Nationality and Borders Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Monday 4th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Motion T1 in the name of my noble friend Lord Murphy of Torfaen. As has already been explained, this amendment, in previous guises, was discussed in Committee and on Report. On those occasions, your Lordships’ House considered it a valuable amendment and that the Government, via the Ministers in the Home Office, working with the Northern Ireland Office, should see that this electronic travel authorisation does not take place. I have talked to many people and, as my noble friend has said, the requirement is unworkable and daft. I wish to give practical examples of that. It is also unenforceable. It would violate the very premise of reconciliation and bringing people together on the island of Ireland in terms of the Good Friday agreement. It would jeopardise important parts of strand 2, the north-south requirements. All this, in many ways, is simply a consequence of Brexit.

Our amendment says that those who are legally resident in the Republic of Ireland who have come from EU and other countries in the last year or so should be exempt from requiring an electronic travel authorisation if they wish to travel from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland.

From a practical point of view, I have asked the Minister to consider the geography, because I believe the Home Office has not fully considered that. Let us take the county borders of Donegal and Tyrone, Donegal and Derry, and Donegal and Fermanagh. There is one village that straddles Donegal and Fermanagh, the small village of Pettigo. That border goes straight down the middle of it. One minute you could be in the Republic of Ireland and the next you could be in Northern Ireland. There is the case of Lifford in County Donegal and Strabane. There is a direct, symbiotic relationship between those towns, as they exist cheek by jowl. You can walk over the bridge from one to the other. The symbiotic friend of Belcoo in County Fermanagh is Blacklion in County Cavan. They exist cheek by jowl. In terms of the geography we are talking about, this proposal from the Government is unworkable and unenforceable.

I ask the Minister—and I say this to the Government in the most sincere terms—to please continue direct negotiations on the issue with the Irish Government, who are deeply fearful of the repercussions of this proposal for an electronic travel authorisation. They believe that it is unworkable and that it will impede tourism—an issue I am sure that other noble Lords will deal with. In that respect, the Minister referred to work with Tourism Ireland and Tourism Northern Ireland. I ask the Minister: what discussions took place with those bodies and what were the results of those discussions?

Apart from, I feel, being in breach of strand 2 of the Good Friday Agreement—and in breach of natural common sense—I say that a proposal for an ETA is not only inconvenient but disruptive, unworkable and unenforceable. Can the Minister tell us when the Government envisage introducing the secondary regulations in relation to the charging? I firmly believe that these are not required. I urge the Government to accept our reasonable amendment, which states that if the individual is legally resident in the Republic of Ireland, that should act as a reasonable exemption.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support Motion T1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. Because this is something which has been brought in, one must look at what the current situation is. The current situation is that it is an open border, and we have heard that there will be no one on it. Even before Brexit, the situation was that we had border officers at the airports and ports because of terrorism, drugs, human trafficking and whatever else. Those people are still there—so, in effect, what is this ETA actually going change? It is not going to put anyone on the border. We have already heard about people working either side of the border.

I declare interests in running a small tourism operation and because my brother is chairman of Tourism Ireland. I have not discussed this matter with him. He is perfectly aware of my feelings on it. However, the Minister rather brushed over consulting Tourism Ireland, Tourism Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland—as if these discussions were going well. I have not spoken directly to people involved but it is my impression that these discussions are not going well. These two organisations and the Government of Ireland are entirely against this. They are against this in relation to the movement of people day by day doing everyday things. They are also against it from a tourism point of view.

A couple of years ago, the Government accepted that the passenger duty for airline passengers was an inhibiting factor, preventing airlines travelling to Northern Ireland because it was less in Dublin. They obviously accepted that it was an inhibiting factor because they dropped it and made it roughly equal—this was largely for tourists. So what are they proposing now? Putting on more than half of it to any tourist who wants to enter Northern Ireland. I ask the Minister for her honest opinion: if a £13 or £14 passenger duty inhibited people arriving in Northern Ireland, what is half of that—£6.50, plus apparently £10 or £12—going to do? Does she see this as an encouragement, or as something which will inhibit people coming north?

The Minister says that interested parties will be told—which must include travel agents and so on—in order to get people to put in for this. What will happen when somebody decides to come to Ireland as an island, and their travel agent says they will have to fill in an electronic form and pay extra money to go north, even if they want to come for a few hours? This is why I like the first amendment—because it talks about short periods of time. Noble Lords may not necessarily think that Northern Ireland is a holiday destination, but I can assure them that a lot of people do. In particular, the Titanic exhibition was voted the world’s leading tourist attraction a few years ago.

Those who have watched “Game of Thrones”—and I have not—will know that the world was hooked. Warner Brothers has invested millions of pounds in what is going to be an iconic visiting centre for “Game of Thrones” in Northern Ireland, and it is not all that far from the border. But what is going to happen? What does the Minister really think tourists are going to feel when they come to the island of Ireland and find a barrier? Some of us are pretty bad with IT anyway, and it is already difficult enough to do the filling in. Additionally, if this form is as light a touch as the Minister says, what possible checking can there be in it? Anybody can fill it in anyway. It is crazy to think that that will stop anyone.

We were talking just now about crossing the border; I will stop after this. Not only are Belcoo and Blacklion on opposite sides of the bridge, but we have in Fermanagh something that noble Lords probably do not know about: Concession Road, which runs between two Republic towns, Cavan and Clones, into the north and then back into the south. That is fact. If you had been on patrol at night during the Troubles, you would have known all about it. It caused immense problems, because Garda patrols were not allowed up that bit of road; we were allowed up it, but we had to cross a bog to get to it. The police could not get to it, because they did not particularly like bogs; they liked nice carts and whatever.

This is really unbelievable. The duty of government, surely, is to make laws not for filling pages of A4 but for something that can be implemented. Surely, it is a duty of government not to make laws that are entirely unenforceable.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise extremely briefly, my noble friend having done the praising the Government part, to offer Green support to the other, non-government amendments in this group. We have heard very powerful practical examples on Motion T1. On Motion M1, the argument that someone acting in good faith should not face a court case, particularly in a life or death matter, is obvious.

I will focus briefly on Motion B1 on the deprivation of citizenship. Commons amendments have tightened the conditions under which citizenship can be removed without notice and improved the judicial oversight. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, is seeking to do that further with this. She said she was not against the principle of deprivation orders so I must lay out, very simply and clearly, that the Green Party is totally against the deprivation of the right of citizenship; citizenship should be a right that, once granted, remains. I must declare an interest here, because I am one of over six million people who are potentially affected by this deprivation of the citizenship right because, as anyone who hears me speak will know, I hold another citizenship. Many other people feel like second-class citizens in their own country, because they are; that right can be taken away as it cannot be from other people. All I can do is apologise to all those people that we have failed to get a parliamentary consensus for this and say we are going to keep trying.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I will keep my remarks brief as the case for this amendment has been made so very powerfully this evening by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie.

