UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 78-iii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

CROSS-BORDER CO-OPERATION

Wednesday 14 January 2009

MR RONNIE SPENCE, MR BRIAN McCAUGHEY and MR PAUL DORAN

MR COLIN REID, MR AVERY BOWSER and MS KATHLEEN SPENCER CHAPMAN

Evidence heard in Public Questions 192 - 259

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 14 January 2009

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Mr David Anderson

Mr John Grogan

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Kate Hoey

Mr Denis Murphy

Stephen Pound

________________

Memorandum submitted by Probation Board for Northern Ireland

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Ronnie Spence, Chairman, Mr Brian McCaughey, Director, and Mr Paul Doran, Assistant Director, Probation Board for Northern Ireland, gave evidence.

Q192 Chairman: Gentlemen, could I on behalf of the Committee welcome you and thank you for coming and wish you all a very happy new year. I am delighted that you are here because the plane after yours was delayed for at least three hours and that explains the absence of Lady Hermon. I am afraid we are a little thin on the ground: Lady Hermon is marooned in Belfast; Iris Robinson is still on the sick list; and David Simpson has gone down with one of these seasonal bugs today, so that explains their absence. We suspect that Dr MacDonnell was also going to be on the cancelled flight that Lady Hermon was due to be on, so it is no discourtesy to you that we are rather thinner on the ground than normal. Mr Spence, you are the Chairman of the Probation Board. Would you like to introduce the Director and Mr Doran and then tell me whether you wish me to direct questions to you or to Mr McCaughey or how you wish me to do it.

Mr Spence: I am the Chairman and Mr McCaughey is the Director of the Probation Board and Mr Doran is one of the Deputy Directors. It might help the Committee if I just say a few words by way of introduction, and then Mr McCaughey will probably deal with most of the detailed questions. As the body in Northern Ireland with the central role in the management of offenders it is essential that we have a good working relationship with the probation authorities in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. Of those relationships the one with the Republic of Ireland is probably the most important simply because of the land border and the ease with which people move about the island. It is also easier to manage that relationship because there is one probation body in Northern Ireland, the Probation Board for Northern Ireland, and there is one probation body in the Republic of Ireland, whereas in the GB there are of course a large number of local bodies with responsibilities for probation services. As I said, in Northern Ireland probation is the responsibility of the Probation Board. It is a public body appointed by the Secretary of State. In the Republic, probation is the responsibility of the Government of Ireland, the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. This difference in the legal status of the probation bodies on the two sides of the border has not hampered our ability to work together as required. We have had for many years an excellent relationship with senior colleagues in the Probation Service in Dublin and the two organisations share many common values. Last year we both published three-year corporate plans and anyone coming to read the two documents would have been very impressed and struck by the similarity of the language used in the two documents. There is a whole lot of values and approaches that we very much share. As our short paper to the Committee explained, the relationship has been strengthened further in recent years with a particular focus on sharing good practice and information, all within the overall objective of managing more effectively the risk that is posed by offenders on the island of Ireland. That very positive overview that I have given does not, however, indicate any complacency. We recognise the need to develop that level of co-operation to make it deeper and wider and we believe that, as well as the shared desire for closer co-operation between the officials involved, we have now much better machinery in place for achieving it, particularly in the Public Protection Advisory Group which is jointly chaired by Mr McCaughey, our Director, and by the Director of the Probation Service in the Republic. That is all I want to say by way of introduction.

Q193 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed, that is a very helpful general introduction. If I asked you, Mr McCaughey, to list what you considered to be the main benefits of this co-operation, how would you respond, and would you say that the sharing of information about operational practice was top of the list?

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, I would respond by saying that over the past 30 years we have had on-going contact with our counterparts in the South. Since 2000 and the Criminal Justice Review we have moved into a more formal arrangement and we have seized on the opportunity within that Criminal Justice Review, particularly in the chapter on structure and co-operation, to develop in 2004 a joint called Protect North and South. If I would answer your question therefore, the main achievements and relevance of our structural co-operation would be that we have managed that programme; we were able to increase our knowledge and experience in both organisations; we were able to draw on other international knowledge about effective practice; and we were able to develop protocols in relation to information-sharing around sex offenders, and that has been a very important area. We have been able to identify a single point of contact for each of the organisations, so on a daily basis if there were queries or questions or points of clarification both organisations knew where to go to, who to go to and how to get access. We were able to lead the development post that project to the formalisation of a Public Protection Advisory Group involving all the relevant criminal justice organisations North and South, and that now meets three times a year and has a fairly formal agenda around identified areas of interest.

Q194 Chairman: Three times a year?

Mr McCaughey: We have now confirmed as of last week that it will meet three times a year and that we would have a substantive agenda for each of those meetings. We alternate and we meet in Belfast for one meeting and we go to Dublin for the following meeting and vice versa. We have established structures for the two senior management groups that will meet at least once a year and at a lower level our operational senior managers will also meet once a year and share best practice. That is a very good exercise. It keeps us abreast of developments on both parts of the island and also allows us to draw on other experiences in our involvement with European colleagues. We have also developed a journal which allows us to share theory, research and best practice. We have copies of the five journals that we have produced since 2004 and we will leave those with you today as real evidence of our shared working and co-operation. We hope to further develop observational exchanges and personnel exchanges at different levels in both organisations so that we continue to share best practice.

Q195 Chairman: That sounds extremely good and very helpful, thank you very much for that. Before I move on to Mr Anderson and Kate Hoey, who want to ask you specific questions, can you give the Committee an example, without necessarily naming names - I appreciate confidentiality and all that - of a combined operation that has really brought great benefit?

