Police (Northern Ireland) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:30 pm on 25 October 2000.

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Photo of Lord Archer of Sandwell Lord Archer of Sandwell Labour 6:30, 25 October 2000

After my noble and learned friend has been so accommodating, it may sound almost churlish on my part if I reprimand him for a bad habit which the whole Front Bench are now getting into; that is, answering arguments before they have heard them. I have not even moved my amendment yet.

Perhaps I may say a word about Amendment No. 222. As at present drafted, the Bill envisages that the ombudsman will act only in relation to individual complaints and only when the process is initiated by an individual complainant. Indeed, in the other place the Secretary of State confirmed that that was the intention.

The problem is this. The ombudsman is really the only person provided for in the Bill who will be able to investigate the impact of policing on individuals. But there are ways in which policing can have an impact on individuals which do not readily lend themselves to individual complaints. Certainly it may not always be easy to single out a specific police officer against whom a complaint is made. One example cited to me is the incident at Drumcree in 1998. Plastic bullets were fired at people in the crowd. No individuals were willing to single themselves out as making a complaint, and it was virtually impossible to identify a specific police officer who fired a specific bullet. Yet it may well call for someone who is empowered to investigate the incident and, since we are all agreed that we want to avoid an unnecessary inquiry, preferably without the necessity of establishing an inquiry.

The clause says that the ombudsman may report on matters which come to his attention "under this part"--that means of the 1998 Act. Of course, we know that those are related to individual complaints. I am grateful for Amendment No. 222A, but, as I read it, it still confines any information which the ombudsman gives to matters arising from a complaint.

The Patten commission declared in its recommendation 38 that the ombudsman should take initiatives and not merely react to specific complaints received. So it is not clear why she is now denied that power. I must not look a gift horse in the mouth, and I must perhaps ignore old proverbs about Greeks bearing gifts. However, between now and Report stage I promise to look carefully at the half-way house where my noble and learned friend is meeting us and I shall not take this matter further this afternoon.

Amendment No. 223 is a probing amendment. Clause 61 imposes on the ombudsman an obligation to supply the board with necessary statistical information. The Human Rights Commission raised the question whether that exhausts all the useful information which he may give to the board. In paragraph 6.41 of the Patten report, it was recommended that he should compile data on trends and patterns, and that is no doubt what the provision addresses. But it goes on to say that he,

"should work with the police to address issues emerging from this [statistical] data".

So there should be what the commission calls a "dynamic cooperative relationship".

In particular the commission recommends that the ombudsman should supply data on,

"accumulations of complaints against individual officers".

Yesterday, on the Freedom of Information Bill, we became involved in an interesting debate as to what is and what is not a statistic. This afternoon the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mayhew, raised the question of what is and what is not a fact. One could spend a great deal of time on this issue in a seminar. If the ombudsman says that there is a complaint about a specific officer; that is a fact. If he says that there have been two complaints about the officer, that is a statistic. If he said that the officer was placed in a situation which made undue demands on him, that is not a statistic; it is simply information.

I do not propose to elaborate at great length; I am not being paid to deliver a lecture. But, having answered the argument which I had not then advanced, my noble friend may wish to think about it again.