Clause 14
Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill
9:30 am
Paul Goggins (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Northern Ireland Office; Wythenshawe and Sale East, Labour)
Let us be clear about this, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing out that the agreements between the various oversight bodies work in practice. The Human Rights Commission does not seek to investigate everything. If it believes that a complaint is better suited to another oversight body it passes it on. The fact that the Human Rights Commission might suspect that it would come to a different conclusion would not be grounds to carry out its own investigation. Only if the commission believed that the other body concerned did not carry out an investigation that should have been carried out, or if it believed that the other body had investigated insufficiently, would it have the power to carry out its own investigation, subject to all the safeguards that I have described—the need to present terms of reference and the opportunity for challenge and appeal.
I have no doubt that in practice a very sensible approach will be adopted to the arrangements, that the agreements between oversight bodies will continue to work as effectively as they do, and that no frivolous investigations will be carried out, because of the safeguards in the clause.