Mr Doran: Perhaps, Chairman, if I could come in there. My colleague Brian made reference to the single point of contact that we have established with our colleagues in the Probation Service in the Republic of Ireland. Over the last 12 months the Probation Board have written 36 reports for courts in the Republic of Ireland for defendants who reside in Northern Ireland. In turn our colleagues in the South have written 12 reports to assist sentencers in Northern Ireland, thus avoiding delay and obviously assisting the sentencers in passing more appropriate sentences. We believe that the identification of one of our managers and our colleagues' identification of one of their managers to ensure that there is consistency and full recording of information and that there are explanations provided to the courts (within the limitations of working across a jurisdiction) has been a very positive step forward, and I would suggest it is probably one of the most concrete examples of good working.

Q196 Chairman: That is very good and just the sort of thing I had in mind. In this part of the United Kingdom an offender is assigned to a probation officer. Are there any occasions when an offender has a probation officer supervising his or her rehabilitation both in the Republic and in Northern Ireland?

Mr McCaughey: We would have examples where we would have offenders from Northern Ireland who may be working in the South of Ireland and who would be supervised on a voluntary basis by our colleagues in the South and, vice versa, if there was somebody from the South on a supervision order who was working in the North, we would supervise that on a voluntary basis. If that individual does not adhere to the conditions of their supervision order, it is the responsibility of the home jurisdiction to enforce the order, and we would immediately inform our colleagues in the South were the person not reporting as required, and vice versa, they would inform us and we would initiate enforcement action.

Q197 Chairman: But to all intents and purposes you have reciprocity of supervision?

Mr McCaughey: Correct.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. David Anderson?

Q198 Mr Anderson: Can I ask you specifically about information exchange in relation to sex offenders. Our understanding is that you signed a protocol from March 2006. How well has it worked?

Mr Doran: Chairman I will pick up that response. That has been a very important step forward. Members will be aware of the limitations with data protection and human rights about the type of information that can be exchanged, but in drafting that document we took cognisance of those pieces of legislation, and that has provided a framework for the sharing of information where there is a planned move by sex offenders. However, we are now working on amendments to ensure that in situations where there is an unplanned move, where the public would be more concerned, we would also share information, as we strongly believe that public protection across the border should drive the practice. Our colleagues in the Police Service have also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Garda Síochána about the exchange of information regarding sex offenders, and I believe you have had evidence from colleagues from PSNI.

Q199 Chairman: We have, yes.

Mr Doran: We work very closely obviously with the police and our colleagues in the South work closely with the Garda Síochána. We would not want to suggest that this is a huge problem because, as we know, there is a very small number of predatory sex offenders per se and, again, we have no clear evidence of predatory sex offenders exploiting the different countries and the opportunity to cross the border to commit offences, but it is something that we are very focused on, and to that end we have also worked with our colleagues in the South to have a shared commitment to a very new and well-researched method of assessment for sex offenders, which our colleagues in the South have also agreed to adopt, and again the Police and Prison Service in the South and the PSNI and Northern Ireland Prison Service are also working with us on that. That is a major step forward, Chairman, we would suggest. We now have an all-Ireland instrument for assessing the risk posed by sex offenders.

Q200 Mr Anderson: So does the fact that you are working under two different sets of statute give you any problems? Is there any way you think you could improve what you are doing now?

Mr Doran: It would be wrong of me to say that there are no problems if an offender moved to the South. We have had evidence in the last two years where a sex offender in Northern Ireland who had disappeared turned up in the South, and it was a long process, working with colleagues and the police, and eventually he has returned to the jurisdiction, but it is not a massive problem.

Mr McCaughey: If I could add to that, Chairman. The issue for us in terms of the protocols was to ensure that we freed up our staff to be able to talk to one another about specific cases and to share information. Whilst individuals under our supervision may have human rights and there may be data protection issues, the overriding concern for our organisation is child protection, public protection and public safety, and the protocols were our means to free up staff to be able to talk to one another. When an offender leaves our jurisdiction without permission, we will lodge our warrants for his arrest and that matter then becomes a police matter, and it is police to Garda. As far as our protocols are concerned, it frees us up to have sensible discussions with our colleagues in the South.

Q201 Chairman: In exercising these responsibilities - and you did refer to this very briefly at the beginning, Mr Spence - do you find it easier to co-operate with your colleagues in the Republic than you do with colleagues in England and Scotland and Wales?

Mr McCaughey: In anticipation of that question Chairman, my answer to that would be that the ethos of the Probation Board in terms of public safety, public protection and its legislation would be closer to the Probation Service in England and Wales. However, in terms of the Probation Service in the South, it is an ever evolving, rapidly evolving service and very quickly they are moving along the continuum towards public protection and public safety. I expect announcements within the next weeks in relation to multi-agency arrangements for management of sexual offenders and of some other new initiatives around electronic tagging, so very much aligned to our business world.

Q202 Chairman: Can you keep the Committee informed of these developments because it is very relevant to our report.

Mr McCaughey: Absolutely, as soon as we are notified formally of the announcement, but I expect that it will be within the next weeks. They are moving rapidly towards the public protection/public safety agenda. What I would say is that the expectations, the responsibility and the authority of my organisation and the levels of accountability are very similar to our colleagues' in England and Wales whereas they would not have the same expectations, responsibility, authority and accountability as yet - and I repeat as yet - in the Republic of Ireland.

