Police Service of Northern Ireland: Security and Data Protection Breach

Lord Reid of Cardowan Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his questions, as always. He will be aware that the Policing Board itself has asked the Department of Justice to undertake an inquiry into its activities; we should await the outcome of that. On funding, I reiterate that funding is primarily a matter for the devolved Administration out of the £1.2 billion that has been allocated to the Department of Justice. We will obviously have to look again at the various reports and investigations, and the conclusions that they come to.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)]

My Lords, given the problems raised by my noble friend Lord Murphy, it is doubly unfortunate that Northern Ireland is now left without a chief constable. Can the Minister say something about the timeline for the appointment of any new chief constable, since that will obviously affect the questions raised about the occurrences we have been faced with? Secondly, can he say whether that will be exclusively a matter for the Policing Board, or will it be in any way affected by the absence of an Executive and a Justice Minister?

[Lord Caine (Con)]

I am grateful to the former Secretary of State for his questions. He will understand that the timeline is entirely a matter for the Policing Board, which appoints the chief constable. I am sure that it will wish to seek a resolution for this issue very quickly. It is important that the PSNI has strong leadership restored as quickly as possible, but that is entirely a matter for the Policing Board. It is within its power to appoint an interim chief constable while the formal recruitment process is ongoing, but that is its own issue. On the lack of a Justice Minister, in the unfortunate circumstance that the appointment be made before the Executive is re-established, we would have to take powers for His Majesty’s Government to ratify any appointment that would normally be ratified by the Justice Minister. That happened back in 2019, when the outgoing chief constable was appointed and there was no Executive and Assembly functioning.