When we debated this amendment in Committee, I raised several areas of concern regarding these proposals for the ETA requirements. In his response, the Minister confirmed that these proposals would not result in any kind of checks on the Irish land border, which is very much to be welcomed. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, said, it remains far from clear how these ETAs will be enforced in practice. In the many thousands of border crossings that take place every day for work, leisure, family or educational purposes, there is currently no expectation or need to carry a passport. Given the very special circumstances of the land border on the island of Ireland, and further to his responses in Committee, I ask the Minister to expand this evening on how this scheme will work in practice.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, I remain concerned about the potential impact of these proposals on the Northern Ireland tourist industry. Does the Minister accept that these proposals may deter international visitors who have flown into the Republic of Ireland from visiting Northern Ireland during their stay because of the additional financial and bureaucratic requirements that they will entail? Have the Government carried out an impact assessment of the effect of these measures on the Northern Ireland tourist industry? I hope the Minister can respond to this this evening, as he did not when I asked the same question in Committee.

Given the special circumstances and potential negative impact of these proposals on Northern Ireland and Ireland, I believe they have not been properly thought through. I therefore urge the Government to think again and accept this amendment.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. At this late hour I will not go into everything I said in Committee, but I live on the border and see it every day. I deal with and know people who cross the border every day. I know of many people who do not have Irish or British passports. They are not citizens of either country. Many of them are eastern Europeans who have remained and who work on both sides of the border, sometimes at the same time.

We heard about healthcare from the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. The whole healthcare drive has been an all-Ireland drive to provide services of the best quality in Ireland. Your Lordships will be well aware in GB that, because of the land mass, it is sometimes better to have centres of excellence. There are therefore health staff and, just as in Great Britain, many of them are not British—and we are now trying to inhibit their crossing the border.

Before I go any further and talk about other areas, I must declare my interests in that, first, I am involved in tourism and, secondly, my brother is chairman of the organisation mentioned, Tourism Ireland. Nobody has lobbied me on this at all, not even him. When I rang him about it, he was not quite able to give me the figures I wanted, so this is not an “I’m telling you what I’ve been told” scenario at all.

I want to look at what the Minister said in reply, because we have heard that a lot of it was perhaps slightly muddled. I think it is worse than that. It was contradictory. First, in talking about the costs in tourism the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, ventured to say:

“I looked that up this morning in anticipation of this, and it is currently $14”,


so to him it was “not overwhelming”. People will be well aware that air passenger duty has been a bone of contention in this country and in Ireland, especially because in the Republic it was always lower than in the United Kingdom. I am aware that the Chancellor announced that because of the stress on tourism, he was going to lower it for internal travel throughout the United Kingdom but also, I believe, that it would be devolved to Northern Ireland for international travel.

If the Government attach so much importance to that and consider it significant—I think it was being lowered from something like £10 or £12 to £6 or £7—why did the Minister tell us that this is not significant? Is it or is it not? If it is not, why did they change it? I will tell the House why. In effect, the Government have just resurrected it by doubling it in order to bring this measure in. So, it does matter, which is not what the Minister said.

I then looked at the next paragraph. The Minister said:

“There will be no controls whatever on the Northern Ireland land border. Individuals will be able to continue to pass through border control at first point of entry to the common travel area.”


In many cases, the first point of entry is in the Republic of Ireland, so is the Republic going to administer this visa? I suggest that it will not, so this does not tie up.

Next, the Minister said the following:

“As is currently the case, individuals arriving in the UK, including those crossing the land border into Northern Ireland”.


I hesitate to say this, and correct me if I am wrong, as the Minister may have walked up and down our border many times without my noticing it, but I suggest that he would not have a clue where the border was. That is not me laughing at this. He would not have a clue, as there are no markings on the road. He might stop at a shop on either side, which takes euros or pounds. There is nothing else, but I will give him a lead: the telephone boxes in the Republic are yellow. If you see one of those, you know you have “crossed the border”. However, there is no border, so who are these visas for? It is absolutely clear that there is nobody to inspect them, so what are the Government going to do?

The Minister also said that the Government are going to use

“a variety of communication channels”.—[Official Report, 10/2/22; col. 1935.]

Excuse me, but it is almost laughable to say there would be communication in the Republic of Ireland to tell people that they cannot come north and vice versa if they do not have Irish passports.

I am sorry, but the reason for having legislation is to enforce it. This provision is not unenforceable because people refuse to have it enforced, but because it is totally unenforceable under those circumstances. This amendment is therefore not that logical—I think it is getting them out of a hole, but the Government are not prepared to look at the hole they are in. This may not be the most vital thing in the world, even if it is to us; it is a tiny thing.

The noble Baroness also mentioned the protocol. I am not talking about the protocol, because clearly, the Government have not used it as the excuse for not doing this. This is therefore basically outside the protocol, which has no bearing.

However, on the protocol, we all know, and we agree with them, that the Government put in place an incredibly bad arrangement, depending on which way you look at it. They are trying to alleviate it on the one hand, and they have brought out something to dump on top of it on the other. We have a saying in Lough Erne in Fermanagh: “I didn’t come up Lough Erne in a bubble.” It looks as if the Government did, because it seriously is unworkable.

That is all I am going to say, except perhaps ask the Minister to define the hard border. He says in his script: “There is no hard border; there is no hard border; there will never be a hard border.” What is a hard border? I do not know what the definition is, but it is where documents are checked or people have to stop. He is absolutely right that there is no hard border. Therefore, there is no border to make these checks. I suggest that the Government agree to this amendment.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I appeal to the Minister, especially as I hope he has received some expert advice from his colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Caine, who, as a Northern Ireland Minister, is respected on all sides of the House. He knows his stuff, and that is a big plus. The noble Viscount has explained in practical detail why it is essential either to accept this amendment or to withdraw the provision and come back at Third Reading without it. My noble friend Lady Ritchie has underlined that with an eloquent speech, which I really hope the Minister has listened to carefully.

This is not a party issue or an Opposition versus Government issue; this is a Northern Ireland issue. I worry that in the construction of this Bill and this particular provision, Ministers have been thinking about everybody except Northern Ireland. That, I am afraid, is far too often the case. Their whole approach to Brexit has neglected Northern Ireland and deeply offended unionists for reasons I completely understand, including the former Government supporters who kept the Conservatives in power for a couple of years—the DUP. In Whitehall, there seems to be a default position in which Northern Ireland does not register when Bills are framed. I am afraid this is a very good example.