Q203 Chairman: But looking forward over a five-year period, do you think there will be many differences then?

Mr McCaughey: I think if I look back and then look forward the similarities are very close now and getting ever closer.

Q204 Chairman: So there is a degree of increasing convergence?

Mr McCaughey: Absolutely.

Q205 Mr Anderson: In terms of the arrangements in place do they help you if offenders move from the Republic across to Great Britain or vice versa? Is there a restriction on how you use the information?

Mr Doran: Chairman, if I could answer that initially. That is not something that we are involved directly in but we have provided information and guidance to our colleagues. There was at one stage a suggestion that we would act as a conduit between the Republic of Ireland and Great Britain, but it is fraught with difficulty because in these types of situations communication is essential, and Mr Anderson might be referring to a particular case where a convicted sex offender moved from the Republic of Ireland into GB and there were a number of concerns because he was a potentially dangerous offender. Really in Northern Ireland it is not something over which we have any authority or control. However, where we can provide advice and guidance we will do. I think one of the key elements in response to your question is that we have now developed trust with our colleagues in the South and vice versa. In fact, Brian McCaughey co-chairs the Public Protection Advisory Group which is accountable to the Inter-Governmental Working Party on Criminal Justice along with the Director of the Probation Service in the South, Michael Donnellan, so that basis of trust allows a lot of possibilities. There is a good, close working relationship.

Q206 Mr Anderson: When the Chairman opened he talked about the issues around data sharing and there are limits on what you can and cannot do. It would appear that information exchange in some way gets around that, not in a bad way but in a positive way. Is there a restriction on you using that information exchange for the benefit of probation services in Great Britain?

Mr Doran: What we did was the Home Office sent a number of officials over to Dublin to meet with their colleagues in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and that was to address that very issue. We provided them with copies of our protocols which we had agreed with the Republic of Ireland to act possibly as a template, so I know that Home Office officials were working on that. That was 18 months to two years ago.

Q207 Kate Hoey: It sounds then from what you are saying, and perhaps I have picked it up wrong, that the protocol on the sharing of information on sex offenders is working reasonably well; is that right?

Mr Doran: Reasonably well would be it.

Q208 Kate Hoey: So what practically would make it work better to help both citizens of the United Kingdom and of the Republic of Ireland?

Mr Doran: We would like to extend it to violent offenders, particularly potentially dangerous offenders. We have already commenced discussions with our colleagues in the South. The Northern Ireland Office has been very helpful and supportive of our engagement with our colleagues in the South, but certainly any support from the Northern Ireland Office and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to create the scenario that Brian referred to, where public protection is always the main driver, would be welcome. Data protection is obviously very important but public protection should always take priority.

Q209 Kate Hoey: So what is the stumbling block to it extending in the way that you would like it?

Mr Doran: 'Stumbling block' may be too strong a term but as in work between any jurisdictions there are always difficulties where you have got different laws, and obviously it is a lot easier for us to exchange information with our colleagues in Great Britain because we are working within the context of UK law and, for instance, we can transfer some orders of the court between Northern Ireland and Great Britain but that is impossible between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I suppose support within the European context would be helpful, and to that end we were advised before Christmas from the Director for the Probation Service in the South that an element of the Maastricht Treaty is recommending enforceability of court orders to be completed before 2011, and certainly that would be something that we would welcome.

Q210 Kate Hoey: You are not suggesting that you change the legal system in Northern Ireland to be the same as the Republic in terms of making this work better or changing the statutory way that it works at the moment? Would that not make you in conflict with the rest of Great Britain where presumably lots of offenders would come over from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and have to be monitored and looked after?

Mr McCaughey: You are absolutely right. What I would be seeking would be the practice developments that we have seen in GB and in Northern Ireland around the multi-agency management of sex offenders, which we have now extended to violent offenders and put on a statutory footing, to share that best practice with our colleagues in the South and encouraging them to develop their practices along these lines so that we are aligned and there is harmonisation of standards and practice, if not legislation, and extend that also to a register of violent and sexual offenders in both the North and South of Ireland.

Q211 Kate Hoey: I was talking generally not just about sexual offenders. You mentioned about an offender working in the Republic coming from Northern Ireland being supervised in the Republic. Does that work in exactly the same way then for offenders who come to Great Britain?

Mr McCaughey: That is correct.

Mr Doran: Well, no.

Q212 Kate Hoey: You say yes and he says no.

Mr McCaughey: Some of the orders can be formally transferred between Northern Ireland and GB; they cannot be formally transferred to the Republic.

Q213 Kate Hoey: 'Formally' means that you no longer have any responsibility, you pass it over?

Mr McCaughey: We pass everything across.

Q214 Kate Hoey: Whereas you never could do that to the Republic? Does passing it over work better? Are you pleased when you get a few people leaving to come over to Scotland or Wales or London? Do you think, "Well, that's a few gone"?

Mr Doran: It is a very important question because risk assessment should drive these decisions, and if an offender is on supervision or on a licence and they say they are moving over to Scotland or down to Dublin, it is not in every case that we say, "That is great, do you want a hand with the fare?" because every case must be assessed on its own merits. If there was a potentially dangerous offender and we thought the public would be at risk, we would not consent to that move. I think that is a critical point to make that every case is assessed on its merits.

Mr McCaughey: And I would wish to emphasise that when the lights are bright and people might be drawn to the big cities, we would want to be sure that people had put a lot of thought into their moves and that they were planned moves and they were not going to return to Northern Ireland in a fortnight's time with the whole transfer of the order.

