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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

The fact is that everyone who is recruited to the Police Service of Northern Ireland is suitably qualified, because all candidates have to be suitably qualified. Hon. Members need to remember that the 50:50 recruitment policy was introduced in the context of the Patten report and a commission that looked into the question of how to create a new beginning for policing in Northern Ireland. Among other things, the commission might have had to consider the total disbandment of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as a way of creating the new beginning so that we started recruiting with a blank page. The decision was made that it would be wrong to move to the point of disbandment and to appoint and recruit afresh, even though some people argued for that. A decision was made to retain a large number of officers in an unrepresentative force. That is the first decision that we need to remember. If we were going to argue for open recruitment and fairness and that everything should be done on merit, we could have said, ““Everyone out, it is now open recruitment; it is now open sky.”” For a variety of reasons, clearly that was not favoured. So 50:50 recruitment and the creation of turnover by offering severance packages to serving officers alongside the retention of thousands of serving officers who were overwhelmingly Protestant was a compromise package. Hon. Members should remember that under Patten, after 10 years, we do not have Catholics over-represented in the Police Service of Northern Ireland; we will still have Catholics under-represented at 30 per cent. So people need to get some sense of perspective on the real import of 50:50 recruitment.