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Will the Minister explain whether the target of 30 per cent by 2010 is consistent with the Patten target, or was that target something different? The memorandum does not make it clear whether they are the same thing. I shall leave it at that and I look forward to the answers from the Minister, especially those on the Garda Siochana and the Patten target.
Lord Eames: The trouble with any regulations or legislation of this nature is that when you speak from within Northern Ireland you will immediately be interpreted as extending sectarianism. When you voice any opinion on something such as what is known colloquially as the “50:50 disposition” you can be open to the interpretation that “everything is right and you are going against what is wrong”.
This afternoon, I suggest two things to the Minister in this context. First, in the light of what has already been said by previous speakers, the time has come to reconsider whether this provision should even be renewed for three more years. The situation in Northern Ireland has changed vastly since the initiating of this thinking, and certainly since Patten. I feel that it would be of tremendous encouragement to the whole of our community if it could be seen that that change is recognised in a tangible way, such as I am suggesting.
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Secondly, it gives me no pleasure to be critical at this stage of the legislation and the rules, particularly as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is presenting this to us. I have always admired his contribution as a Minister during his time in the Northern Ireland office. He took endless trouble to become acquainted with the various briefs given to him about the conditions in Northern Ireland. However, in my professional live, involved as I was in the community of Northern Ireland for 43 years, I have had numerous representations made to me by parents and unsuccessful candidates, victims of the 50:50 legislation who did not just meet the preliminary requirements for membership but far exceeded them. It was acknowledged in explanations given to me in Northern Ireland that many of these candidates would have excelled in any police service in western Europe, but because of their religion they were not allowed even to enter training.
I speak as one who has devoted his life to opposing sectarianism in all its forms. Therefore, I do not want any of the Members of this Committee to interpret what I am saying as anything other than a feeling of frustration if the 50:50 position is not reconsidered, which would be tangible evidence of how far our society has moved in such a short time.
As the previous speaker said, it is not a case of 50 per cent Catholic, 50 per cent Protestant; it is a case of 50 per cent Catholic and 50 per cent others, made up of various ethnic groupings. Indeed, I say to my noble friend Lord Kilclooney that 40 per cent is quite large in terms of the Protestant population representation. I am certain that there is insufficient recognition in Government that in Northern Ireland this will be interpreted as saying one thing and doing another. They are saying that the situation has improved, yet they are putting on the table for three more years something which is perceived as a contradiction of the progress that we have made.
Finally, I do not believe that this is a party political issue; I do not believe that it is a question of party views. I accept that it was a genuine approach, as a result of the Patten recommendations, to allow a representation in the Police Service of Northern Ireland which was not possible in a voluntary way. But the time has come for serious reconsideration of whether it is correct to have this on the statute book once more, even for three years.
I pay tribute, from my personal knowledge, to the tremendous courage of Catholic families whose members joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary and, later, the PSNI at great personal risk. When the history of these times comes to be written, I hope that adequate tribute will be paid to that courage, for I have buried too many members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, too many members of my community, not to know what the Catholic community has gone through in the losses inflicted on it and its members who served in the police service.
As I said, it is very easy to interpret any criticism of the order as sectarian. I beg the Minister, to whom I have already paid tribute, to treat what I am saying in terms of reality rather than anything of that nature.
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Baroness Blood: As has already been said about the 50:50 rule, I can remember when fair employment was introduced in Northern Ireland, back in the 1970s. I was a shop steward within the trade union movement, and it was a very difficult time. None the less, it was worked out, and today employers in Northern Ireland have a rule they live by.
I have never quite understood why the police force had to be sectarianised in this way. I had two friends from a Roman Catholic family who joined the police, and both were murdered by the IRA. Why did religion have to be the thing? All my life I have fought for people getting jobs on merit. I am a great believer in equality, so I cannot get my head round why we are looking at having this law in place for another three years when we are told on all sides that Northern Ireland is entering a new world and everything is different, with the PSNI going forward with legislation, and women and people from ethnic minorities joining the force.
