Clause 3 - Judicial Appointments Commission
Justice (Northern Ireland)
9:30 am
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate, Conservative)
I do not want to delay the Committee on these amendments because the arguments behind them are self-evident and common sense. The people of Northern Ireland have every reason to want to have confidence in the Judicial Appointments Commission. However, that would be extremely difficult if the commission's membership included people who had been sentenced to serious offences that entailed imprisonment for a period longer than six months or who were members of proscribed organisations. That would bring the commission into disrepute, and it should be avoided.
We should look to the 2003 Assembly elections, or the elections in 2007 and thereafter. It is perfectly possible that the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, but especially the latter, will be members of Sinn Fein-IRA. We know that Sinn Fein-IRA are making progress towards becoming Sinn Fein without being inextricably linked with the IRA, and we hope that that progress will continue. The party is on a journey, but it is difficult to know when the IRA will decommission and when the inextricable link—as the Government say it is now—between Sinn Fein and the IRA will be broken. Some would say that those organisations are one and the same, but the link between Sinn Fein and paramilitary violence by an armed group needs to be broken and removed for ever. That is what we all desire.
In order for the electorate to have confidence in the Judicial Appointments Commission, it is necessary to restrict the lay membership to ensure that, in the inevitable debate between the First and Deputy First Ministers on the lay membership of the commission, the people specified in the amendment cannot be nominated and cannot become members of the commission. It would not be right for people who have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment in excess of six months—it would plainly be for serious offences—to be involved in the appointment of the
judiciary. Nor, in the context of Northern Ireland, is membership of the commission appropriate for people who are believed to be members of proscribed organisations.
The object of the amendments is to take that potential controversy out of the picture by ensuring that people with such convictions or members of proscribed organisations cannot be chosen as lay members of the commission. That would help to reinforce people's confidence in the commission.