to any particular part of Northern Ireland. We would commission those projects, as we commission other work from the community, from the voluntary sector. We would commission them to carry out particular services, which we would specify. We would have standards and we would seek the same sort of inspection arrangements which Kit Chivers is going to provide on the NIO approach. We would see that being very appropriate in that blank sheet situation.

Q72 Chairman: Could you do that with your existing resources, or would you need to have a significant increase in them?

Mr Spence: I think what we are going to see over the next few years is greater use of the Probation Board in managing offenders in Northern Ireland. That will need extra resources, and this would be just one of the additional areas where we would have to work.

Chairman: That is very fascinating.

Q73 Sammy Wilson: Could I just come to the Protocols, because there are two which directly involve the Probation Board. The first one is the actual involvement of the Probation Board and the people who go through the schemes and the monitoring of their conduct. Originally you were to be the message boys for these groups to the police, the conduit along which the information flowed. Reluctantly, the Government has agreed that the police should have direct involvement. From my understanding - and I just want you to clear this up, if you could, for me - is that the only involvement of the police is that when somebody comes to the notice of one of these schemes they must pass on to the police as quickly as possible any appropriate information they believe the police would require. A letter would do. They would never have to involve the police directly in the structure or whatever. Is that your understanding of how the scheme has to operate or the minimum which is required from the scheme to have contact with the police to meet that part of the Protocol?

Mr Spence: Yes. We are happy with the general thrust of the approach which is now being proposed. We did not like being the post office. We prefer the approach which is now being proposed. I think the difficulty is we do not know how it is going to work. There is a danger that it becomes very bureaucratic and paper-bound. It needs to work in a flexible way with all the players having - I will not say an equal role, but all the players being seriously involved and being seriously involved in the decisions about how somebody should be treated and managed.

Q74 Sammy Wilson: You talked about the role you would see for the Probation Board and you have outlined a bit of that, and I am happy with that, but do you see that as the same as the role the police would have to have, because this is what the Protocol says, that they must pass on to the police as quickly as possible all the information the police would require? Does that simply mean that the scheme could get away with sending to the police, "By the way, we've got Sammy Wilson. He broke a window and we're now dealing with him," end of story?

Mr McCaughey: May I attempt to answer that, Mr Wilson? That is not how I understand it. I understand that the information was to be immediately brought to the attention of the police. They would have a number of checks in relation to that individual because that individual may have come to their attention for other matters. Examples, for instance, which have come to my attention is the example where a name is given to the police in connection with a car crime and the police may be investigating that individual for a number of other matters and therefore in their discussions with the Public Prosecution Service would say, "No, that matter cannot be dealt with through that scheme because there are wider issues." So it is not just, "Here's the information. Can we go ahead?" There is some investigation. That is my understanding.

Q75 Sammy Wilson: Yes, and that is fair enough. The police can then, if the individual is known to them or they suspect he has been involved in other things, or he has been involved in a number of other serious things, say that this is not an appropriate way. But if it is decided that yes, in the light of the information which has been received by the police, this person can go through the scheme, what involvement is there for the police at that stage, because according to the Protocol the scheme has done all that it is required by passing the information on to the police? There is no indication that the kind of thing which Ronnie has outlined the Probation Board would like to do, or involvement that they would like to have, but the police will have that. Not according to this Protocol. What do you see as the role for the police after the information has been passed on and after the police have said, "Yes, we believe that the scheme is the appropriate way of dealing with this individual?

Mr McCaughey: I think the roles are two entirely different roles. The Probation Board has a history, since 1982, of working in, with and through communities and helping to form partnerships and schemes with community groups, and that is what these groups are. They are not voluntary organisations, they are community groups, and there was some discussion about that earlier on. So we have got a long history in allocating a significant amount of our budget to forging these partnerships, to help to reduce crime in local areas. The job of the police is to investigate crime and in the instance I have described it would be them who would say to the scheme, "Yes, go ahead. This is appropriate." But I had understood also that they would be issuing some sort of informal warning or there would be some mark against the individual who actually decided to participate in the scheme.