May I underline the points of my noble friend Lady Ritchie and the noble Viscount, made with a great deal of practical advice, about the operation across the border? The border, in everyday life for those who live either side, does not exist. People cross the border all the time and work, receive healthcare, get blood transfusions and receive educational opportunities and provision from either jurisdiction. I could go on, but time is short. It is terribly important to keep momentum going following the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, knowing that is the case. These unhappy residents, who are entitled to all these provisions by their residency rather than their nationality—they may be Polish, Lithuanian or all sorts of nationalities—and who provide essential services to people on both sides of the island of Ireland could be caught by this. This is a practical issue.

As surveys have shown, most Northern Ireland tourists who leave Northern Ireland to go to Europe, America or the rest of the world go via Dublin. Equally, most incoming tourists to Northern Ireland come via Dublin. If, in addition to the other issues involved, they will have to pay a fee—nominal, you may argue, but it is an additional hurdle—to benefit from Northern Ireland’s beauty and opportunities and bring much-needed income to Northern Ireland, especially to businesses suffering from an absence of tourists because of Covid, this is really damaging.

Can I also bring to the Minister’s attention the proposal, with cross-party support, to have Rally Ireland, which crosses the border, in the international FIA calendar for the world rally championships? The proposal put this year did not succeed but it is being strongly and widely backed for next year. This will affect Rally Ireland and the practical implications have not been thought through.

I refer to the detailed 1,000-word letter of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, who is chair of the Lords protocol committee, on which I sit, along with my noble friend Lady Ritchie. I have it in front of me, but I will not read it out this evening because the hour is late. It asks all sorts of questions about the reply from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, to the series of questions that our committee asked. I am afraid that, given her normal standards, it was a very unsatisfactory reply, which reinforces my concern that Northern Ireland has not really been thought of.

Nationality and Borders Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th February 2022 Lords Chamber

In summary, I believe that these measures have not been properly thought through, and I urge the Government to think again and accept these amendments.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie. I had not necessarily thought about saying anything, but she mentioned me in her speech. First, I declare an interest in that we are involved in tourism at home. Secondly, my brother is chairman of Tourism Ireland, a cross-border body that survives on funds from both the United Kingdom and Ireland to market the island of Ireland. Therefore, this particular regulation would make a complete fool of the whole practical implementation of it.

People ought to understand what the border really is—or, in fact, what it is not. We have come through all the Troubles. Before them, we had a border and we had to have certain papers to cross it. Then we all joined the European Union and that side was taken out of it. But then we had the Troubles so, in effect, the border was reinstated, albeit for a different reason. We do not have those border checks now; there is no border under the Good Friday agreement and everything since, including the protocol. That is the way it should be. Whether the noble Baroness and I are supporters of the protocol is neither here nor there; it is about the practical problems raised by this.

Whether tourists from another country cross the border, and who polices this, is of course an issue. In fact, they will not know whether they are crossing it, so it becomes rather ridiculous—on the whole, they do not have a clue. During the Troubles, there was a time when even our own British people—soldiers and police—did not know whether they were crossing it, so they used to draw yellow lines on it so that they knew when they were. A certain part of the population moved the yellow lines, so they still did not know where they were and then there were diplomatic incidents.

I live in County Fermanagh, which is one-third of the border in Northern Ireland. The border does not just affect it in terms of regulations—people cross it not just from day to day but time and time again in one direction or another to do very simple things. I know that you can use euros here if you are pushed, but every shop and business there uses euros and pounds. Therefore, half the time, no one has a clue whether they are in the north or the south, even when they walk into a shop. All the people working there, and of course the ones who are straightforward British or Irish, are not covered by this.

However, a wealth of people who are not British or Irish live and work within a few miles of the border and they do not think twice about it. If you cannot get a plumber very locally—we might get one from further afield anyway—you just ring up the nearest person. We are five miles from the border and he could well be from either side of it, and he might not be an Irish or British citizen.

I entirely support this amendment. I know that what I have said is not technical and I can only be very grateful to the noble Baroness, as we all can, for going into it in such detail because there is very little for us to say, except for the Government to sort it out.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and spoken to by other noble Lords. I was grateful, too, to have been briefed by the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission. I did not need to be convinced of the importance of local journeys for work, education, health services, shopping, frontier workers and so on. I was lucky enough to be a member of the EU Select Committee of the House during the transition period, when we heard direct from people living and working in Northern Ireland about the concerns which the amendments in this group address.

I want to speak particularly to Amendment 175ZA. The points raised in it apply more widely than to the Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland border. I certainly do not want to suggest that there is greater concern about criminals in the Republic than at other borders. I am not quite sure why these proposals come to be in the same group but I understand why there is a concern to get through the remaining amendments. The point is relevant to the border and there is a practical problem, as the noble Viscount just said.

My noble friend Lord Paddick is concerned about checks on the criminal record of an individual, now that we are no longer a member of the EU or have access to SIS II or ECRIS. We have to fall back on the Interpol database, which requires specific uploading of information and is not integrated with our police national computer or with member states’ national systems.

The report of the EU Security and Justice sub-committee on post-Brexit arrangements in that area is due to be debated on 25 February. I know that the Minister will deal with the points in the report then. I was going to say that I was sorry to see she does not get that Friday off, but it is never off for a Minister, is it? The points in it are relevant to Northern Ireland.

My noble friend Lord Oates has Amendment 180, which is not in this group, on physical proof of status. This amendment relates to the points that I know he will make and asks the very pertinent question: what happens when the digital system malfunctions? I am normally a glass-half-full person but that is pertinent to everyone, especially at this land border.

I noted, and think it deserves to be mentioned here, that the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House has reported in the following terms:

“The House may question why the detail of the Electronic Travel Authorisation scheme introduced under clause 71 is not set out in the Bill.”


It is because the scheme has not been worked up—at any rate not to completion, as I understand it. The report continues:

“If it is appropriate to make such provision in immigration rules, the House may expect it to be subject to a form of affirmative procedure, at least for the establishment of the scheme.”


The committee is saying much more delicately what I said the other day: we should not be expected to deal with criminal offences, as it was that day, arising from the scheme when we do not know what the scheme is. That also applies here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that intervention. I am going to come on to a number of those points subsequently. In terms of cost, I am told it will be competitive with international norms. I have just referred to the ESTA programme in the States. I looked that up this morning in anticipation of this, and it is currently $14, so it is not overwhelming. In terms of the enforcement, which I think is at the heart of the matter, I will come to that in a second if I may.