Q215 Kate Hoey: Presumably it is the same as a Scottish person coming down to London?

Mr McCaughey: No.

Q216 Kate Hoey: It works differently if you come from Scotland?

Mr McCaughey: We can transfer some orders to England and Wales that we cannot transfer to Scotland.

Q217 Kate Hoey: Because Scotland has got a different system as well?

Mr McCaughey: It is complicated.

Q218 Kate Hoey: Although we are looking in the context of our inquiry at good practice and relations between the Republic and Northern Ireland and so on, actually the whole thing is an islands issue as well?

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, if I might suggest I forward to the Committee a grid which we have constructed on how we can exchange and transfer orders.

Chairman: Thank you very much for that. Mr Pound?

Q219 Stephen Pound: Gentlemen, most of the evidence that I have heard has been impressive and reassuring. Mr Doran made a statement earlier on two or three of his answers ago about an offender from the North who was identified in the South. Could you possibly give us some more information about that? Did the person commit a crime in the South? Were they identified by supervision? What was the process and what were the mechanics of the identification? Did you use the European Sex Offenders Register? Could we have a little more detail if possible?

Mr Doran: Yes, Chairman, in broad terms, the offender disappeared from Northern Ireland and we issued a warrant for his arrest. The offender did not commit a crime in the Republic of Ireland but police work by the Guard Síochána identified him as working outside Dublin. They then put in place monitoring arrangements because public protection was of paramount importance. There were proposals and, as Brian said, our job is to ensure that the warrant is issued and it then becomes a policing matter, and I would not want to comment about the police operation, but eventually the offender did return to the jurisdiction. In fact, he turned up in Scotland and, again, through good police work, he was returned to Northern Ireland and is now back in custody in Northern Ireland. That would really be a police matter and I would not want to comment.

Q220 Stephen Pound: In some ways that is even more impressive. I assume we are talking about fairly small numbers, but are you saying that in cases like this you can send the details to your colleagues in the Garda Síochána and they will take the time and trouble to look out for, and hopefully identify, those people because if that is the case that is a protocol in very good practice?

Mr Doran: We would not have any direct contact with the Garda Síochána, sorry to mislead you. We issued a warrant in the court in Northern Ireland and we contacted the PSNI. They were aware of it because, as Brian has mentioned, we work through multi-agency arrangements in Northern Ireland which are now know as the Public Protection Arrangements for Northern Ireland (PPANI). They are similar to the English and Welsh MAPPA arrangements. We notified the court in Northern Ireland and the PSNI. The PSNI would be the contact with Garda Síochána. We would not have any direct contact with the Garda Síochána.

Q221 Chairman: No, but the work would be done?

Mr Doran: The work is done. The ultimate effect is the same as Mr Pound has mentioned.

Q222 Chairman: As we move towards the end of this session, this Committee is looking at cross border co-operation on a whole range of issues. We may or may not decide to focus on this as one of them, but we shall certainly refer to it. If we were to make recommendations, what from your point of view would be the most helpful recommendations for improvement of what is clearly quite a good arrangement?

Mr McCaughey: Chairman, I have prepared a short list!

Q223 Stephen Pound: In anticipation of that question!

Mr McCaughey: Given our stage of development in the Probation Board, since its inception in 1982, it has been a very forward-thinking, developing organisation and we seek to be at the leading edge of probation practice and to test out and try new things that may be more effective in the management of offenders. I think the whole area of research, both in the North and in the South of Ireland, is an area that criminal justice and certainly the probation services should begin to look at, as to what is best practice in the management of offenders on that island? A lot of research comes from Canada, North America, and we need to now look at our own practice, and indeed in England, of what works best on these islands and decide whether we need to change our practice accordingly. There will always be scope for on-going special interest seminars, and during the life of our project Protect North and South 2004 and 2006 we had six seminars and two conferences and they proved very effective, not just for the Probation Service but for wider criminal justice, academics and others. I would like and would recommend the extension of protocols to cover dangerous offenders, as my colleague Mr Doran has said. I will certainly be encouraging our colleagues across criminal justice in the South of Ireland to develop multi-agency arrangements with the extension to violent offenders and sexual offenders. I will encourage them through my chairmanship of the Public Protection Advisory Group. I would wish to see a register of sex offenders North and South of Ireland so that we have a comprehensive handle on exactly who we are dealing with. I think in times of less money when we are looking at the whole area of training, I would recommend more joint training around management for operational staff in terms of our interventions with offenders and seeking to harmonise standards of practice that I have mentioned earlier. The area of drugs is an area where the South of Ireland has more knowledge and experience as a probation service than ourselves and we have much to learn from them in that area. In terms of victims and the engagement and involvement of victims and making victims more central to probation practice, again I think that is a very important area for development and a strong recommendation from the Probation Board. On a wider front, I think we need to do better and we could do better on staff exchanges. I hope also that we continue to publish the Irish Probation Journal which is a good summary of our practices in both jurisdictions.

Q224 Chairman: That is very, very helpful and very positive. Obviously you cannot speak directly for them, but do you believe that your colleagues with whom you enjoy this good relationship in the Republic would endorse that general line?

Mr McCaughey: I would be confident that they would echo the same sentiments.

Chairman: We may have an opportunity to follow that up when we are in Dublin in a couple of weeks' time. That is extremely helpful, thank you very much indeed all three of you. This is obviously a co-operation that is working well and thank you for pointing the way as to how it might be made to work even better. I wish you success in your endeavours and we hope very much that you are not held up and you can fly back!