I cannot understand why we still have to do this because back in Northern Ireland this is looked on simply as a sectarian issue. Many previous speakers mentioned that they had been approached by young people. As many Members of the Committee know, I live along a peace line and a number of Roman Catholic families have told me that their kids cannot join the force because of the 50:50 rule. They fitted all the criteria but they could not join the force. So it works both ways. In the light of what Sinn Fein has done and what the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, said, and if it has all been accepted, I do not really see why we are pursuing this measure for another three years. I find this very difficult. I have never understood why there are only two derogations on Northern Ireland in European law, one concerns the police and the other education—two major pillars in building a new Northern Ireland and yet they are the two areas in which we can discriminate.
Lord Trimble: We would all do well to reflect on the two speeches that have just been made by the noble Baroness and the noble Lord opposite. It was welcome that they couched the issue in terms that departed from the narrow political and sectarian approach. There is much to commend in what they said. I understand the reservations of the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, about whether the republicans have gone all the way that they should to support policing in Northern Ireland. But for the purposes of my remarks I shall assume that if they have not yet gone the whole way in their language, they will, in short order, go the whole way in their conduct. On that basis I very much agreed with what the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said about the changed circumstances. We are now in a different situation.
Part of the reason that was adduced to explain these measures was that of the need to give Catholic applicants a helping hand as it was feared that there would be insufficient numbers coming forward as a result of republican hostility to policing. But we are in a different situation now in that respect. Republicans are clearly moving towards supporting policing even if they have not gone the whole way. We have heard
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If that is the case—and there is good reason to expect that it will be the case within a short period if it is not now—the order that the Minister is bringing forward tonight will start to disadvantage Catholic applicants. Young republicans and young nationalists might have held back in the past because the republican movement was hostile to policing. As was mentioned, at the moment we are still getting more applications to the police from people of a Protestant background than from people of a Catholic background. It is quite possible that within a matter of months or a year or so that will switch and we shall find more Catholic than Protestant applicants coming forward. The Minister should bear in mind that as regards the relevant age group—young men aged 18 to 25—there is a rough equality in numbers in terms of the demographics, so what I have described is quite likely to occur. So we could see a situation where more applications are coming forward from a Catholic background but this legislation limits recruitment to 50 per cent. You will find it working against Catholic applicants. I understand that the Minister said that he can calculate that with the recruitment that is taking place, the 30 per cent target will be achieved by 2011 without the order. It is perfectly possible that that target could be achieved earlier than 2011. I do not know whether anyone has bothered to think this out.
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There is a general issue here. Discrimination is wrong in principle. I have never personally favoured discrimination or supported people who discriminate. Discrimination is wrong in principle, but it is also a bad thing in practice. I have given one example: how, in the change of circumstances that is likely to happen, we are likely to find that the untoward impact of the order, which will probably be approved shortly, will have a negative effect reverse to that originally intended.
It is also bad from the point of view of policing. The noble and most reverend Lord, Lord Eames, made the point about the high quality of people who have been turned down. Statisticians tell me that they can, from looking at the figures, work out that roughly one-quarter of the Catholic recruits to the police service during the past number of years are persons who would not have got in on pure merit—if
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It is not a wise thing ever, in any line of business, especially policing, not to be recruiting the best qualified people. That will obviously have a negative effect on the quality of the police service, but think about the consequences, think about the next stage. People join as constables. In a few years’ time, they will start to think about their chances of promotion. The legislation applies only to recruitment; it does not apply to promotion. Therefore, when it comes to promotions, if the promotions are done purely on merit—the best qualified people are promoted—we are likely then to see an imbalance in promotions.
If it turns out in the years to come that promotions are done on something roughly 50:50, that will be prima facie evidence of discrimination, which, this time, will not be protected by legislation. In our modern litigious age, you can be sure that there will be a significant number of complaints to the Equality Commission and actions brought on the matter. So there will be problems down the line. That reinforces my point that this is a bad idea in practice as well as in principle.