Q76 Sammy Wilson: But the police will have no involvement. This is at variance with what we have been given earlier. I did not take it up at that stage because I did not believe that we were getting an accurate picture of it anyway, but I wanted to follow it through with you because you are actually dealing with the day-to-day running of these things. There will be no direct involvement of the police in the schemes on a day-to-day basis, looking at what is happening to the individual, monitoring whether the action taken is appropriate, or whether, indeed, it is what the police would have envisaged as happening once the person is in the scheme. The involvement of the police is still an arm's length involvement. In so far as the information is passed on to them, they okay a person under the scheme and they can be blanked out after that, is that correct?

Mr McCaughey: Again, I repeat, I think there are two different roles. I think the role of the police is investigatory and to give permission to the schemes to go ahead. I think the other role you describe is one of quality assurance. Are they doing it properly? Have they got the knowledge, the skills and the competence and are they carrying out what they have said they would do properly?

Q77 Sammy Wilson: Well, you see, that is not correct because earlier on when Lord Clyde was giving his evidence, the advantage he saw was that people would be sitting around a table and the police officer would be there and would be able to exercise a certain amount of discretion and quickly get decisions made. Now you are telling us that the Probation Board sees this totally different. I suspect that your picture is more correct than his.

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, if I could give my experience, having been involved with both schemes.

Q78 Chairman: Please do, and feel free to expand on it. I want to bring in Mr Battle, but Mr Wilson has raised a very important point.

Mr McCaughey: I think, Mr Wilson, what has been described to you is the management committee of some of the particular alternatives. I think that was the example provided where you had the police officer and a member of social services and the local community. That is the management committee meeting on a quarterly basis. That is not how I understand they manage the cases. So I would agree with you, there is not a multi-agency case discussion but an individual referral. Do you follow?

Q79 Sammy Wilson: I do follow, and now you have confirmed the concern which I have, because my understanding was - and this is what is being sold now by the Government - that there will be total involvement of the police with these Community Restorative Justice Schemes. Lord Clyde's understanding was that the police would be involved in the individual case, able to go to and fro, and people would be very happy with that. But now we are back and you are describing the situation which many of us feared, that the police would simply be told, "Here is an individual. They would then pass over that individual to the scheme, or not pass him over to the scheme and would have no further input."

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, that is not what I described. I said my interpretation of what you had heard earlier on was a description of their management committee.

Sammy Wilson: The management committee would hardly discuss individual cases, and that was the context in which that was described.

Q80 Chairman: Let the witness answer as he thinks appropriate and we can always take it further. You are saying that there has been a confusion between two parts of the same body, between the management committee and the regular administration of justice within the body? That is what you are saying, is it?

Mr McCaughey: That is correct, and I believe that the new Protocols as outlined do give a role for the police, and a strong role for the police, in giving schemes permission to go ahead or not to go ahead. I understand that they have also a role in ensuring that that is linked to some sort of informed warning or caution.

Q81 Chairman: But in the overall management of the scheme the role of the police is participatory but slightly arm's length? That is what you are saying?

Mr McCaughey: It is not what I would call case management.

Chairman: No. I understand the difference between the two and it is very important to have it on the record.

Sammy Wilson: I want to develop the role of the Probation Board.

Chairman: I want to bring in John Battle at this point.

Q82 John Battle: I want to take what Sammy Wilson has said a bit further. I think it is a great first session of the Committee, if I may say so, Chairman, because I am going to go away now with a lot more questions than I came with. The reason for that is that I do share their concerns in a way and I would like to be absolutely clear in my mind whether a body, a community group - I do not know the context, but I am just imagining it, others know it better than I - make the decision of referral to the police, because if they are in a position to make the referral, they may decide not to refer someone when it is quite a serious matter. If I turn the question around the other way and ask it in the form of a question, as I asked the other witnesses, am I worrying unnecessarily about the nature of the crimes referred to in the scheme? Should I be worrying about distinctions between low level crime and more serious crime? I am massively in favour of a scheme which deals with low level crime in the neighbourhood and saves the whole court system, the legal aid, and all the rest of it, but what I worry about is that line and interface between low level crime, as we may describe it, and where it sheers into more serious crime where the decisions are left in the community even, perhaps, without referral to the police. Could that happen?

