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.