Memorandum submitted by National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Northern Ireland

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr Colin Reid, Policy and Public Affairs Manager, Mr Avery Bowser, Assistant Director, Children's Services, and Ms Kathleen Spencer Chapman, European Adviser, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Northern Ireland, gave evidence.

Q225 Chairman: Could I call the meeting to order and welcome our witnesses from the NSPCC, Northern Ireland. You are here at our invitation but also at your own request. You submitted some evidence and said that you would welcome the opportunity of expanding on it in oral session and we are very glad to have you here. Mr Reid, would you like to introduce your colleagues and also although we have your names we do not know precisely what your roles are in the NSPCC.

Mr Reid: Thank you. I am Colin Reid and I am the Policy and Public Affairs Manager for NSPCC in Northern Ireland. I also represent the NSPCC in the public protection arrangements that the Probation Board talked about. On my left I have Avery Bowser and Avery is our Assistant Director in Children's Services and he has a lot of the case examples that are in our submission to you. On my right is Kathleen Spencer Chapman. Kathleen is our European Adviser and works for the NSPCC at a European level in terms of European policy and public affairs. All three of us have put information into the submission that we made to you.

Q226 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Is there anything that you would like to say by way of opening?

Mr Reid: I will just make a few remarks. I will not repeat what we have sent to you already. We very much welcome this inquiry by this Committee. It is a very important issue and for us as the NSPCC in Northern Ireland it is one that we have prioritised for a number of years. We ran conferences in 2002 and 2006 in conjunction with our sister organisation, ISPCC, and Barnardo's North and South, who also have an all-Ireland presence. It is an area that we are seeking to progress in a whole lot of different ways. It is also an area where we think huge progress can still be made. For us it is very difficult to separate out civil child protection, which is a devolved matter, from criminal justice matters, the two work very much hand-in-hand, and that comes in sharp focus in some of the policy and case examples that Avery might have. We have made huge progress largely through the Ministry of Health and Social Services and other colleagues in the Northern Ireland Executive, who through the North-South Ministerial Council have really put devolved safeguarding issues onto the agenda on a North-South basis and through the British-Irish Council as well. That is very good and we very much welcome those developments. For us there are a number of issues and I will just highlight them very briefly. Sex offender management: the Probation Board talked a little bit about some of the issues. The statutes - the Irish Sex Offenders Act and our UK Sexual Offences Act - are very different animals, and we have huge challenges around a common currency for sex offender matters. We have lots of civil tools to control sex offenders - risk of sexual harm orders, sexual offences prevention orders - and these are not available in the South. We need to try and ensure that we deal with a common currency and language around matters of sex offenders. Information exchange: a lot of risky people are not actually convicted. For various reasons where investigations are done people are not convicted, and these 'non-adjudicated offenders', as they are known, often pose a higher degree of risk than those who are actually convicted and parked within the sex offender management arrangements, and we need to look at the protocols and information exchange on a North-South basis. Vetting and barring: the UK Government has brought in the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act which will radicalise our vetting and barring arrangements the UK. It creates big disparities on a North-South basis. For example, people who live in Donegal but work in Derry, the continuous monitoring arrangements that will be part of those new arrangements will place a challenge around information-sharing from the Garda to the police in Northern Ireland and through them to the Independent Safeguarding Authority. Also when we bring in our new arrangements we will have people who are barred from working in the UK but who effectively can go and work in the Irish Republic, so I think that is a challenge. Dealing with victims: Avery has some case examples which I am sure he will provide himself. Internet safety: we think there are challenges. Some of the difficulties around internet safety are that its regulation and its focuses is often in London but the issues are exactly the same in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Finally, all of this takes place in an EU context. The difficulties and challenges we have on a North-South basis are replicated across the European community.

Q227 Chairman: Thank you for that. You heard the evidence given by the Probation Service and I think I am right in saying that you were in for the whole of it, were you not?

Mr Reid: Yes.

Q228 Chairman: Do I infer from what you have just been saying that you are not quite as happy as they were?

Mr Reid: I think we can do more. Part of the difficulty is that we manage sex offenders in Northern Ireland along largely similar arrangements that you have within England and Wales and I think those are probably leading the world in how those take place. We have just brought in new public protection arrangements. All sex offenders, and indeed people who are known as 'potentially dangerous persons', are brought within those arrangements. Under the arrangements in the South that is not the case and they do not manage all sex offenders and those people who pose a risk in the way in which we do here. One of the challenges for us is to ensure that we have a common understanding and currency. We talk about high-risk sex offenders but is that the same as the Republic of Ireland and how we manage those individuals, systems and processes, our understanding about research and about what works, community sex offender programmes ---

Q229 Chairman: I hear all that and understand it. There is quite clearly a good working relationship between the two probation services. Is there an equivalent body to NSPCC Northern Ireland with whom you have an equally good working relationship in the Republic?

Mr Reid: We work very closely with ISPCC who before partition were part of the same organisation, but a lot of this is about criminal justice and working at a structured level on a North-South basis and making things happen. We play our role as an NGO and challenge the government but ultimately it is a matter for government to take forward.

Q230 Chairman: Just let me tease this out a little. Do you have the sort of structure that the two probation services have? Do you have regular meetings with your sister body in the Republic and regular contact and do you have the sort of cross-committees that we were hearing about from the Probation Service?

