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Policing and Criminal Justice (Northern Ireland)

It is difficult to answer the hon. Gentleman's question without second-guessing what Lord Eames and Mr. Bradley will say, but he does us a service in highlighting the sensitivity of the language in these cases. I anticipate that from Eames and Bradley we will get not answers to questions such as that, but perhaps a process that allows those in Northern Ireland who are most closely involved to arrive at answers for themselves. One remarkable feature of Northern Ireland politics, which I see as an interested outsider, is that it is easy for us sitting here to come up with answers. As the hon. Member for South Staffordshire said, there is not the same immediacy of impact in what we see. It is pointless for us to bring up answers, because the problem is not ours; the problem is for people in Northern Ireland. If we go too far towards producing answers, whatever they are, we encourage a process that prevents people in Northern Ireland from taking responsibility for their destiny. Let me return to the somewhat piecemeal nature of the process to date. All those actions have been constructive in their own right, but they have also involved their own difficulties. One of the most pressing, which the report highlights, is the financial cost involved and the resourcing implications that that has had for the organisations at the forefront of investigating the past. It is no doubt reassuring to the families involved that the Chief Constable is committed to keeping the Historical Enquiries Team project going for as long as it is needed, but it is worrying that the demands of running that project might compromise the ability of the PSNI to fulfil its primary role of policing the present. The Chief Constable accepts that if no additional funding were to be made available for the HET, it would have an impact on the resources available for current policing activities. The report quotes him as saying that"““the reality of course, is if there is no more additional money, that, like everything else will be drawn out of my current budget””." It is clear from the report that that experience is shared by the police ombudsman. The ombudsman has seen a significant increase in the number of historical complaints made to his office since the HET began operations in 2006. He has had difficulties in securing sufficient additional funding to resource the additional work, and some staff have been reassigned from current investigations to assist with historical work. The report states:"““The pressure on the Office is compounded by the limited availability of skilled, experienced and appropriate staff, to manage, lead and undertake such investigations… The complexity of the cases and the gravity of the issues immediately necessitate significant managerial involvement.””" People always talk about normalisation in dealing with Northern Ireland. The role of the police ombudsman ought to be to deal with policing issues arising from current policing. In fact, it is pretty clear that for as long as the service remains bogged down with the inquiries of the past, it will not be in a position to say that it is dealing with a normalised situation. It is in the interests of the efficient and effective working of the ombudsman service itself that it should be allowed to devote its resources to dealing with the primary purpose for which it was set up by the House. I shall make one observation on the question of the finances, because this will be crucial. The debate is timely for many reasons, not least because we are, we hope, fairly soon to embark on a process of devolving criminal justice and policing to the Northern Ireland Assembly. I hope that the preparatory discussions relating to that will involve the cost of what we are discussing. I hope, too, that there will be an understanding in the Treasury that significant financial legacies related to policing requirements are involved here, not least in respect of the payment of pensions to those who were part of policing in Northern Ireland through the troubled years when we needed much greater policing activity. That cost cannot be avoided; we cannot walk away from it now. I fear that if the Treasury regards the devolution of policing and criminal justice as an opportunity for cost cutting, we could do profound damage to the significant progress that we have made so far in Northern Ireland. The cost, of course, is not just financial; there is a human cost as well. The disclosure of intelligence information to inquiries clearly presents challenges to the police and other organisations that are required to provide sensitive information, but which also have an obligation under article 2 of the European convention on human rights to protect the life of covert intelligence sources. I am mindful of the work of the Privy Council review of intercept evidence and the ongoing work of the Chilcot review on how to take forward the recommendations in the report. That is obviously a complicated area of work, but there are a number of pressing cases that the work of the review could help to resolve, and not just in Northern Ireland—those cases are pressing. It would be helpful if the Minister said today how that work is progressing. There are clear and significant financial cost implications from the piecemeal approach of dealing with the past through selective inquiries. Once established, inquiries become a law unto themselves, with no accountability in respect of costs or assessment of value for money. It is bewildering to me, as it is to other hon. Members, that the Bloody Sunday inquiry has still not reported almost 11 years on from its creation. I shall say no more on that issue, but having embarked on the process and having devoted such resources to it, we should recognise that there will be plenty of time to pass judgment on its worth once we have seen the fruit of its labours. I am more than happy to say that we need to learn from the experience of that inquiry, but we cannot form a judgment until we know exactly what we are going to get for the money that we have spent on it. Fundamentally, there are trade-offs to be made in any society on how scarce resources should be allocated. Major opportunity costs will arise as a result of the course on which Northern Ireland has been set. The mounting cost of inquiries could go a long way to addressing other long-standing social, economic and environmental costs—and indeed policing costs. Looming on the horizon is a tightening by the UK Treasury of Northern Ireland's policing and security budget. Any new Minister for Justice in the Northern Ireland Assembly will have a difficult task in reconciling those issues unless the Government make a financial settlement at the point of devolution of policing and justice powers. The sobering financial realities should embolden society across the political spectrum to give serious consideration to the forthcoming recommendations of the Consultative Group on the Past, and to aim for a cost-effective and all-embracing means to address the legacy of violence and division in a manner consistent with a shared future. I apologise, Mr. Bercow, for perhaps having laboured the financial aspects of the process. It will be apparent to those who read the Committee's report and the Government's response to it that this is a complex area—one that requires a great deal of sensitivity to enable us to dance around many of the human considerations involved. Those considerations must be uppermost in our approach. For that reason, the report and the Government response are much to be welcomed as part of a process. Liberal Democrat Members look forward to seeing the next stage of that process, which we believe to be the Eames-Bradley report.