There will be no controls whatever on the Northern Ireland land border. Individuals will be able to continue to pass through border control at first point of entry to the common travel area. As is currently the case, individuals arriving in the UK, including those crossing the land border into Northern Ireland, will need to continue to enter in line with the UK’s immigration framework. Obviously, that includes the ETA.

Many noble Lords, including the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, have asked about the impact on tourism. The Government acknowledge that a clear communication strategy is obviously going to be key to tackling any misunderstanding about the requirements to travel to Northern Ireland. We are planning to work across government, utilising internal and external stakeholders and a variety of communication channels to ensure that the ETA requirement is communicated very clearly.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

Can I just make one point? Northern Ireland is the size of Yorkshire. What the Minister is really stating is that somebody who goes on holiday to Yorkshire must not go to a neighbouring county for any reason without complying with this regulation. I am terribly sorry, but this is complete and utter rubbish. It is nonsensical and it is not going to work. What do people do if they go touring in Yorkshire? They tour outside it. If tourists go to Ireland, why should they not simply tour Ireland? No amount of communication will do—I am very sorry—and there is nobody to police it. What the Government are talking about is simply unworkable and disastrous.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank the noble Viscount—sort of. There will be no hard border. As I said, there is not going to be a hard border in Northern Ireland, and within the CTA there is effectively no change.

In answer to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, about enforcement, which was brought up subsequently as well, I have said it three or four times now: there will be no routine border controls on journeys from within the common travel area, which goes some way to answering the Yorkshire example. There will be none at all on the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. Everyone entering the UK, regardless of where they enter from—again, as I have said—is required to meet the UK’s immigration framework. In answer to “What’s the point of having it, then?”, anyone entering the UK without an ETA, or any form of immigration permission where required, will be entering illegally and may be subject to enforcement if encountered during intelligence-led operational activity.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Lords Hansard - part two & Committee stage
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 265. I am very sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is not able to be in the Chamber.

Many years ago, when I was a magistrate and at the same time chair of my police authority, I wondered how we could bring in the concept of restorative justice. It was not an option for us then as it did not appear in our guidelines—that might have changed, I do not know. It was apparent, though, that repetitive cautions given to young offenders simply were not working. Something needed to change.

I became interested in restorative justice because of a remarkable chief constable, Sir Charles Pollard, who was then chief constable of Thames Valley Police. He had been advocating restorative justice for some time. He was extremely well supported by the chair of the police authority, Mrs Daphne Priestley. I thought it was a very interesting and potentially life-changing intervention for some young offenders, and so it has proved to be.

Restorative justice aims to foster individual responsibility by requiring offenders to acknowledge the consequences of their actions, be accountable for them and make reparation to the victims and the community. Initially for use with young offenders committing minor crimes, it quickly caught the imagination of communities, which liked the idea of a victim being able to confront their offender, who was made to realise the impact of their criminal behaviour. It is done with seasoned practitioners who have a wealth of experience in this discipline, as it needs to be a formal procedure. They have to ask the right questions in the right way for there to be a successful outcome, which would be when the offender realises the harm she or he has done and makes some sort of reparation to the victim. Meeting face to face, where both sides agree to that, can be a formative solution to an otherwise potentially serious punishment, even jail.

In London trials, 65% of victims of serious crime said that they would be happy to meet their offenders and talk about how that had affected them. The impact of this intervention has far-reaching benefits for everyone involved. Over the years, the success of the restorative justice model has worked alongside police forces, local authorities, the Prison Service, courts and schools. It has helped reduce permanent exclusions in schools, and in a sample case in Lincolnshire, in the first year of using this system the restorative service, as it is called there, worked on 53 cases. This was extended subsequently to 135 cases and became an integral part of the Behaviour Outreach Support Service there—BOSS—in which restorative justice sits with its partners.

Restorative Solutions, established by Sir Charles Pollard and Nigel Whiskin in 2004, is a not-for-profit community interest company that I think the Government need to contact for help with understanding just how important restorative justice can be to the benefit of victims of crime, and its potential to reduce criminal behaviour. It needs properly financing, of course, and to date that has not happened, so if the Government are really intent on reducing crime and helping victims, as they say they are, I suggest that this is absolutely the right solution for them to promote.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I apologise for not speaking on the subject earlier. The Bill is far too complicated for me as a whole. I saw this in the paperwork today and, surprisingly, I am here so I thought that I ought to say something.

I was on the first Northern Ireland Policing Board. One of the subjects that came up to us was restorative justice as it was being practised in Northern Ireland. The origins of it are very important. In our case, it came under the two communities and terrorism. Post the peace process and ceasefire, these local communities were trying to police themselves—partly because they rejected the police completely. Yes, they dealt out punishment beatings, kneecappings and far worse, but what was interesting was that, although the communities might not have liked the punishments, they began to see a reduction in bad behaviour on the streets.

When it came in front of the policing board, we looked at other countries. The fact that it came out of terrorism in Northern Ireland is not an indication that it would be no good or would not fulfil its true potential in England, because we looked at Australia, Canada, New Zealand and America, where it had been really very successful.

There was then the idea of how to get this to be more in line with justice, because, naturally, the Department of Justice and—I am not accusing them of this—judges, and to a certain extent senior policemen, were reluctant to see anything that was outside their immediate world taking over something of it. We went down the line of bringing it into being an official practice, and that took quite a lot of nerve.

But it is extraordinary, if you actually go and visit, to see what is going on. The most important thing is that restorative justice is victim based, not perpetrator based—that it is not a soft touch for the perpetrator. I will not speak for long on this, because I have not even prepared. But it is not just a way of solving things; it does a lot more. The victims are incredibly satisfied with restorative justice. A survey produced when they were doing a seminar on the EU day of the victim in February 2019 said that 85% of victims were satisfied with the outcome, and 69% of perpetrators did not continue. The bonus for society is multifaceted: fewer people get convictions for what may, at times, be on-the-spot bad behaviour or, as we have seen, 69% of them do not misbehave again, so they have a clearer record for future employment. It keeps them out of short periods of detention. It was used originally for youths, and we do not have enough well-supervised room for youths in detention. So restorative justice helps the victims, helps the perpetrators remarkably, and is very good for society.

In the 2016-17 Session, the House of Commons Justice Committee came out with its report on restorative justice and supported it. The committee particularly supported looking at Northern Ireland. It is really nice when we can say that you should look at something positive from us in Northern Ireland—however, do look somewhere else.

