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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

This has been a bizarre afternoon. On the previous set of amendments, SDLP Members defended the notion of a Minister for policing and justice who would not give a pledge to support the police. Now the same party is defending overt discrimination against those who apply to join the police. Once again, we have heard the same threadbare arguments. We have been told that 50:50 recruitment is necessary because of the discrimination of the past, despite the fact that there was never a religious bar on people joining the RUC. Indeed, a percentage of places was held over for members of the Catholic community to join the RUC. I understand why many people did not join the RUC. In the 1970s, I served as a part-time RUC member, and I used to walk the streets with two Catholic RUC members. The family of one of them totally supported his position and his wish to be a policeman, while the other had not seen his family since joining the police—he could not go back, and he told me that he would not go back.