Justice and Northern Ireland

I thank my right hon. Friend for that comment, and he is right. The working group's representatives are meeting the draftsmen several times each week in various formats to deal with those technical issues, which is why we are not yet in a position to publish the final work. We anticipate that that will happen at the end of this month. Reference has been made to the retention by Parliament of the power to provide for what is called 50:50 recruitment to the PSNI. As the Secretary of State will know, my party has consistently opposed that measure, because we believe that state discrimination is wrong in any circumstance. Although we share the Government's objective to increase the level of representation within the PSNI of the Roman Catholic side of the community, we believe that the provision is a very blunt instrument. It leaves a lot of young people who would otherwise qualify to become police officers, and who pass all the tests and enter the merit pool, unable to do so simply because of the church they attend on a Sunday. We certainly cannot agree to that.