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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

My Lords, the Bill reminds me of the aftermath of a children’s party, when one casually sweeps up the crumbs that litter the floor, because that is what we have been asked to deal with today. The Bill is a mishmash of trivia, with a few potential gems hidden or, more likely, lost among the dross. I have little doubt that I will be told that here is a scarce commodity—primary legislation for Northern Ireland. I must pre-empt that justification with a question: why, for example, can I not expect the same when the educational future of our children for the next 40 years is to be jeopardised by some sort of government ideology that is rejected by 90 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population? While this Government struggle to amend the damage they have done to education in England and Wales, they prepare to impose the same flawed system on Northern Ireland without any recognition that we comprise a mainly rural community that is to have a mainly urban experiment imposed on us. I raise this issue on the basis that, increasingly, Northern Ireland is governed in a manner that piles chaos on pandemonium, where there is a lack of planning for change and where, therefore, change becomes demolition rather than construction. On 5 July 2004, I asked the Government,"““whether, in pursuance of the objectives of the Costello report on post-primary education in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Office has now undertaken and completed an infrastructural audit of current educational facilities outside the Greater Belfast area; if so, what that audit has indicated are (a) the estimated average hours per week that pupils and teachers will spend travelling between schools; and (b) the estimated costs per annum of providing transport and supervisory support during the first 10 years of education; and when any such audit will be made public””.—[Official Report, 30/6/05; col. WA 44-5.]" I was told that there has been no such audit. I asked a similar question on 30 June 2005 and I was given the same answer. Would any business restructure itself without planning? The education of our children must surely be someone’s business. I got around to begging in November 2005 when I asked the Government,"““whether they will reconsider their decision not to cost the objectives contained in the Costello report on post-primary education in Northern Ireland””," only to be told:"““The arrangements necessary to ensure that all pupils have access to the range of academic and vocational courses under the new curricular entitlement framework will be developed locally by schools and colleges working together. It is not possible to assess the associated costs at this stage, but the position will be kept under review as new arrangements are developed””.—[Official Report, 30/11/05; col. WA 45.]" No one has given me any information about a bottomless purse that precludes planning. I suggest that no planning means bad government, and that bad government means an irresponsible society. It is not often one has the opportunity to speak across such a miscellaneous range of subjects, so I intend to make the most of it. It really does not matter what is in this Bill—we will deal with that in Committee. But what else is left out? Let me move to restorative justice. There has naturally been a tendency for the voids left by terrorism to be filled by criminality, and hence it is important that the Government plan for any restorative justice programme that may emerge. Part 4 of the Bill would have presented an ideal opportunity. I recall the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, of Lisnagarvey—whom I too welcome to the House tonight—discussing with Superintendent Stephen White of the RUC and a bevy of bureaucrats a programme for restorative justice that they had worked on for literally months. That was around the time of the 1998 Belfast agreement. Yet I recently became aware of programmes that excluded the police, so on 9 March 2006 I asked the Government:"““Whether they have made an assessment of whether restorative justice schemes are operating outside the scope of police supervision and participation in republican areas of Belfast””." I asked exactly the same question about loyalist areas of Belfast. Finally, I asked:"““Whether they have made an assessment of how many restorative justice schemes in Northern Ireland (a) have full police participation, and (b) are known to operate as community schemes that preclude police participation””." The Government responded that they had,"““set out the standards and safeguards that should be observed in the draft guidelines that were published for consultation on 5 December. These guidelines make clear that schemes—which are currently privately funded and unregulated—should have an acceptable and appropriate relationship with the criminal justice system including the police””." What about all the work done in the late 1990s? I set about searching for those guidelines, but the Northern Ireland Office does not have them, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland tells me that it has searched 100,000 documents without success. Is anyone interested in what has happened, unregulated for the intervening eight or nine years? It has not been good. Again, I asked the Government:"““Whether it is illegal to impose a restorative justice scheme which precludes police participation; and, if so, what is the penalty for such an offence””." The answer was that,"““As with all criminal offences or potential criminal offences, it would be for the PSNI, the Public Prosecution Service and the courts, fulfilling their proper statutory roles, to determine whether any aspect of the operation of a community-based restorative justice scheme is in breach of the law””." Is that not careless? Apart from that, it is a