Mr Spence: I am going to try to answer the question and my colleague can tell me where I am wrong. I think in my ideal world we have this process whereby everyone agrees that this individual should be referred into one of these schemes. The schemes are highly professional. They are well-trained people. They have protocols, they operate to a high standard, and those schemes decide what is the best way to treat this individual to make sure he does not re-offend, to make sure that he goes to see the victim and deal with the problem, and that the community now accepts that this individual has now behaved improperly. That is all done within the schemes. The schemes themselves are subject to scrutiny by the Criminal Justice Inspectorate. So they are going in every now and again, looking at individual cases if necessary, looking at how the organisation is performing. There is also a complaints process so that someone who is dissatisfied with the way an individual has been treated - it could be the victim, it could the offender himself - can come to the Probation Board and we have got a formal complaints process in position. If, in working with this individual, who is not complying with what we have suggested, that is not going well one might expect the police and the Probation Board to get formally involved again because it was not working, the referral had not worked, and it would be either an informal or a formal return to the criminal justice system of that individual because the process was not operating in the way we thought. So the police would not be involved in the day-to-day management of the offender, but there would be safety nets to try and pick up cases which did not work effectively.

Q83 Chairman: Do you wish to add anything?

Mr McCaughey: I do, a slightly different take on the question. Communities must refer to the scheme under the Protocols. They have no option but to refer to the police. That is the first thing.

Q84 John Battle: They must refer to the police?

Mr McCaughey: They must refer. However, a concern we would have is with the definition of "low level crime". I think it is a vague area, a grey area, and we could debate for the next hour where the cut-off point is from anti-social behaviour to low level crime. In my experience, the schemes have dealt with not low level crime.

Q85 Chairman: Would you like to amplify that a little?

Mr McCaughey: I have examples where we had a conversation about car crime. Car crime is a very serious crime.

Q86 John Battle: Stealing cars or smashing them up, you mean, when they are parked on the street? What do you mean?

Mr McCaughey: Stealing them.

Q87 Chairman: I really think it is important to get this on the record. If you could expand on this with some examples, it would be very, very helpful.

Mr McCaughey: I have had contact with the schemes for many, many years now and the Criminal Justice Review and the guidelines and subsequent Protocols have introduced the term "low level crime". These schemes have been in existence for a long, long time. We are imposing the term "low level crime" on the schemes, but to my knowledge they certainly do not get involved in offences of a sexual nature or domestic violence. I think they do see that as outside their area of expertise, at least that is what I am told. I have no direct experience of that. But they are really directed by the victim. The victim is central in restorative justice and if the victims are saying they do not wish to go through the formal justice system that seems to be the priority for support to be necessary. Is it low level, medium or high level crime?

Q88 Chairman: Is it true that a certain amount of physical violence, including knee-capping, has on occasions been so treated?

Mr McCaughey: Can I firstly clarify that alternatives originates from alternatives to punishment beatings and knee-capping, it is not alternatives to the criminal justice system or formal justice. It was set up as an alternative to reduce and prevent punishment beatings, punishment shootings. I have no knowledge of where people have been knee-capped or punished in the nature of these schemes.

Q89 Sammy Wilson: It is correct, Mr McCaughey. We have actually had people from Women's Aid speak to us where some of these schemes have tried to deal with rape cases and have tried in fact to persuade women to remove their evidence because some of those involved were involved with the IRA.

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, I have no knowledge of that and I would not accept that practice whatsoever. That is a very, very specialist area and if this Committee has received evidence in that regard, I cannot dispute it. I have no experience of that.

Q90 Chairman: You have no experience. That is absolutely fair. It is a very fair question and that is a very categorical and helpful answer, but you did say - and you did not actually give us many examples - that you were unhappy about the definition "low level crime".

Mr McCaughey: I have been engaged in conversation with the schemes about the type of work, but I have not investigated them, I have not examined the case files, but in conversations and meetings I have asked them of the type of work they would be involved in. It has been quoted to me, car theft, and I queried would they actually see that as legitimate. They would take their lead from the victim and if the victim did not want to raise car crime, be it car theft or damage to a car, or criminal damage to a car, they would take their lead from the victim.

