New clause 6 - Membership of district policing partnerships

Part of Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:15 pm on 11 March 2003.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr John Taylor Mr John Taylor Conservative, Solihull 4:15, 11 March 2003

I am grateful to you, Mr. Amess. Inasmuch as I have strayed, I have done straying. There will be no more straying.

I return to the wording of the new clauses of my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne. He wants to add the circumstances in which a person

''is convicted of a terrorist related offence''

to the list of grounds for disqualification from service. That would follow on from paragraph (5)(c) of schedule 3 of the 2000 Act, which says that disqualification follows cessation of membership of the council. I would hope that a failure under the proposed new sub-paragraph (d) would also be a failure under existing sub-paragraph (c). If an individual were convicted of a terrorist-related offence, he ought to be disqualified from serving on the council. He would come off the district policing partnership on two grounds.

I shall draw my remarks to a conclusion by leaving the Committee with my lingering doubt as to whether DPPs are just one more accountability institution, or even, I suggest, an accountability institution too far. There are so many, and so much mischief could be made with all the opportunities for inquiring into the police and their activities.