prime example of passing the buck. Do we sack the Chief Constable, the Director of Public Prosecutions or some senior civil servant when not only do we not have proper legislation, but we cannot even find the study and recommendations that were laboriously produced almost eight years ago? Yet planning began only in December 2005, presumably because I raised the issue. It gets worse. I asked:"““What are the lines of accountability in respect of restorative justice schemes in Northern Ireland; and whether, in the event that a case proves unsuitable for resolution by this means, any court referral is subsequently precluded””." You would think that might have evoked an answer, but the answer that came was:"““Community-based restorative justice schemes are currently privately funded, voluntary organisations operating in an unregulated fashion. In future the Government would like to see all such schemes working within the mainstream criminal justice system. To this end, the Government are seeking to ensure that the proper standards and safeguards are observed, and published draft guidelines for consultation on 5 December””.—[Official Report, 9/3/06; col. WA 168.]" These guidelines make it clear that the Public Prosecution Service is the only body with responsibility for deciding how offences should be dealt with in accordance with the test for prosecution. Why is that legislation not here today? Why is it not included in the Bill? It is the same with the way in which our children with autistic spectrum disorder have been neglected, although I am happy to report one potentially good-news story. Following a meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and subsequently with Secretary of State Hain, I have found a new willingness to help progress the good work of Autism Northern Ireland which it has been doing for 16 frustrating years. I am a vice-president of Autism Northern Ireland and I am grateful. At this stage, many of us regret the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, is no longer an integral part of the Northern Ireland Office and is not with us to the extent he has been in the past. I thank him for the contribution he has made. However, I caution the Government that a clever answer is not always a good answer. They announced that multidisciplinary teams are in place to tackle the huge backlog on assessments of children suspected of being on the autistic spectrum—that is some 668 youngsters who have been waiting for anything up to 35 months—but they are still unable to predict when the backlog will be reduced. That smacks of bureaucratic evasion rather than ministerial control and planning. I will continue to probe this issue in detail, and by now I hope that my questions belie my appearance. I am not some redundant sheepdog, I am still a terrier. Indeed, I have observed that when the Government are unable to justify an issue in Northern Ireland, they hide. I cannot imagine the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, hiding, but I fear that his civil servants try to lead him and his colleagues into the impenetrable bush, as they have done with questions I have posed about the operation of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, another subject not mentioned tonight. Initially I got answers regarding the Police Ombudsman, but when these proved to be too revealing in respect of accountability and real effectiveness, I was told I had to write to the ombudsman as the Government have no rights in that domain. That just cannot be true. Do we really condone anarchy in any form? Do we condone it when we know that the police are currently investigating the possible ““tweaking”” of evidence by members of the Police Ombudsman’s office? I will not go into details, although I could, but I have sat in court and seen police officers who have had to wait for up to four years for justice. That is exploitation, not justice. A recent Parliamentary Answer shows that the last three extended jury trials brought under the aegis of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland all ended in not guilty verdicts. Does anyone think that I will get the answer I am entitled to under a system where I have to write to the Police Ombudsman’s office, or is the most persecuted element within our society to be our police officers? What motivates the Government to allow this to happen? We all want to see a devolved government in Northern Ireland, but will a Bill of this multi-faceted nature cure a single one of the ills from which we currently suffer, or will it put to right a single injustice? Add to that the Order in Council approach to the most fundamental elements of our society functions and ask whether it is a fair and reasonable basis on which I and others like me are to be asked to recover from 35 years of perversity, corruption and violence. I conclude with one statistic to underline how the Government perform in respect of health. Over the past year to March, the total number of inpatients and day cases waiting has decreased by almost 6,000 from 47,300 to 41,495. Is that success? The number of people waiting for a first outpatient appointment has increased by almost 14,000 to over 181,000, and all this in a community of 1.7 million. Planning, what planning? Who decided that this should be the way forward? Could it possibly have been planned like that, and if so by whom—Minister or administrator? This mishmash may do little harm and we will deal with it in Committee, but nothing will motivate Ulstermen and women to overcome their ingrained suspicions of each other and take on the responsibility of devolution if all their sense of what is right has been devalued, their dreams of normality dismantled, and their confidence in democracy destroyed. On such an ill-planned foundation nothing enduring can be built. Progress is not based on a wish list, but may be achieved by better planning than is currently evident.