While we have been in this Committee, because I was panic-struck about having anything to say, I googled “restorative justice”. We hardly need this debate. There is not a bad word about it, and there are so many pages I gave up after two or three and wrote down a couple of notes on it. But this is something that successive Governments—including Labour when they were in power—have not given true support to.

What about our prison population? What about sending people into detention, the “college of crime”, when restorative justice has the potential to be such a success? As I said, I think this debate is unnecessary. Every single person in your Lordships’ House and everybody outside can google it and have a look. If the justice side, judges and some senior policemen are still slightly careful about it because it seems to be out of their hands, they may need a bit of persuading.

But funding is an issue, and I have just heard—because I have not looked at it—that the funding was reduced. This is madness. We know that budgets are a problem, especially after everything we have been through. They are a problem for the police, for social events such as this and for justice. But this is madness. This is cutting off a not very great budget which would be saving us. The figure is that every £1 spent has saved £8. I do not think that is very well substantiated, but there is a big payback, and the young people of this country—and we are moving on to adults in Northern Ireland—earn the support for a system that is socially good and good for our population.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with everything that has been said. One of the most obvious applications for restorative justice would be in the aftermath of a road traffic accident. I touched on this during our debates on road traffic offences. The difficulty is that, in motor vehicle insurance, the contract prohibits the parties from discussing the accident at all, making it impossible to use restorative justice for road traffic offences related to accidents. Can my noble friend the Minister consider this and write to me on the point? I do not expect a reply right now.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB)]

Restorative justice is a very wide issue, and one should not think that because it does not work for road traffic accidents it does not work. Furthermore, it is done only with the agreement of the parties involved.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, we welcome this amendment and the opportunity to discuss restorative justice. We are very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, for relaying the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who has a long-held commitment to restorative justice that is well known.

We fully support the amendment and are concerned that the Government should take in how important restorative justice is felt to be in this House. This debate has given us the opportunity to make that clear. We were privileged to have the explanation of the reasons for restorative justice and the comprehensive account of its birth and development from my noble friend Lady Harris, who set out, from her experience of police work and as a magistrate, how restorative justice has developed and its value.

The amendment is important because we—some of us, anyway—have concerns that, although there is this commitment around the House, there may be a danger of progress stalling. That is why it is so important that there should be a call for the preparation of an action plan, that it should be laid before Parliament and that there should be a report on the progress on restorative justice.

Members of the House will have been interested to hear the account of the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, on how restorative justice developed in Northern Ireland from a state of great hostility, where real potential enemies were confronting each other, and how restorative justice became reflective of community justice as perpetrators and victims came into contact. He made the point that this was very much not a soft option but was victim based, and that analysis from the circumstances in Northern Ireland was, I felt, reflected by the analysis of my noble friend Lord Paddick, who gave the history of restorative justice in London and dealt with the achievement of victim satisfaction and, interestingly, a greater feeling of safety on the part of victims. He also talked of the benefit for perpetrators in the contact between the victim and the perpetrator; that was a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who was one of the signatories to the amendment.

I will be very interested—we will be very interested—to hear the Government’s response, which we hope will give us an indication that the Government take restorative justice as seriously as the speakers this evening do and that their commitment to it will be increasing and continuing.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Report stage & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on tabling the amendment. I am deeply sad that it needed to be tabled. It is staggering that the Government could even try to legislate in such broad terms to permit people to commit murder or any sort of outrage without limits and with blanket legal immunity. I would have used the word “inconceivable”, but obviously at some point somebody has conceived that this would be all right. I very much dispute that.

The Government’s response is also that some sort of ethereal legal soup will magically prevent these powers being used for murder, rape or torture. That just is not good enough. This question has to be put beyond any doubt.

The amendment also covers the issue of obstructing or perverting the course of justice. The people who use the powers in the Bill are the very people entrusted by society to uphold the law and fight for justice. The fact that the Bill even puts into any question that they might obstruct or pervert the course of justice is frankly embarrassing.

I mentioned earlier public incredulity, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, put it, from anyone not involved in day-to-day policing, because when they are told of this practice of advanced immunity, they are frankly horrified. When I was buying a coffee today in my local grocers, I explained this part of the Bill to Maxfield, who was making my coffee. He was shocked and said, “It’s a licence for crime.” It is a licence to kill. It is a licence to commit endless perversions of the law. The rule of law demands that we pass the amendment and insist on it at ping-pong.

[Viscount Brookeborough (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I had not intended to intervene—[Inaudible]—discussed in the context of CHIS operating in non-terrorist criminal organisations and rather less of those in terrorist groups. Because the Bill covers both at once, I feel there is a danger—[Inaudible]—extent that it might seriously inhibit the latter, which is the fight against terrorism. I therefore cannot fully support the amendment as a whole, but I would support proposed new subsection (c) on sexual offences on its own if I could do so.

The major difference between non-terrorist crime and terrorism is that the former—[Inaudible]—of death. Terrorism always has death and destruction as its aim. I know little about the former apart from what I have read in the press and heard in the very excellent debates on the Bill. However, I have some knowledge of—[Inaudible]—we remember the serious nature of the criminality that terrorist groups seek to carry out. The intelligence that CHIS gather prevents large numbers of deaths and serious harm to the public.

There have been, I believe, some misconceptions in these debates about the terrorist world. There has been mention of informer—[Inaudible.] All agents are informers, but not all informers are agents. The single-use informer is a person who is short term only and would probably be paid off or given another life after the operation, such as the dismantling of a drug-dealing gang. This is because he will have been exposed by the arrest—[Inaudible]—operator in a large organisation that provides ongoing information that can go on for years or even decades. The noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggested that a CHIS operating under one of these authorisations is called a participating informer. Perhaps that was so in the areas of his experience, but it was not so in mine, when—[Inaudible]—these types of agents, strategic agents in a terrorist group or short-term criminal informers.

In Committee, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, said:

“Let us suppose that in becoming a member of a terrorist organisation, a CHIS is required to fill out a membership form … The handlers may therefore assist”—[Official Report, 24/11/20; col. 151.]


in filling the form out. I hesitate to disagree with such an eminent noble and learned Lord, and while I do not doubt that this might be the case for other groups, I am not aware of any terrorist organisation that produces a membership application—although the IRA had a green book that was given to people once they were inducted.

