Part of Orders of the Day — Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Bill – in the House of Commons at 4:39 pm on 20 June 1991.
I support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), although I regard even that as inadequate, for several reasons which I shall explain briefly. The first problem is the location. In practical terms, if the complaints procedure is to be effective, there must be ready access to the person's office so that the role can be overseen in a practical way in accordance with the Government's position and the Lords amendments.
Whoever would be appointed would sit in an office somewhere in the Greater Belfast region. He might deal adequately with the situation in Greater Belfast, but he would be completely inaccessible to the vast tract of Northern Ireland outside that area. The problem of location also affects the operation of the Police Complaints Commission. It is a common factor. Although the commission has the power under the legislation to go out, investigate and see for itself at first hand, the instances of its doing so are few and far between. Location seems a small point, but it is a big problem if one happens to live in say, South Armagh and happens to be the recipient of undue attention from the security forces. People in such areas have no access to the location where the assessor will be.
The second point is about the person. I do not want to make it in an offensive way, but I can find no other way of doing so. What sort of person will he or she be? Will he or she be drawn from the coterie of people in the north of Ireland who, for whatever reason, seem to be suitable for a Government appointment to such a job? He or she will certainly not be a Unionist with a capital "U" or a Nationalist with a capital "N". If experience is anything to go by, he or she will be someone whose experience in the community bears no relation to the sort of problems being dealt with. I would rather see the position given to a committed Unionist, with a capital "U", with enough courage and bottle to stand up and deal with the problems, than to a nice person who has been brought in because she or he holds a tea cup properly on special occasions.
Without being offensive, may I suggest that, given the circumstances in the north of Ireland, with 20 years of violence and 20 years of problems stemming from violence of all sorts, it seems incredible that we cannot find the right sort of person to sit on the Police Complaints Commission who has direct experience on the ground. I do not wish to be personal, but it stretches my credibility—and perhaps that of others—that the vice chairman of the Police Complaints Commission is the wife of a High Court judge. It requires a stretch of the imagination to establish any credibility for that appointment. I shall not go further than that, although I could. I make a plea to those who make the decisions that the communities in the north of Ireland, whether Unionist or Nationalist, contain some honest people who could be chosen to carry out such a job.
I envisage some great difficulties in relation to the operation of the assessor, which I shall couch in terms of recent experience. Mr. Stevens was sent to the north of Ireland to investigate alleged collusion between members of the security forces and terrorist organisations. Mr. Stevens' team had to go to Army headquarters, knock on the door or ring the bell, and say to whoever answered, "We understand that you have boxes of montages containing confidential information about people, and that those boxes were given to you by a member or members of a terrorist organisation to prevent them from being caught with them; could we please have them?" I wonder what the position of the independent assessor, supervising the Army's position, would be in those circumstances. Where would his powers—his teeth—lie? That situation occurred recently in the north of Ireland and was investigated. If we put an independent assessor without any power into that position, it is difficult to imagine what the GOC might have to say to him. In reality, the Stevens inquiry had to wring the evidence out of the Army. That is one of the good reasons why the assessor must be independent, not someone without the power or the teeth to deal with the problem
I shall make a third general point which I believe is relevant. With whom does the responsibility rest for the implementation of the legislation that Parliament draws up? Is it the GOC, the Chief Constable or the Government, acting through Parliament? That is a crucial question, to which the answer is equally crucial. The attitude is developing both in the House and in practice that the people who make security decisions, on policy or otherwise, are not Ministers, but those who carry security clout—be they members of the security services, senior Army officers or civil servants. I should like an assurance from the Minister at some stage today that each and every element of Government in relation to Northern Ireland is honouring its duty in making those decisions, not having the decisions imposed on it by people who are not empowered to do so.
Another relevant factor is the grey area of what has been known as "public interest". The term "public interest" is often used on the Floor of the House. If the independent assessor asks to examine the way in which a complaint was made and is told that information and files will not be given to him because it would not be in the public interest, where is the independent assessor's authority? Surely his authority diminishes almost immediately. Such circumstances can and will arise.
5.15 pm
There is a distinction to be made between the criminal complaint and the non-criminal complaint. Those of us who deal with such matters at the coal face on an almost weekly basis know exactly what the procedure is. First, the complaint goes to the police to establish whether it is a criminal complaint. A period elapses while that decision is made. If the complaint is deemed not to be a criminal one, it is returned to the Army authorities, by which time the soldier and regiment involved are no longer in Northern Ireland, but are in Germany or somewhere else. I have filing cabinets full of letters stating that the Army would be only too glad to deal with a problem, but that the person involved is now in a different country and, unfortunately, the matter must rest there.
These are the sort of difficulties that present themselves on a daily basis. That is why the independent assessor, as envisaged by the Government, will be quite inadequate. Even if the Lords amendment were carried, as I hope it will be, the assessor's toothlessness will remain due to his inability to penetrate the grey area of the decision-making process in relation to security.