Clause 18 - Provision of information to Board
Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]
9:15 am
There is validity in the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, and it is not the first time that he has made it. I can answer only in the broadest terms. Some of us would consider certain people in the political process as unreasonable. We would not want to go to tea with them, but that does not affect the right of a person or a political party to pursue their objectives by political means. The thesis of the new political dispensation in policing and, indeed, in every other way is that we are moving away from those days, from those points of view and from those activities.
I did not want to do this, and I will try to be as gentle as possible: if I were, perhaps, to apply the Clapham omnibus definition of reasonableness to people in the hon. Gentleman's party, who at times strutted on stages with red berets and were associated with those who had guns hidden throughout the north of Ireland, he might ask me to test the reasonableness of representatives from his party becoming members of the board. I am trying to resist doing that.