[Inaudible]—in Northern Ireland for 23 years of the Troubles. More recently, I am well aware of the agent-handling protocols from the Troubles era and that they have been adapted and improved for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. For centuries, perhaps for all time, there have been spies and intelligence gatherers at state level, where it is basically strategic intelligence within a pyramid of government structure. This is, if you like, the Le Carré world. Spies rarely have to commit crimes, such as planning and carrying out a bombing—[Inaudible]—in the last 60 years is worldwide terrorism and the need to have long-term deep plants or active terrorists who have been turned.

[Inaudible]—that states have. Terrorist organisations are very flat in structure and every person from the top to the bottom is—[Inaudible]—for want of a better word. They are active terrorists. It is also important to realise that it is very difficult to—[Inaudible.] In 40 years of the Troubles, there were only, I believe—[Inaudible]—figures of such people. We saw what happened when Robert Nairac thought he could become a member of a family. As a result, most CHIS are turned terrorists or at the very least members of the same communities. They will have committed and will almost certainly continue to commit crime—[Inaudible]—a big part of the induction process in the first place. There are no convenient forms to sign, and any reluctance to take part, from initiation onwards, is suicidal.

Imposing these legal limits, as laid down in the amendment, could put CHIS in the terrorist world at substantial risk. After being inducted into a terrorist organisation, every part of that individual’s life from then on contributes, one way or another, to the terrorist aims, death and destruction—criminality of the highest order. Becoming a CHIS cannot change that much. However, the outcomes of their provision of intelligence saved many lives.

I shall give a true example of a small event. An agent turned up at a meeting of his IRA ASU—active service unit—in the county where I live. He was told to deliver a car bomb immediately. He could not refuse. He delivered the car and, luckily, the TPU—the timer power unit—gave him time to call his handler from a call box before the bomb was to blow up, thereby avoiding loss of life. If I may say so, that is not the most extreme case.

Of course it is right that CHIS activity should be regulated and the Bill does just that. There are protections in place such as the Human Rights Act. However, there may be times when participation in serious crime is necessary and at short notice. Any refusal to be involved would result in the loss of an agent, and no further information from that source. It may have taken years for him to become so deeply involved. This is real life in that terrifying world. The running of the protection of such people is vital and complex. There has to be a way in which to manage them. Inserting increasingly tight legal limits on what they can and cannot do is not the way forward, as those limits may be largely unenforceable in those circumstances.

I will not go into examples of the protection. However, there is an analogy which shows the value of sources. The Enigma was a provider of intelligence, albeit a machine, rather than a person. When the code was broken, the first signal referred to an immediate attack on a convoy by U-boats. It struck me that that was a similar situation to those of some agents. Turing’s colleagues said quickly, “We must warn the convoy.” He said, “No. We cannot risk such a valuable source for the future, or that will be the end of it.” That is one of the problems for the CHIS.

Terrorism is—[Inaudible]—operations alone. The use of many long-term, deep-intelligence CHIS creates a cancer within the terrorist organisations that does so much damage to them that, although they do not admit defeat, they begin to realise that they cannot win. That turning point is sought after by Governments worldwide, and very much due to CHIS.

In the months prior to the ceasefire in Northern Ireland, over 90% of planned terrorist operations failed or did not take place, largely as a result of long-term deep CHIS. I and my family were among the beneficiaries of such intelligence. I believe that this and some of the other amendments will inhibit the fight against the worldwide terrorist threat.

[Lord Paddick (LD) [V]]

My Lords, we support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen. I have added my name to it.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, seems to have blown the Government’s reliance on the European Convention on Human Rights out of the water. Even if he was wrong, which I very much doubt, I fail to understand the difference between a list of offences that can be deduced from the convention and an offence listed in the Bill. The Government’s argument seems to be solely based on the danger of the CHIS being tested by asking them to perform prohibited acts. Yet as the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Cormack, have said—the amendment being based on the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act 1985—the Canadians seem to have had no such qualms or difficulties.

In any event, is the cat not out of the bag already? Do criminals read Hansard? That is about as likely as they are to read primary legislation, in my experience. We have the list of prohibited offences published as a proposed amendment. The Minister is saying that those offences would be prohibited anyway under the ECHR, so what is to be lost? I understand the reservations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, about the wording of the amendment, but if the Government do not give an undertaking to bring this matter back at Third Reading, it can be approved on ping-pong, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

I was wondering whether one was allowed to take part in the debate if one was not a former chief constable or Home Secretary, but I have decided to take the risk, having listened rather carefully.

I only want to add a few sentences. I thought that the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, was one of the most persuasive that I have ever heard—that is, until I heard the speech of my noble friend Lord Howard of Lympne about overlapping bodies. That brings me to the same position as the noble Lord, Lord Condon, who has just spoken, with his distinguished and long experience. We certainly do not want two boards or panels with overlapping responsibilities treading on each other’s feet—that was my noble friend’s point. Equally, we do not want a police commissioner who is a lonely figure with massive responsibilities and nobody to turn to.

It seems that the answer to this is not to set up a non-executive board but to look at the panel, as has just been suggested, and make sure that its powers, responsibilities or however they are defined reflect the need for the commissioner to be able to turn to people for advice, support and sometimes comfort—or, indeed, unwelcome advice—in the way that has been reflected in this debate. I hope that may be of some help to my noble friends on the Front Bench, as the view of one modest Back-Bencher who has listened to the debate.

[Viscount Brookeborough]

My Lords, I support the amendment, or at least the basis of it. My experience is from the Northern Ireland Policing Board—which is, incidentally, perhaps the last such board, but also the one which has been modernised most recently, and in difficult circumstances. It was required to cover all the aspects that we are talking about in that it had to be workable.

As for having non-executive directors or the equivalent, this is not just about the commissioner’s power or about bringing in the expertise; quite frankly, it is about the impossibility of the commissioner carrying out all the functions that he will have to carry out. The functions of the police panels are laid out quite clearly. The Bill says that they are to monitor and keep up to date with the commissioner. It does not say anything about their powers to call police and other people. In fact, Clause 30(2) says:

“Nothing in subsection (1) requires a member of the police and crime commissioner’s staff to give any evidence, or produce any document, which discloses advice given to the commissioner by that person”.

The commissioner is the one who has the power to call the police to give evidence on what is happening, and to scrutinise everything that goes on in the police force.

Although I hesitate to do so, I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howard. The problem is that the powers do not overlap. It appears that the panel has no right to go into the police to find out the details; that power rests entirely with the commissioner. The problem is that no individual—commissioner or otherwise—can possibly go into all the issues such as finance, staff, equality, property and everything else. To correct that in the Northern Ireland Policing Board, we had somebody in the property market as well as an accountant and somebody in HR. I do not believe that anyone here could give us an example of an individual who could do the work that we had to do to monitor the police. There is no such individual.

