Northern Ireland Act 1998 (Devolution of Policing and Justice Functions) Order 2012

Lord Browne of Belmont Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, I apologise as I have to be brief due to other commitments this afternoon. I want to refer to some of the comments made by the noble Lords, Lord McAvoy, Lord Alderdice and Lord Empey. This order of course has my personal support and, as a former Minister of Home Affairs dealing with the police in the middle of the last century, it is clearly of great interest to me. However, I am not going to talk about the past, I am going to talk about one or two present-day problems in Northern Ireland.

First, I note my entry in the register of interests, as I am going to talk about the media. The noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, mentioned contentious parades, and the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice and Lord Empey, emphasised what a great improvement there has been in Northern Ireland in that context. Incidentally, is it not a sign of the improvement in circumstances in Northern Ireland that 100 members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland incorporating the former Royal Ulster Constabulary, are coming to rescue London from its problems next week? That represents a change in what is happening within the United Kingdom.

One of the things that worried me during the past week, watching the media here in Great Britain, especially Sky and the BBC, was that they concentrated on one parade only, near the Ardoyne. There were hundreds of parades last week in Northern Ireland, all of which were peaceful and orderly—but not one reference was made to that by the media here in Great Britain. Worse still, they misrepresented what did happen. They reported—not simply alleged—that an Orange parade went through the Ardoyne. It did not go through the Ardoyne, it went down the main road past the Ardoyne. To walk through the Ardoyne would have been absolutely criminal, and madness. They do not get the terminology correct and give the impression of provocation. There was no riot immediately after that Orange walk—it was after a parade by supporters of the Real IRA, who went down that road a few hours later. Once again, the media did not make that clear here in London and there were terribly misleading reports.

The second point—bringing us right up to date as we are talking about the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland and the devolution of powers from here to Stormont—regards a report recently in the Tyrone Constitution. It is a paper with which I am personally connected but I had no involvement in the report. It was a local report of an Omagh District Council meeting. Councillors from all parties, Sinn Fein, Ulster Unionists and the DUP, were reported as complaining about departments of government—I think the Department of Justice was mentioned—discriminating against the people outside greater Belfast. This is something now taking place under the terms of consultation. Who are these government departments, including the Department of Justice, consulting with and who are they offering jobs to? They are restricting the advertising of jobs and consultation documents to press within the greater Belfast area and no longer using the media outside Belfast. The result is that there is now a bias in favour of the people living within the greater Belfast area. As one who lives west of the Bann myself, I am getting complaints now from people—and the report in the Tyrone Constitution is typical of what I am hearing— that people in Londonderry, Tyrone and Fermanagh and Counties Down, Armagh and Antrim are no longer getting the same opportunities as people in the greater Belfast area.

To be personal and specific about one newspaper, the Belfast Telegraph, 55% of its readers now are restricted to the greater Belfast area. There are only about 700 copies of the Belfast Telegraph sold in each of the main towns in Northern Ireland, yet the weekly papers there, many of which are owned by companies with no connection to me, sell 10,000-12,000 copies. However, the Department of Justice advertises in the Belfast Telegraph restricting most of the readers to the greater Belfast area, thereby ignoring the people in the other parts of Northern Ireland. I want to place that on the record today because, as we consider devolving more powers to departments in Belfast, they must treat all sections of the community in Northern Ireland fairly and not continue this discrimination against people living outside greater Belfast.

[Lord Browne of Belmont]

My Lords, I was a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2010 when policing and justice were successfully devolved. It was a very difficult time but I am pleased to say that since then the Justice Committee has performed its task well. I think it has enabled both sides of the community to take responsibility for policing. I know that we all wish to move forward to a shared future. However, it is not without difficulty. Respect, as we have heard, for different traditions and cultures does not come easily and does not necessarily appear overnight. It will be a long-term learning process. We all face challenges in Northern Ireland but I am confident that issues such as parading, as we have heard, will be resolved and I know that there is a lot of work in the background going on that will help to do that. When these issues are resolved, I am confident that the Northern Ireland Executive can concentrate on the issues that are important to the people such as housing, education and the state of the economy.

Finally, we owe a great deal of gratitude to the Police Service of Northern Ireland which has played a very constructive role in this process, but it still, as we have heard, has a very difficult task in ensuring that the law is enforced fairly and that those who resort to violence are brought to justice.