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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

That is true: my father served in the RUC as a district inspector. He died before I was a year old, so I have no memory of him, but many people have told me that he was a very good officer. However, I also know that he was that very rare thing in the 1950s and early 1960s—a Catholic police officer at a senior level. Indeed, it was because he was a Catholic, like his predecessor, that he became the district inspector in Armagh. Even then, a person’s religion affected their suitability to hold that post. I am not sure whether that helps the hon. Gentleman to make his point, or not. The RUC’s unrepresentative nature meant that it was badly perceived in the Catholic community and that, as a result, it was badly equipped because it was not as accepted and accessible as an effective police service needs to be. Nor was it in any way as considerate or sensitive to the needs and interests of the Catholic community as it should have been. If we want evidence, we need only look to the report of Sir John Stevens, who investigated allegations of a shoot-to-kill policy, poor use of intelligence and refusal to pass on intelligence to enable proper police intervention. His report says that this grossly unrepresentative police force failed to warn nationalists of threats to their lives. He wrote:"““A further aspect of my enquiry was how the RUC dealt with threat intelligence. This included examination and analysis of RUC records to determine whether both sides of the community were dealt with in equal measure. They were not . . . Nationalists were known to be targeted but were not properly warned or protected.””" The report also refers to collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, including the involvement of state agents in murder. Nationalists bore the brunt of that unequal, awful policy. To create confidence in the new beginning to policing, we have to take steps to ensure that nationalists have no cause to say, ““Nothing has changed: this is still the same nefarious, one-sided police service that it always was.”” One dimension of that—