I shall not labour the point on the matter of principle, but I find it strange and wonder to myself sometimes what it is about the Labour movement, which trumpets its attachment to human rights and equality but has an itch to discriminate. We see that itch here. We were reading in the press in the past few days about university entrance. The desire to discriminate there runs throughout the Labour Party. I could also mention the way in which the Labour Party has shamelessly discriminated against everybody in Northern Ireland over the course of the past 80 years and denied them their political and civil rights. It continues to do so, despite being dragged to employment tribunals over it. The desire seems to lie within the Labour Party to discriminate.
The Minister's language was telling. He said at one stage that the effect, the consequences of the legislation certainly justifies the measure. It is not and it can never be justified. The Government’s defence up to now has been that it is expedient, but not that it is justified. Discrimination is not, and cannot, be justified. The Minister’s only defence is to say that it is expedient, but, as I have pointed out, he may find that it is no longer so.
Finally, to give him his own words again on that basic point, he said at one stage in his introduction, “I’ve got lots of figures here to show that the climate has changed”. If the climate has changed, then the Government should recognise the change and get out of the mindset they have had for the past half dozen years. This is not necessary. If the Minister persists
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Lord Rooker: I will do my best to answer the questions I have been asked, as well as addressing some of the myths and unfortunate—how shall I put it?—foresuppositions based on the figures. I genuinely mean that I will try to address every point. It is 20 March. The deadline is 26 March, and the one thing I will not do is change that. I cannot be certain what hour of the day the deadline is—I presume it is the whole 24 hours from midnight, when the clock starts ticking. I do not intend to comment on or allude to anything here today that could be used in one way or another, and I do not think I would be expected to. Therefore, I will not be able to comment on who said what, who feels what or whatever. We are in a very sensitive period. We all understand that.
There are a lot of figures, I accept that. I do not accept that discrimination is necessarily a bad thing, if there is a policy purpose at the end of it which one seeks to drive to. Twelve competitions have been launched since the new Patten provisions were introduced. Each competition recruits 440 police officers. The lowest number of applications received in a competition—not the number of those who got through the system, but of applications—was 4,410, while the highest was 7,861. The grand total is 70,000-odd. Each time there are only 440 entrants. As can be seen, the lowest figure was 4,410; that was for competition number four. The highest was for competition number 11. Competition number 12 in September 2006 gave the highest percentage so far of applicants from a Catholic background: 41 per cent.
I was very conscious of what I was saying earlier when I talked about Catholic and non-Catholic. I realise that I am not talking about 50:50 Catholic and Protestant, but about Catholics and others—which, as the noble Baroness pointed out, includes ethnic minorities. I fully accept that, at 440 a go, with 70,000-odd applications in the past few years, there will by definition be an awful lot—thousands—of disappointed people. Some of them will have got through the threshold of being eligible for recruitment, and they will still have been disappointed. The police force itself is somewhere under 8,000 strong; I think it is 7,557, although I do not know if that is the figure for today or for the date when this note was written for me. The scale of numbers of people wanting to join the police force is so great that there will inevitably be disappointment for people, whether they are male, female, Catholic, Protestant or from an ethnic minority. Starting from that premise, there will be huge numbers of people who do not get in, for whatever reason. I suspect that that may be the case. There will be a limit on the numbers of police in Northern Ireland for a career structure.
We have not hidden at all the fact that this arrangement is discriminatory. Everyone understands that; I am not arguing otherwise. But there is a policy objective to be achieved at the end of it. It was thought in the Patten report that the scheme’s single
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The arrangement has received the support of the Equality Commission and the Human Rights Commission, but we do not deny that it is discriminatory. I will answer all his other points, but at one point I think that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, referred to discrimination by my political party. I was not sure what the discrimination was. If it was the fact that we do not fight elections, that is tough, but there is no discrimination on membership anywhere in the United Kingdom.
Lord Trimble: Just to correct the Minister on that, the Labour Party stopped discriminating on membership only within the past year or two as a result of legal action taken by a shop steward from Northern Ireland, who is also now bringing a discrimination action over the attitude to fighting elections. Don’t say “tough” to 1.7 million people whom you are discriminating against in terms of their civil rights. That is not the attitude to adopt.
