Clause 3 - Duty of Commission to secure judiciary reflective of the community
Justice (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords]
3:00 pm
The amendment appears to be based on two presumptions. The first is that the question of equality is somehow in
the same category as an equal outcome. As has been mentioned, equality of opportunity is addressed in the Good Friday or Belfast agreement. The hon. Member for Basingstoke seemed to suggest that securing appointments by a process that is reflective of the community excludes meritocracy, but the two are not mutually exclusive in this context. It is possible to have a reasonably practical reflection of the community while achieving the objective of meritocracy.
The amendment does not assist the proposed duty of the commission to secure a judiciary that is
''so far as is reasonably practicable to do so . . . reflective of the community in Northern Ireland''.
Many of our debates this morning did not take account of that important phrase ''reasonably practicable''. One can achieve only what one can achieve. The meritocracy principle has always to be applied to the end product. Surely it is appropriate that the programme of action for appointments to judicial offices, for instance, should, as far as practicable, be reflective of the community. That does not mean that the end product will be exactly reflective of the community; that will happen only as far as is practicable. That is overridden by the final phrase in subsection (8), which is that the appointments must be made
''solely on the basis of merit''.
The commission has to have available for consideration
''a range of persons reflective of the community of Northern Ireland''.
The onus is on it to make suggestions of persons who are reflective of the community in a practicable way. I see no real reason why those principles should not be applied in everyday life; that is done in many other quarters. Why is it so offensive to many people that it should be done in the judiciary and the administration of justice?
The hon. Member for Basingstoke made one or two other points that seemed totally irrelevant to our debate. He suggested that the amendments appease the republican movement. If they did appease, I would probably be the most vociferous in opposing them, because my community has suffered more than anyone else from the republican movement and those in my party have suffered more than people in any other from the republican movement. I have been in my home for days on end under siege by pickets from Sinn Fein and the republican movement, and my wife and family have also been subjected to those sieges. There have also been threats against my life from other paramilitaries, so I am not in the business of appeasing extremism in any form, be it republican or Unionist.
I am in the business of trying to move our society forward from the isolation and division that it has suffered. We must melt the icy chill that, rightly or wrongly, pertains in certain sectors because the entire community has not been able to be involved in all aspects of life, including the judiciary and the criminal process. We must enable the entire community to be involved in those things. For that reason, I argue strongly that it is proper for these measures to be in the Bill.
We have the safeguards of the override provision relating to meritocracy and the fact that what is to be done on reflectivity must be done with reasonable practicality, so the outcome will not necessarily be reflective of the community. This point has been a source of many arguments, not only in this debate, but in earlier ones, as we could have an outcome that is not reflective of the community but which is the best reasonably practicable result of the process.
For those reasons, I oppose the amendments. I do not think that they have been proposed on a justifiable basis. I am referring to the outcome that would allegedly be achieved if the amendments were agreed to. I go back to the status quo of clause 3 as proposed, which I support.