Q91 Chairman: So it is victim-driven?

Mr McCaughey: We then entered into discussions, is that one car or could that be five cars, and who actually would have that information? The police, and my argument was part of the discussion and the debate as to why the information needed to go to the police to make the overall decision as to whether schemes should or should not deal with the matter.

Q92 Mr Murphy: Could we take that a stage further? Could the victims, therefore, say that they did not want any police action if they were assaulted?

Mr McCaughey: That is a matter for the victim, who may well say in the circumstances, "I do not want to go through the formal justice system."

Q93 Mr Murphy: But could the police not therefore intervene in that case? Rather than allow the scheme to deal with it, could the police not say, "Well, whether you like it or not, I am afraid it's that serious, we know who it is, it's a crime"?

Mr McCaughey: Absolutely. That is the strength I see in the Protocols. We are comparing what may have happened in the past and what must happen in the future, and in the new world when everybody has signed up to the Protocols, I would anticipate situations with the police and the Public Prosecution Service, because it will be their decision to bring a prosecution, the Public Prosecution Service, not the police. The police detect crime and bring it to the Prosecution Service and they will decide whether to prosecute, but the weight of evidence will probably lean towards prosecution through the formal justice system.

Q94 Mr Murphy: There is always the fear that the individual who has been attacked could also be intimidated not to give evidence?

Mr McCaughey: Yes. I appreciate that.

Q95 Sammy Wilson: I just want to ask, in this rose-tinted world of yours do you not see the chance of somebody coming round and saying, "You really don't want this reported to the police, do you?" I have got to say, we are not living in a new world yet. We are living in a world where you have got schemes which are occupied and are run by people who have, at best, past criminal records, and indeed maybe even current criminal involvement, and to simply say, "Well, of course, if something like this happened, the police could still deal with it," the danger is that we are giving legitimacy to the very people who are in these schemes who do not want people to go near the police because they want to protect individuals, or whatever?

Mr McCaughey: My response to that is, yes, I did participate fully with the Northern Ireland Office in moving the process along from guidelines to Protocols. The Probation Board does believe that restorative justice is a positive way of working and will be beneficial to solving crime in communities. The Protocols as presented by the Northern Ireland Office do provide us with a real opportunity to involve communities, to place victims central. In my world, when groups sign up to these Protocols they have no choice but to report the matters, no choice and, whether it is through complaints or inspection, if somebody reported under the scheme we would hope that we would be able to establish that.

Q96 Chairman: I do not think anyone would dispute your good faith. I do not think any of us would not share your hopes, but this Committee produced a detailed report on organised crime in the summer - you may have seen it - and we received a lot of our evidence, we had to, in camera because people were not able to give it in public, and the reason they were not able to give it in public (it is spelt out very clearly in our report and the recommendations which we made) was that in many, many cases they were too afraid to give it in public. I am not talking of old ladies, I am not talking of young children; I am talking of men who had served in the Armed Forces, I am talking of men running businesses, and so on, who frankly were afraid to give their evidence in public because of the intimidation which they knew they or their families would be subjected to. We all devoutly hope and pray that Northern Ireland's society in a few years time will be so radically different that that just will not apply, but at the moment it does, and we are worried, therefore. Your remarks, set in the context of what we, from our investigations, know to be the case, do make us worried.

Mr Spence: There are certainly dangers that victims could be intimidated or persuaded not to allow their case to go through the formal justice system or to have a case produced under restorative justice which should be dealt with by the police and the courts. That danger is there. That is why we have said we should only introduce these schemes if we are confident they are really going to work and that the safeguards are there. Our call at this time is that the safeguards which we are trying to build in through the Protocols, the complaints process, will be there. The presence of people from the statutory bodies in managing the offenders in relation to the schemes, the intelligence which we will have on the ground of what is actually happening will help to pick up some cases, and the penalties are there because the schemes can be removed from accreditation by the Northern Ireland Office and the criminal justice inspector can go in and look at what they are doing generally. So there are safety nets there, as I said earlier, but I do not think they can totally guarantee that given our troubled history in Northern Ireland that risk of intimidation can be totally removed at this point.