Lord Rooker: No—political parties are voluntary groups. We have a policy of not fighting against parties that are members of the Socialist International. It is as simple as that. That has always been the case. We make no bones about that; that is our policy; that has always been our policy. That is the policy in England, Scotland and Wales; it is the policy in Northern Ireland. There happens to be a party that is a member of the Socialist International there. I have not come here to debate this; I do not even know why this got raised. Nevertheless, I had to respond because I was not clear about the point being raised.
On the issue of people expected to score higher—it will take me a while to go through this—the fact is that the selection procedure of all applicants prior to reaching the pool, because there is a more than one-stage process, as Patten underlined, is based on merit. There is no requirement for members of one community background to score higher or lower than another as part of the process to get into the pool. The 50:50 provisions only apply once people are in the pool. There is no secret about that. Of course, by the time people are in the pool, they have met the United Kingdom requirements to be a member of the police force.
The other point was that it would happen naturally. I had to have this explained to me at some length, but that is not the case. If we consider the total numbers of the police force and its current composition, we know that there is a recruitment competition of only 440, so knowing what the endgame of the number of police will be with retirements and other movements, the best estimate is that it will be March 2011 before the 30 per cent target is reached. It is possible to make that calculation because the entry is fixed at 440 and the total number is fixed and we know the composition that we start with today. It cannot be done any quicker.
The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, is absolutely right—two seconds before he raised the point, I satisfied myself on the answer—that if the proportion
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I much regret that, looking at the demographics, if we approach March 2011 and the situation is still the same—I will come to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, about devolution—someone else will have to come to seek a temporary provision order for one year, because the target will be that close. I much regret that this is not a four-year order, but the legislation requires it to be for three years, because then it could be put to bed. That is the end date on these calculations with these entry numbers by which the policy objective of 30 per cent will be achieved. I will also cover the point about why the figure is 30 per cent rather than another one. A noble Lord has asked about that.
At the present time—the post-Patten period—over 93 per cent of all Catholic applications have been unsuccessful. Let me make that absolutely clear. Only those who meet the UK standards have been appointed, and even then we have had to turn away a significant number of those who have met the standard because the demand is so high. I go back to the original point: there have been 440 entries on applications running at an average number in the competitions of 5,000, 6,000 or 7000, with the lowest competition at 4,400. We are looking to address the imbalance of the community background so that the police service is more representative of the community that it polices. That is what Patten said; it was accepted at the time and it serves no useful purpose for me to go over the history. Patten said that it was the most striking issue relating to the police and that it ought to be addressed.
In respect of lateral entry which I referred to in my opening remarks, the wider degree of lateral entry as set out in the Explanatory Memorandum is based on the opportunity of opening lateral entry from other forces, not just the Garda Siochana. Entry is not narrowed to that one, it extends to other forces. I can also say to the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, that I have looked at the new oath. It is similar to the oath for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and it is certainly human rights compliant. If there is a point about it that the noble Lord objects to or if he feels that it fails in some way, I shall be happy to try to respond to that. Further, the oath can be converted to an affirmation so that the words “Before God” do not have to be used. I do not know whether that was the issue here, but I can confirm that it is human rights compliant and very similar to the PSNI oath.
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Baroness Harris of Richmond: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Can he indicate whether any senior officers—
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Lord Rooker: I am coming to that. First I should say that no one has been recruited under the lateral entry process. There have been no entrants. In answer to the noble Baroness, within this system I understand that there have been two promotions from entry as constables, both of them male.
On the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, about support for policing, I shall get into trouble if I start quoting who said what and giving weight to the statements that have been made by various members of the political parties. The noble Lord himself referred to the fact that within the next few days, political leaders in Northern Ireland are going to have to make up their mind about whether they have the confidence in each other and in the system to go into devolved government on a power-sharing basis. They have to do that by midnight next Monday. I do not think my quoting one leader as opposed to another or referring to one type of crime as opposed to another would take the matter forward. That is not for me as a UK Minister, it is for the political leaders in Northern Ireland. I wish them well in their decisions.
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