Mr Reid: If we maybe use the example of social services, I think we can do a lot more for social services to co-operate on a North-South basis, and that is one of the gaps we really see, and I think in fairness ---

Q231 Chairman: Forgive me, just to press this one, do you as the NSPCC have the same sort of formal relationships with the ISPCC?

Mr Reid: Yes.

Q232 Chairman: You do?

Mr Reid: Yes, we meet on a regular basis.

Q233 Chairman: That is what I wanted to know and so you share information and you share concerns? When he answered my final question, Mr McCaughey said that he felt that everything he was saying to us would be endorsed and agreed with by his colleagues in the Republic. When you are talking to us this afternoon, do you believe that they would take a very similar view as to what is desirable?

Mr Reid: Yes, we work very closely with them on a number of these issues.

Chairman: Good, that is very important. I would like to bring in Mr Hepburn and then Mr Murphy initially.

Q234 Mr Hepburn: Just some questions around the legal framework. What are the substantial cross-border differences around risk assessment and management of offenders and what problems do those differences pose?

Mr Reid: In Northern Ireland we risk assess all people who come on to what is known as the sex offenders register. We have notification arrangements as a matter of course and those are categorised into various categories of risk, one, two or three. In the Irish Republic they do not have the same arrangements, as Brian McCaughey outlined, although it was helpful to see that there is a movement towards public protection arrangements as we have within the UK. We have a number of tools at our disposal through what are called risk of sexual harm orders and sexual offences prevention orders, which can impose civil restraints on a sex offender, for example ban him from using a computer, through the courts, which are not the same in the South. We have slightly different arrangements around notification periods. We have access to things called foreign travel orders to restrict sex offenders moving outside the jurisdiction which are not replicated in the Irish legislation.

Q235 Mr Hepburn: Apart from the obvious thing of bringing the laws into line North and South of the border, how could you get over those problems?

Mr Reid: I respect the position of the Irish Government that due to various constitutional issues that it may not be possible to replicate exactly the arrangements that we have. For a long time until the end of last year our public protection arrangements were on a non-statutory basis. I imagine it would be quite possible for the Irish Government to do something similar without necessarily enacting legislation as such, and, as we are doing, we are starting to work towards common assessment tools. The Probation Service talked about the Harris model for example which has been highlighted on an all-Ireland basis, and that is an agreed risk assessment tool that we are starting to use on a North-South basis.

Q236 Mr Hepburn: Do you think there is an argument to harmonise the law?

Mr Reid: Yes.

Q237 Mr Hepburn: And which way would you do it, would you harmonise the South in line with the North or the North in line with the South? In other words, who has got the best law?

Mr Reid: Ms Hoey asked a similar question. I think very strongly we have good arrangements in the UK and we have worked hard at them for ten years to improve them. The UK Government has brought in various enactments to improve the situation and we want to bring the South to the similar type of arrangements that we have, not the other way round.

Q238 Mr Murphy: You have touched, Mr Reid, on a number of issues that I intended to raise particularly in relation to barring and vetting procedures. I understand that the United Kingdom, and from what you have said you have confirmed that, has much more stringent checks when it comes to adults working with children. Are you able to share information with colleagues in the South and can you be proactive in that sharing in as much as the list you have of individuals in the North who are barred from working with children, are you able to send that to colleagues or have you to wait for a request from them?

Mr Reid: Under our current vetting arrangements, which is the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults Order (the equivalent of the Protection of Children Act) in this jurisdiction organisations in the South can access the Department of Health's list of individuals who are domiciled in the North but working in the South, or who lived in the North and go to work in the South, so that is possible. I think these things need to be worked out from the Independent Safeguarding Authority as to how they share information on people who are barred. As I said, it is going to present some difficulties to authorities in the South whereby people will be barred. People currently are barred but I suspect we will see more people being barred because the system will become much more efficient at picking up people who pose a risk. We are going to have some problems when people are barred in the UK but can go and work freely in the South. Legally you are committing a criminal offence if you are barred and you work in what is called regulated activity in the UK, but you are free to do that in the Irish Republic. I think that does indicate the need for information-sharing protocols. I do not know if Avery wants to say something about particular cases because he is involved in much of our casework around that.

Q239 Chairman: Would you like to amplify that in reply to Mr Murphy?

Mr Bowser: I suppose my angle on this is more at a operational level. I manage therapeutic services for children who have been abused and services that support children who have to give evidence in court. The case examples that we have been drawing on are probably at the earlier end of the spectrum, pre-adjudication, but the information-sharing issue underpins the whole thing. I suppose as an overview we would be saying that we welcome a lot of the progress that has been happening, and a lot of the high-level progress, and the subject of this inquiry looking at the Northern Ireland Office's role and relations with the South. I sit on the sub-committee of the Criminal Justice Board and the situation we are in is night and day from where we were because these topics are now discussed. We are asked for our views and we are asked to put this kind of information into the process. I think there are difficulties at an operational level, particularly at the investigative stage and at the prosecution stage, where you have a situation where the victim and possibly the defendant are living in one jurisdiction and the offences have happened in the other, and the passing of information, so in a sense if you were making progress at that stage it would also probably help relations and mechanisms further down the line once you have adjudicated, which your discussion today has focused quite a lot on, and certainly your discussion with the Probation Board focused on dealing with convicted sex offenders. My view would be that progress on that also depends on progress at the earlier stage so that an investigating officer in Northern Ireland is in a position to talk more directly to colleagues in the South without going through quite a complicated protocol to achieve that. There are similar issues for prosecutors and, taking Colin's earlier point, our perspective on this as a child protection organisation is that this is not just a criminal justice matter in terms of multi-agency working. We get swept up in that. If I have a young witness who needs to appear in court in Letterkenny but lives in Derry, we have maybe been supporting them as far as we can in terms of the court process, certainly we have been providing treatment support, but the mechanism for us to communicate, say, with the prosecutor in Donegal is very difficult and there really are no protocols to cover that, and I suppose what we are looking for is how can we get a lot of this more operationalised so that we see progress on the ground.

