Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Laird, for bringing this Northern Ireland Bill to your Lordships’ House. It is an excellent sign of the times that a member of the Unionist Party has thought to bring a Private Member’s Bill concerning Northern Ireland to your Lordships’ House. We have some sympathy for the case made by the noble Lord. From the outset, we have had difficulty with the 50:50 recruitment provisions contained in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. They are deliberately and clearly discriminatory—a point that has been made by everyone who has spoken today. They have caused considerable anger among the broader unionist community—a point that politicians today tend to overlook, but which is making life increasingly difficult for unionist politicians in reaching any form of agreement with republicans. Let me be clear on one thing. We wholeheartedly share the objective of increasing the proportion of police officers who are Roman Catholic, but we absolutely reject any inference that the former Royal Ulster Constabulary was in any way anti-Catholic.  Many Roman Catholic officers served in the RUC with great bravery and distinction. We all know that the greatest impediment to recruitment of Catholic officers was intimidation or the threat of intimidation by republican paramilitaries—in particular, the IRA. Even today, the IRA refuses to allow its followers to accept the judicial processes of the United Kingdom, and if it can prevent them joining the PSNI, it does so. That is something that the Patten report of 2000 unaccountably played down when discussing the so-called turn-off factors against Roman Catholics joining the police. Although that threat has diminished, it has regrettably not totally gone away. Dissident republicans have continued day by day to target Roman Catholic recruits and members of the district policing partnerships. The mainstream republican movement, as I have said, still refuses to endorse the police and the criminal justice system. I have no doubt that the 50:50 provisions have helped to achieve a significant increase in the number of Catholics in the PSNI from about 8 per cent in 2001 to almost 20 per cent today. Incidentally, however, we might shortly reach the same proportion of Roman Catholics in the PSNI that made up the ranks of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the early 1920s. I have no doubt that the proportion will increase further if the laws continue to be in force, but the question has never been about end—rather, it has been about the means and whether there is not a better way to achieve this objective. The noble Lord, Lord Laird, pointed to a number of the problems with the current 50:50 system, in particular the resentment in the Protestant community. It is discriminatory, and it has led to many perfectly well qualified Protestants having their applications to join the police turned down in favour of less well qualified Roman Catholics. I have had a good deal of anecdotal evidence of this myself in Northern Ireland, and I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us whether there are official figures for the number of Protestants disadvantaged by the system in this way. The Opposition also find it unforgivable that people pass all the tests and reach the pool of qualified applicants, only to fall foul of the 50:50 quota system and—this is my point—then having to go all the way back to square one should they wish to continue with their ambition to serve in the police. Surely, as we have argued before, there should be some kind of reserve list for those who are suitably qualified but have missed out on final selection because of the 50:50 rule. Could the Minister give us one good reason why these people could not simply be fast-tracked back into the pool? As a matter of interest, how much is all this extra work and bureaucracy costing? Then there is the crudity, which noble Lords and the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, have already referred to this afternoon, of dividing applicants into Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic. As a result, Taoists, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims and many members of other religions—Northern Ireland, as the Minister well knows, has a growing Asian community—are placed at a serious disadvantage. Surely this is plainly absurd. At the time of the 2000 Act, we supported amendments that would have placed on the chief constable a statutory duty to promote measures designed to achieve a police service that was more representative of the society from which it is drawn and which it serves. We continue to believe that this is a fairer way of increasing Catholic representation in the PSNI. The 50:50 provisions have been in place for some years now. They are described in Part 6 of the 2000 Act as temporary provisions. Those familiar with Northern Ireland will know that things that are described in such a way almost always become part of the furniture and assume an air of permanence. I would therefore be grateful to know for how long the Minister expects these wholly exceptional and unpalatable measures to be in force. Is it the Government’s intention to renew them for another three years once the current provisions lapse? Is it not time to begin to consider another way of achieving the wholly laudable aim of increasing the numbers of Roman Catholics in the PSNI, and having a little original thinking from the Government? I finish by returning to the point about intimidation that I touched on earlier. No one doubts that much has changed in policing in Northern Ireland in the past six years. Yet there is unfinished business. In our view, policing is central to any agreement that restores the devolved institutions to Stormont. Put bluntly, there can be no place in government for those who do not just refuse to take up their seats on the Policing Board or the DPPs, but refuse point blank to support the police force and judicial processes. We need to see an ideological shift from Sinn Fein, so that it recommends policing as a worthwhile career for people who live in what would be seen as mainly republican communities. Ultimately, that would surely be the best way of guaranteeing Roman Catholic, republican, nationalist or a wide range of minority participation in the police, rather than the blatantly discriminatory and heavy-handed measures that we are discussing today.