So I would ask the Minister: who in the police and crime commissioner’s office will do that? The answer is that it will be done by paid staff. The police and crime commissioner’s staff will produce an opinion to one person without that being questioned by any expertise or any experience on that side at all because, as I understand the provision that I have just read out, the panel will have absolutely no right under the Bill even to hear that advice.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton]

My Lords, does the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, recognise the contribution to that political neutrality—and to the confidence expressed by the public in many parts of the country—of the noble Lord, Lord Howard? In the 1980s he was part of a Government who sought to deal with the issue and with these concerns. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Imbert, will seek to prevail on the noble Lord, Lord Howard, to take an evolutionary approach to his many previous successes.

[Viscount Brookeborough]

My Lords, I support the amendments, which take us in the right direction. I do not mind whether the commissioner, or the head of a commission or a panel, is elected or otherwise: coming from Northern Ireland, I have no right to that view. However, from my experience with the police there, it is clear that an individual cannot do the job without the backing of a committee, panel or commission, which must supply him with the means of interrogating the police and different departments in order to get the story out. One individual cannot do this: we have committees with numbers of people on them because one gets a variation of views and questions. Otherwise, there would be no point in having this Chamber; we might as well have just one person. Therefore, he must be attached to a panel, a commission or a committee of some kind.

Taking that into account, as far as I can see, the panel, as it stands at the moment, only makes recommendations or questions the commissioner, who is not policeman, and is expected to get satisfaction from that. This is Chinese whispers by the time you get to the end of the road. The panel has an obligation to have public meetings so that the public can put their views forward. We have already been into that. It may be that a single panel for a single police area is not local enough or accessible enough, which is a different matter, but I question whether the public are going to continue to turn up to a panel where the police are not present to ask a panel to ask a commissioner, a chairman or however you put it to ask the police a way down the road.

If we are talking about democracy or, indeed, connectivity, which is what it is all about, the Government’s current system does not suffice. Unless they are able to amend their plans to ensure that the lowest denominator —the man in the street—feels that he has some method of influencing his destiny as far as crime and policing in his area goes, they are not going to work. This idea of having different people at different levels without the panel actually having the police there to talk to will not work. If you look at public meetings held by hospitals and other organisations, if people do not think they are getting anywhere, they will not turn up, and you will have lost the vital part of policing in this country.

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I have not spoken on this Bill before and I rise now with some diffidence because I feel somewhat estranged from the debate. What people really care about is what happens to them, not just perceptions. I will be slightly frivolous about internal combustion engines. I live very near the A1 in the north-east of England and I have had several internal combustion engines taken out of my garden. The security measures that I now take are much more comprehensive than they were in my youth. For example, we used to leave the keys in our cars, if I remember rightly.

At certain times of night in the north-east—the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, knows more about this than me—there are parts of Newcastle where the anti-social behaviour is pretty compelling. As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, knows, my son-in-law tries to assist the police in dealing with some of this behaviour. I think there are places in south-west Durham where the police do not go. I shall not quote the names of the ex-mining areas into which they do not go at certain times of the day and possibly hardly ever.

In the context of what is happening in the country, we need to think very seriously about the purpose of this Bill. It is to try to establish arrangements, which I think would meet with total agreement on all sides of this House, for the reduction of crime and anti-social behaviour. I hope that in all this discussion, conversation and exchange about form, we do not lose our sense of purpose.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough]

My Lords, I support the amendment and will make two brief points. The first concerns democratic accountability and community involvement with the police; and the other concerns whether a single commissioner can do the job. On accountability and community involvement, at the moment we are looking to a senior tier to link the police and the people. However, that accountability relies on their being connected at the very lowest level of the community. The panel we have for such a large area, dealing with more than 1 million people in many cases, simply cannot connect. Under the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, the Government and the then Opposition enforced on us much more democratic accountability down the line than we ever wanted. That is why it worked. The point was that there is a level below the panel which we are discussing. We should not expect people, in open meetings with the panel, to travel 60 or 70 miles to say that their gated community is not working or that crime on the street last night is not happening. That will not happen.

There has to be some other form of panel at the divisional level of policing involving the local community. It is no good calling for it to be entirely elected. That may be democratic, but as far as I am aware, elections never favour minorities. Therefore, you have to appoint people who come forward from the minorities. That includes the obvious minorities, but it also includes those with disabilities and those from disadvantaged areas. We must encourage participation. Democratic accountability and involvement is one thing, but when you get to a certain level, you have to ensure something else. Noble Lords may remember that we had reverse discrimination, if you like, with the 50:50 in the police force. What happened? It worked.

Secondly, regardless of the sort of person who will be elected to be a police and crime commissioner, if he is utterly brilliant, middle of the road, not political and can keep all other things out of his mind, he may be a good person for that; but he will be out of this world if he can do the job. He is holding to account a police force with many different departments. There is not just the chief constable. The chief constable has his finance department, his estates department, his operational department and his crime department. Those are all run by different people in his organisation. How can one person possibly bring forward those people in succession to monitor them and hold them to account?

In our policing board, which was the same as a policing authority, we had committees which mirrored the departments within the police force. That is the only way that you can hold a department to account. In your Lordships' House, we have an EU Committee. The chairman of the committee is chairman of several sub-committees. If we had no sub-committees, he would be a very hard-worked man and could not mirror all the committees on Europe. He could not do the job. If we elect the chairman of the police panel, and he is able to use the police panel to carry out the functions, that is a different matter, but from our experience in Northern Ireland, it would be impossible for an individual to do that.

[Baroness Randerson]

This amendment is a useful opportunity to draw your Lordships’ attention to something of a constitutional stand-off between the Government and the Welsh Assembly Government. This is an entirely different point from those that have been raised this afternoon. The problem exists because the Welsh Assembly declined to support a legislative consent motion, which was required to allow Parliament to legislate on behalf of the Assembly on a devolved issue. The Bill involves a devolved issue in an aspect which I shall explain in a moment. The issue in question is the establishment and make-up of the police and crime panels in Wales. Because those panels will involve elected councillors, the Bill will intrude on devolved powers. I urge a breathing space for the UK Government to discuss fully and constructively with the newly formed Welsh Assembly Government—so new it was formed only this afternoon—to find a satisfactory compromise on how the panels will be constituted in Wales.

As your Lordships will be aware, there has been something of a hiatus in government in Wales lately because of the Welsh general election, which was held last week. It would not have been reasonable to expect either the Government or the Welsh Assembly Government to have made progress on the issue since the vote in the Welsh Assembly at the very end of the previous Assembly in March. There has been no opportunity to make progress; but it is important that progress is made now.