Q240 Mr Murphy: What changes would you like to see put in place to help that process along?

Mr Bowser: Again, I was thinking through this and what I was highlighting there is that you are looking at protocols that enable prosecutors to talk more directly rather than having to go back to headquarters for them to go to headquarters for it to come down when people are only 20 miles apart. We need similar arrangements for police to prosecutor. Again, you have the situation where the offence maybe happened in the Republic but the complaint was made in Northern Ireland, initially to the PSNI. The PSNI may have video interviewed the victim but that interview is actually not admissible in proceedings. We need the ability for people to communicate smoothly with each other to reduce delay in the system but also in terms of speed of action in relation to defendants. Again the example we have there is the very real difficulty in locating a defendant who is hopping around.

Q241 Chairman: So a video taken by the PSNI, however undisputed its facts may be, is not admissible as evidence in a Southern court?

Mr Bowser: We have had examples of that where evidence had been taken. Obviously we have worked very hard within this jurisdiction to ensure that children are only interviewed once. There are good evidential practice reasons for only interviewing once as well as issues of trauma to the child. As soon as it becomes cross-jurisdictional we almost take a step backwards in terms of process.

Q242 Mr Murphy: We have spoken to the PSNI and they have said that they are quite happy to have joint operations with the Garda, and indeed do on a regular basis, so there is nothing to stop them jointly having one interview where both police forces are represented. Surely that then would overcome one of those hurdles?

Mr Bowser: We have seen a lot of high-level progress and I think the challenge now is to really see that on the ground, because these are fairly recent case examples that we have been submitting here in real courts, and there are clearly communication difficulties still. It goes back to Colin's opening point in terms of not restricting this just to the criminal justice agencies. You need to think about the child protection agencies, social services, ourselves and other concerned parties who have information because you are back into the position, even in our own jurisdiction, that to effectively protect children you need good criminal justice and social services and voluntary sector interfaces, and you need the mechanisms to do that across the board.

Chairman: We have not always done it very well over here.

Q243 Mr Murphy: Just one final point on that, given the determination and ingenuity of some adults who are determined to have access to children, even some who have not been prosecuted for any offence, are you able to share that information where in the North they would not be allowed to come into contact with children because of the information you have yet in the South it would be quite easy for them? Are you able to proactively pass that information on, even though they have not been prosecuted?

Mr Reid: A lot of informal contact takes place social service to social service. I think what would be very helpful - and again this is a devolved matter and I know that the Department of Health has started to do some work on it - is to formalise that so it makes very clear the information-sharing arrangements, because sometimes data protection and all sorts of excuses get in the way of sharing information. I think one of the outworkings and improvements in this would be a clearly defined protocol.

Q244 Kate Hoey: Just two quick points. You talked about working closely with the ISPCC. Are they campaigning, for example, for more stringent checks on adults working with children?

Mr Reid: Yes.

Q245 Kate Hoey: So they are doing a lot of the work that you could not possibly do?

Mr Reid: We have actually worked with them very closely and done campaigns with them. At the moment there is a disparity in vetting arrangements. They campaigned and managed to get criminal record-checking established as the norm for positions involving children in the South and that was a big win when the Irish Government established the Garda Vetting Agency. That improved arrangements. They did not have the equivalent of POC or the disqualification extending that over here into this jurisdiction. The difficulty is that we are going to get the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act, and anybody who has been involved in that knows that that does take post-Soham vetting and barring arrangements on to a very different plane. The UK will lead the rest of the world on this. It is going to cause all sorts of problems because if you take sport, for example, sport is organised on an all-Ireland basis.

Q246 Kate Hoey: Not all sport.

Mr Reid: Most, with the exception of football.

Kate Hoey: Not most sport.

Q247 Chairman: You are talking to an expert.

Mr Reid: There is a lot of all-Ireland sport.

Q248 Kate Hoey: That is better!

Mr Reid: But anyway, I give way to your superior knowledge.

Q249 Chairman: You would be a very brave man if you did not!

Mr Reid: If you take the Golf Union of Ireland for example, certain positions within Ulster (and I am talking about political Ulster as opposed to the county of Ulster) would be regulated activities and that would not be the same as in the North, and I think it is going to be really quite difficult to manage that differential when the new arrangements come on-stream, and I think we do need to work with our colleagues in the South.

Q250 Kate Hoey: Presumably you accept that we want to do as much as possible to be able to make it so that we are protecting children?

Mr Reid: Absolutely.

Q251 Kate Hoey: But we have to recognise they are two separate countries, just as Scotland is a different jurisdiction?

Mr Reid: Yes.

Q252 Kate Hoey: One final point, Chairman, and this is really slightly off what we are talking about today. We picked up some concern about cross-border smuggling in terms of humans. Is there much child trafficking going on and are you involved with that as an organisation?

Mr Reid: At this point I shall defer to Kathleen.

Ms Spencer Chapman: It is not something that I have encountered, I am afraid.