Q97 Chairman: But it is incumbent upon all of us to see that that risk is reduced to the absolute minimum, is it not?

Mr Spence: Exactly.

Q98 Mr Campbell: I just want to follow on one point there and then a subsequent question, if I can, Chairman. Just to be more precise about this, let us say we have a position under the new schemes with the new Protocols in place where a person is suspected of a low level crime, the police have insufficient evidence to charge him through the formalised structure either for that crime or for other criminal activities, and someone somewhere arrives at the victim's door and says, "Look, it's not really appropriate for you to accept CRJ involvement." Would there not be a de-incentivisation for the police, who may be thinking, "Well, we haven't got enough evidence on this guy and he's going to CRJ anyway," and then somebody somewhere puts the pressure on the victim to ensure that CRJ do not get involved either because the victim has been persuaded not to bother and it is more than their life's worth to allow them to?

Mr Spence: I think in the real world of Northern Ireland that could happen, yes.

Q99 Mr Campbell: And when it does, what happens?

Mr Spence: You hope over time that those incidents get smaller and smaller as the policing situation improves and as the community accepts more genuine ownership of trying to deal with those situations and with those offenders, but I do not think anybody could say at this point in time you could eliminate that sort of danger.

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, I will be absolutely clear so that the Committee is clear. We are supportive of Restorative Justice Schemes but only when the police have a full role to play, when there is no paramilitaryism and when there is no resort to violence or pressure, or coercion, if the Committee hears that. We do think that it is an opportunity to bring criminal justice closer to communities. We actually do believe that it is a possible way of enhancing policing in communities. There are threats around as well, and we are aware of that, in terms of threats to the existing ways of doing things, to my own staff practices, but I think in the interests of involving communities and having a comprehensive scheme it is worth the effort to pilot and test that.

Q100 Mr Campbell: Chairman, if I could just develop a different theme? Mr Spence, you said some time ago when answering another question on the issue of the existing schemes, where they are and the number of them, that you envisage other communities and schemes emerging. Given that there are 18 at the moment, or thereabouts, if we looked ahead two or three years, whether through rose-tinted spectacles or any other colour, realistically speaking if you are talking about rolling out some sort of revised CRJ with the Protocols in place, hopefully everybody giving their support to the police, how many would you see in three years' time?

Mr Spence: There is a danger there could be too many, but if you take one of the quieter times in your constituency, you could see a situation where responsible people in the community would come together and say, "We've got to find a better way of managing the young hoods here. Putting them through the formal justice system is too slow, too convoluted and does not really work. Let's all work together to try and manage those people in the community and lead them in a more positive way and try and deal with the damage they have created in the past." I could see that happening, but we would have to deal with it in response to demand. You could get the situation where it is so badly awry that you cannot cope with it. The position we are in now is that we are responding to these umbrella organisations, who are working predominantly in areas where paramilitary organisations have been strong. I am saying that over time you could see Restorative Justice Schemes developing in more settled parts of the community and having considerable community support.

Q101 Mr Campbell: Yes, although the converse of what we have been talking about for 25 or 30 minutes is that if you got over all the difficulties and there was no question in two or three years' time of any paramilitary involvement or influence, past or present, you might actually find, in some of the areas where there are anti-social behavioural problems by young people, if all those problem areas had been resolved, a resource implication if it was the case that large numbers of organised community groups, totally divorced but not involved in any way with paramilitaries, might see this as a much better and more effective way of dealing with very low level anti-social activity. How would you cope with that if you have hundreds of these schemes springing up?

Mr Spence: Yes. I have to hold my hands up to that, yes, but I think you have to rely on the good sense of local communities. I think as a whole we remain in accord that it is better and cheaper to deal with these people at an early stage of their offending career rather than them carrying out some more serious crime which carries even greater penalties for the victims and for society as a whole.

