Clause 21 - Special committee of the Board
Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
I wish to pursue my amendment No. 100. I noted the gleam in the eye of the right hon. Member for Upper Bann as I got to my feet. Let me put him out of his pain. When a person is an ''ex'' in various ways, he is no longer a member of the consultable class. I fall into that category and it is from that position that I address my little amendment. I noticed the gleam in the right hon. Gentleman's eye about my amendment, which would make the momentous change to the number of members of the committee from five to seven.
I await the exercise of the right hon. Gentleman's sense of humour about those figures. I could try to be funny about them, too. Let me try to be at the start. Who will the five be? There are four political parties on the board. Will there be one person from each party? That makes four. Then there has to be another one. There are nine independent Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly, so there will have to be an independent member. Will the member be a nationalist independent or a Unionist independent?
There is a second problem with the figure of five. The board is working well, as are the chairman and vice-chairman. I do not want a situation in which their role and approach is disrupted. In many ways, they are complementary roles. Do we include the chairman and the vice-chairman on such a committee? If we do, then there are three members. We then have to divide three into four, plus one, which would cause difficulties.
There is not a suitable number. It is a little like the debate that we have just had on the penalty in cases that will probably never be brought to court. I do not think that there is a suitable number, but the most unsuitable number would be five, for the reasons that I have given.
I, too, do not want a Policing Board on which there are good and bad members, equal members and those members who are more equal than others. That does not lead to the type of rapport that is necessary within a board, especially one that will be under such pressure. However, that is what is in front of us. We are working on the numbers.
I have tabled an amendment that replaces five with seven. I could immediately point out the difficulties with seven, too, but they are less than they would be with five.
Another question must be asked. In the experience of the Policing Board to date, had this provision been included from the beginning, how many times would the Committee have met? It is my understanding—although it may be faulty—that it would never have met, because there have not been any requests for information of this nature.
There probably will be such requests in the future. There might be cases where people will try not just to use that provision, but to abuse it. Those things may happen, but the element of collective self-preservation as a board will come into play as well: the capacity to sustain a difficult board such as this in difficult circumstances on a very difficult issue would substantially increase if there were more than five people. However, I repeat that I do not believe that any number is ideal because there is not a perfect way of arranging this.
I have made my point about seven, and I can anticipate some of the permutations that will be referred to—probably very shortly. They are as obvious as the permutations with regard to five, but they are less damaging and dangerous. If I had set out to pick the wrong number, I would have arrived at five.