Mr Reid: If I may say in terms of Northern Ireland, I suspect we are seeing increased immigration. The Border and Immigration Agency has a much higher presence in Northern Ireland now and I suspect that we are playing catch-up with other parts of the UK in terms of that particular issue. I know the Garda Síochána second into the Border and Immigration Agency in Belfast to try and deal with some of these issues and they are coming to the fore. I am not an expert in numbers but I suspect it is growing.

Kate Hoey: That is fine.

Q253 Mr Grogan: Just two points, you touch in your evidence on wider European co-operation. Can you just say what you would like to see as regards that? You also mention the internet and the challenges that that poses. Does that have any cross-border implications for co-operation and so on?

Ms Spencer Chapman: On the EU side, I think the challenges we see in the Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland context are amplified across the rest of Europe. We have been focusing for quite a number of years now as the NSPCC around the issues of cross-border vetting and barring in particular. We have a situation where we have freedom of movement to live and work in the European Union. For example, we had about 17,000 people from new EU Member States applying to work with children and vulnerable adults in the UK in 2004. However, we do not see a system where the information can be passed along with people moving to work. This was also raised in the Bichard Inquiry after the Soham murders. This is something where there has been some progress at European level. We are starting to see it being raised as an issue. The exchange of criminal records information is gradually being improved but we are concerned that it is not necessarily possible to exchange the information always for the purposes of vetting and barring and, where it is, it is not always been done. A lot of countries have very minimal vetting and barring systems compared to here and I think legal and political approaches to that kind of issue are very different in comparison. The Republic of Ireland/Northern Ireland is very similar and there is very great progress there. We are really pushing to see much greater sharing of criminal conviction information on sex offenders. Linked to that, I think that a move towards a much closer understanding and common approaches across the European Union. It was quite interesting that the Probation Board referred to an understanding of public protection arrangements or a focus on public protection. I think that is an area where we really need to move forward so that rather than these issues just being seen as criminal justice matters across Europe that these are seen as child protection issues, and approaches are brought in line with that. Perhaps I can just say something about the internet safety angle as well. It is something we are raising quite a bit at the European level and also at the international level, for example around combating child abuse images. Of course, that is an area where cross-border law enforcement co-operation is completely essential on a global scale because a child appearing in a picture may be located in one country and that picture might be found on someone's computer the other side of the world or the other side of Europe. We have been doing some work looking at how EU co-operation can help bring, at least as a minimum, the legal approaches closer and also then linked to that the law enforcement co-operation.

Q254 Stephen Pound: Any Member of Parliament will have had to have dealt with cases of child abuse and if it is tragic for us it is obviously far more tragic for the child, and the child is the single most important person there. Certainly in my experience I have found that stranger danger is not the issue; it nearly always appears to be family, close friends and 'uncles', and the placement of the child in care and protection becomes paramount. Do you ever have cross-border applications for place of safety orders for children? Is there such a protocol? Might that ever exist?

Mr Reid: I am sure there are cases. I was a senior social worker in a former life and there were cases where children moved across the border and we did work with our colleagues in RoI. We did have one case in particular of a dangerous individual who fled the jurisdiction and disappeared into the Irish Republic and short of notifying authorities in the South, there was very little that we felt we could do to follow that up. The relationships and the policy contexts within which we work on a North-South basis in relation to that type of issue is something that we need to develop.

Q255 Stephen Pound: Could I ask you a final question, by your leave Sir Patrick. The NSPCC and ISPCC are almost unique bodies in terms of their specific role. They have a regulatory role which is normally something which is abrogated to the state rather than to an organisation. You are in a huge period of change and upheaval. Do you have a collective view which impacts on the work that this Committee is doing about the changing role of the NSPCC in becoming a far more formal agency? You referred earlier on to your right of formal notification. Is there a problem that you feel might occur where you are perceived as being an agent of the state rather than what you truly are?

Mr Reid: You have asked a very difficult question.

Stephen Pound: I am sorry, if it is not appropriate I will happily withdraw it.

Q256 Chairman: Deal with it as you think appropriate and answer it as fully as you can.

Mr Reid: The NSPCC is a non-governmental organisation with unique powers. In Northern Ireland the Northern Ireland Office recognised our authorised status by including the NSPCC in the new public protection arrangements. We play our role in challenging government and holding government to account as well as our authorised status, and I think that is a very important role that is recognised by government in Northern Ireland.

Q257 Chairman: You heard me ask the Probation Service witnesses about recommendations from this Committee. If you had a wish-list what would it be?

Mr Reid: As Brian McCaughey said, Chairman, "in anticipation of your question ..." I suppose if we could do one thing - and Avery alluded to it in what he said - there are various structures and we have the North-South Ministerial Council overseen by ministers on the devolved side and we have the Inter-Governmental Working Group on Criminal Justice, overseen by Paul Goggins and his counterparts in the South, and if the Committee could do anything, please get us a clear action plan of actions to take forward this very important agenda, formalised not just at the very high level but at an operational level and in an action plan context.

Q258 Chairman: Thank you very much for that. I would like to thank all three of you for your evidence. Do you have to fly back today as well?

Mr Reid: We do but we were very fortunate that we flew easyJet so it was on time from Aldergrove.

Q259 Chairman: That is not something for our inquiry but we do wish you a safe flight back. Thank you for your evidence; that concludes the session.

Mr Reid: Just before you go, Kathleen did mention to me that we might helpfully give the Committee a copy of this which is Protecting Children from Sexual Abuse in Europe which has some cross-border information.

Chairman: Super, our Clerk would love to have that. Thank you.