New clause 5 - Time limit on investigations by the Ombudsman
Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]
3:15 pm
Mr David Wilshire (Spelthorne, Conservative)
In principle, I support what the right hon. Member for Upper Bann has proposed. However, I am not sure that 12 months is an appropriate time limit. It could be argued that a two-year period would be necessary to enable people to collate enough evidence to justify what they are doing. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not want to go to the stake for the sake of 12 months; he has certainly made the point.
The right hon. Gentleman might also have addressed the fact—perhaps he will reflect on it on Report—that not only is it sensible to say that there has to be a time limit that starts from the date on which the complaint is made, but there is still an opportunity to delay the procedure for a huge length of time in the hope that something else might turn up
that would be handy to the investigation. I support not only a time limit backwards from the point of making the complaint, but a limit on how long a person making a complaint can work at keeping the file open by saying that more information will be supplied before the investigation can be completed. There could well be a time limit within which the ombudsman has to complete the investigation. I commend that to the right hon. Gentleman. He is absolutely right.
The role of the ombudsman is to address, for the future, the sort of complaints that have been made in the past, relating to minor issues, rather than Bloody Sunday-type issues. I understand the Government to have stated that the ombudsman should be a safeguard for the future of the Northern Ireland police service. However, as the right hon. Gentleman says, that intention has already been changed into something entirely different—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was given as an example. Had the intention in creating the role of ombudsman been that that person would play the role of the president or chairman of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Government should have said so at the time and we could have debated the matter.
If the Government accept the right hon. Gentleman's argument that that is not the way to proceed and that it is sensible to draw a line in the sand to show that what had happened in the past was dreadful but it had happened, so it was time to move on, I would have though that they should accept the new clause in principle, even if they want to debate the length of time that is specified. That would put it beyond all doubt that the purpose of the ombudsman is to secure the future of the Northern Ireland Police Service rather than to provide yet another vehicle for raking over the past.
I have watched events in South Africa with amazement and interest and can see the value for some people in the approach taken in that country. However, I have also looked at what has happened in respect of the investigations into what happened in Londonderry all those years ago—at the moment the only beneficiaries are the lawyers, and I suspect that at the end of the day the only significant beneficiaries will be recipients of the £200 million in fees run up by the legal profession.
You might be interested to know, Mr. Amess, that at one stage I tried to rent a flat in County hall across the river to help me do my job here, only to discover that virtually every single available flat had been taken, at exorbitant rents with no negotiations, by lawyers who were coming across to appear at Methodist central hall. Some of the inflation in rent was due to an inquiry.
That illustrates my point. What good that is supposed to do to truth and reconciliation, I do not know. It is good for the landlords over there and it is good for the lawyers who are across the way arguing. All that it has done, and all that it will do, if the ombudsman goes down the same route, is that the moment that the Bloody Sunday thing gets out of hand someone will come along and say, ''We must have something about the Omagh bombing.'' We will have to do the same thing all over again. There will
almost be a bidding war to see who can spend the most on which inquiry.
I cannot believe for one minute that that is what the Government intended for the role of the ombudsman. If the Government agree with that argument, I suggest that there is a way of making it absolutely clear once and for all that the ombudsman is about the future of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and not yet another vehicle for raking over things that are probably best left buried in the past. I do not believe that we will make progress or improve the situation in Northern Ireland by endlessly raking over the past. However, I do think that we will make progress by making sure that the future is safeguarded, and the new clause goes in exactly in the right direction.