It is important that your Lordships note that the Welsh Assembly has never before rejected a legislative consent motion. It is not its practice to do so, so that needs to be taken seriously—all the more so because the Home Secretary had agreed to a small role for the Welsh Assembly Government in the appointment of a panel member nominated by the Welsh Assembly Government. That was a compromise negotiated between the two Governments but rejected by the Assembly in a vote.

In response to that, the UK Government appear to have decided that the Home Secretary is to be responsible for bringing together locally elected representatives, but I believe that it is against the spirit of devolution to ignore the Welsh Assembly Government in the panel appointment process. So much of what the police do in Wales involves close joint working with local authorities. That joint working involves significant funding directly from the Welsh Assembly Government and the devolved budget. I give some examples: community safety, highways and transport, youth services, and substance misuse policy. All those and many more are devolved policy areas and the policy is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government. There is therefore a direct impact on policing from Welsh Assembly funding. It is important that that is respected. I give your Lordships another example, a stunning example of success in South Wales: the 101 non-emergency number, jointly funded and jointly operated by local authorities and the Home Office. The two work together in the same building; they funded it together. It is important that that success is built on.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Brookeborough]

My Lords, please forgive me, someone from Northern Ireland, for joining a Second Reading debate on a Bill that is primarily about English and Welsh policing. I declare an interest as I was a member of the security forces in the Province for many years and worked closely supporting the police, planning and patrolling with them frequently—almost daily, sometimes—on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government. I was also a member of the first Northern Ireland Policing Board, formed in response to the Patten report produced by the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes. That Policing Board was in fact an enhanced model of an English police authority. I hope that that experience justifies my giving an opinion in this case.

I come from an area that, sadly, through necessity, had the most politicised policing in Europe. Remember that those opposing the Government shot and blew up the police, the supporting security forces and many others as well. The Patten report and the consequential Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 set in place mechanisms to depoliticise the police and to make the force more acceptable and responsive to community opinions. We now even have the ex-terrorists in government, encouraging their community to join the police. Sadly, I realise that a small number of their erstwhile colleagues are still killing and maiming, which, of course, we all condemn.

Why on earth is the coalition moving towards greater politicisation, rather than away from it? The Minister said that the Bill would transfer power to communities and professionals. For the life of me, I do not see communities involved, except through local politicians. I cannot even see the professionals whom she talks about—professionals of what? They all look like politicians to me, except for two token independents appointed to the panels. For all the reasons given more eloquently by others, I am very much against the establishment of this elected police and crime commissioner working in isolation. I cannot see how an individual can do the work of an authority on his or her own. Who will do the committee work—the staff? It is not what they are there for. Will he or she have a deputy? If there is no deputy, how on earth is this going to run, not only if that person is away, but if they fall ill? The Minister said that the PCCs would be cost-neutral. Maybe, but the PCPs can only have teeth, which she insisted they would have, if they are provided with structure and substantial funding—in effect, mirroring the PCC’s office. This, of course, is unnecessary.

Although our governance of policing in the Province is by no means perfect, some of what we do is perhaps relevant. We have come from a long way behind, but now we are well ahead of these retrograde steps proposed in the Bill. Northern Ireland is the size of Yorkshire and our Assembly is equivalent to the Yorkshire council, to put it into perspective. Our Policing Board is the equivalent of a combination of the proposed PCC and PCP, with, if you like, the PCC becoming our chairman.

However, although we have Assembly Members equivalent to councillors in England and Wales on our board, we also have independent members who most importantly outnumber the political members. Collectively, they elect the chairman; it does not take much guessing to see that they will not elect a political one. We then also have another body even closer to the communities: district policing partnerships, which consist of councillors in our case, although in England and Wales it might be parish council members—again, critically, with a larger number of independents than elected representatives.

The independents on both these bodies are appointed to provide community balance. The Secretary of State appoints independents to the board, while the committee of the board appoints those on the district policing partnerships. I was on the first panel for appointing independents to DPPs. In carrying out this task, we had to take some of the following criteria, laid down in legislation, into consideration to provide balance: religion, gender, age, geographic location of people’s homes, the less able-bodied and the disadvantaged. We also had to include those who were victims. In her most moving maiden speech, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, brought up this requirement and the option of having victims represented and involved. Whether that will come about, we wait to see. We have already got this in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the lesson is that, rather than going far away to the US, where there is a totally different scale and a totally different society, and where a lot of what goes on is quite questionable—the Policing Board made a lot of visits there—we should try looking closer to home, taking examples that are built on our own culture.

In respect of what I have said, in this Bill the coalition is tackling the issues from the top down when it should be tackling them from the bottom up from the community. The declared aim is to provide accountability and connection with the communities. Policing is about policing communities, especially the minorities, and protecting them. Where in the Bill is the inclusion of ethnic minorities, equal gender representation, the aged, the less able-bodied, the disadvantaged and the victims, among others? They simply do not appear. I just do not see that the Bill solves the problems; in my view, it will make them worse.

There is a myth that you often hear that more policemen on the street will not solve our problems. In Northern Ireland during the Troubles, we had what amounted to saturation policing, with the support of the military. As opposed to what we have now in my area, where there are 14 policemen, there were up to 650 security force people—it was saturation. What we called ODC—ordinary decent crime—was at a very low level because of the presence on the street. I accept that we cannot afford to do that here, but it is not true that police on the beat do not inhibit crime. They do, and we must find a way of getting them out of the stations and on to the beat.

Northern Ireland: Police Evidence

Viscount Brookeborough Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The noble and learned Baroness has raised an aspect of which I was not aware, but I shall take it back to see whether it is possible to reduce the formula. I imagine that this would probably be an EU-wide issue, but we would certainly want to do so.

[Viscount Brookeborough]

My Lords, does the Minister understand that many of us find her answers slightly confusing in that, on the one hand, she said that there are no statistics while, on the other hand, official letters are going backwards and forwards? Will she agree to ask for statistics to be made up from those records now? When she says that the response has been good, by whose judgment is it good? It is quite clear that a lot of people are not satisfied.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I did not quite say that there are no statistics. I was asked about present performance and I said that my answer was based on a very small set of statistics. I can give some figures: 17 requests have been received in total this year from the Republic of Ireland, of which six concern Northern Ireland. That is against a background of 1,585 letters of request overall. We are dealing with low numbers, which is why averaging statistics is fairly misleading. My other point was that, in relation to outgoing requests from Northern Ireland, the Northern Irish authorities do not collect those statistics, so I am not able to give that figure.