Q102 Chairman: Mr Spence, reliance, trust and hope are wonderful things and I believe in them, but unless they are guided by experience they can cause all manner of problems. Is not the key to the success of these schemes the people who man them, and are you content and is Mr McCaughey content that the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults framework is sufficient to weed out, and where would you draw the line as to who should be allowed to serve and who, because of his or her background, should either never be allowed to serve or not be allowed to serve for a very long time? Would you like to reflect on those points?

Mr Spence: We have agreed with the approach which the Northern Ireland Office is suggesting to deal with the suitability question and we have agreed in principle to take part in the process to decide whether individuals are suitable and in principle whether the probation officer should form part of that suitability assessment. There are doubts in our own organisation about the evidence which will be available to make some of those judgments, and that is one of the things we want to tease out with the Northern Ireland Office, how this will actually work in practice, what information will be available to the panels which are deciding suitability, but the general principles which the Northern Ireland Office has set out we are comfortable with and we think we can work along with them.

Chairman: Yes, general principles, fine, but you have just said you are not absolutely sure this is going to weed out the right people. We are concerned on that front and we would be interested in hearing from you, after your further conversations with the Northern Ireland Office whether you, as the people on the ground, are satisfied by the reassurances you have been given.

Q103 Sammy Wilson: May I add to that, one of the other Protocols is that there is to be an independent and external complaints procedure. That will be carried out by the police involved. Given your enthusiasm for these schemes as demonstrated by your evidence here today, and also the fact that the Probation Board of Northern Ireland will actually be involved in these schemes, and that you are a non-statutory body as well, how independent can your assessment of any complaint be?

Mr Spence: The difference between our enthusiasm for the concept of restorative justice -

Q104 Sammy Wilson: And your involvement as well.

Mr Spence: -- and our involvement in deciding whether an individual should be referred to a Restorative Justice Scheme, we would envisage the complaints process being managed by a senior and experienced probation officer, who would be separate from the processes within the Probation Board dealing with restorative justice. He would be quite separated from the other parts of the organisation. We have a long complaints process within our own organisation to enable people to complain about the way we have behaved, so that is another safety net. One of the questions which are going to be asked is whether there should be a higher tier of complaint and the Probation Board itself has just commissioned some work to look at our complaints procedures to see whether they now comply with best practice. The Northern Ireland Office asked us if we would be willing to provide this complaints role, and we said yes. If they decide, in the light of responses to the recent consultation about the complaints role, it should be somewhere else, we are quite happy with that.

Q105 Sammy Wilson: In effect, you will be investigating schemes on which some of your people will have played a role anyway and, leaving aside your enthusiasm, given the fact that some of your people are going to be involved in these schemes, for the Probation Board to investigate them is hardly going to be an independent investigation?

Mr Spence: We already have situations where somebody could complain, a victim or somebody on probation could complain, about the way in which we had managed their case and we organise someone independent, the line management or the decision-making process, to look at that. We already do that and, if necessary, we would bring in somebody from outside if it is particularly serious.

Q106 Sammy Wilson: That used to happen in the police as well, where you had the internal investigations branch, and it was deemed that that was not sufficiently independent and that you had to had a police ombudsman. If the police investigating the police is not independent, why should the Probation Board investigating the Probation Board be regarded as independent?

Mr Spence: We agreed to help the Northern Ireland Office by undertaking this role. If Government decides to have a different complaints procedure, we would happily co-operate with it.

Mr McCaughey: Mr Wilson, I have found five roles for us within these Protocols - referral, the appropriateness of the workers, complaints, funding, and there is a natural referral ourselves. So there are five possible roles. I believe we have an independence because of the Board's status as a non-departmental public body. I think we have a track record in investigating complaints, and ultimately if there was an appeal against the Board and its independence then it can go outside the organisation.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. I think we have heard some very interesting evidence this afternoon. Some of it has been concerning; it has all been helpful. Thank you very, very much. I do not think anybody in this Committee can have any doubts whatsoever about the wholly good and honourable intentions of all our witnesses this afternoon and we must just hope that between your recommendations and ours at a later date we find ourselves with a scheme which is truly workable, truly even-handed, truly complementary and supplementary to the police and not in any sense seeking to replace it. Let us hope that we can achieve that. Thank you, gentlemen, and I wish you a safe journey back.