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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it gives me enormous pleasure to congratulate on behalf of the whole House the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, on her first speech in your Lordships’ House. She has shown us the incredible depth and breadth of her knowledge and experience, especially in the field of human rights and ethics and in her moving reminders to us of the tragic past in Northern Ireland, especially of those who have lost their lives and those who have disappeared. Educated as a lawyer at King’s College here in London, the noble Baroness became a solicitor of the Supreme Court, a law lecturer, senior lecturer and honorary doctor of laws and visiting professor at the School of Law at the University of Ulster, during which time my noble friend Lord Smith of Clifton was vice-chancellor. She was also the Jean Monnet chair of European law from 1992 until 1999. In between her academic career and her more political career in Northern Ireland, she raised a family of five sons and lived in Kenya for a number of years. In 2008, she was made a dame. However, I first met the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, in her extraordinary work within policing. She brings to this House a deep knowledge of the effects of a divided community, where she bravely maintained the independence of the office of Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland for seven years. This vast experience she puts to good use in other troubled parts of the world where she advises on conflict resolution. She was made UN special envoy on women and peacekeeping earlier this year. I know that your Lordships will join me in saying how much we have appreciated her first speech and look forward to her future contributions in the House. I shall focus my remarks today on policing and Northern Ireland. I should first declare an interest in that I was chair of a police authority for a number of years and I am currently a vice-president of the Association of Police Authorities. What has struck me during the past 10 years of dealing with Bills in which policing and police authorities have featured—I think that it is well over 20—is how little advice and help the Home Office has accepted when faced with amendments to improve those Bills. This advice, so freely given, has been offered from a platform of specific, practical knowledge and application, but much of it has been ignored. I can only hope that a future Government might be more amenable to listening a little more carefully and taking a little more notice when amendments designed to improve legislation are proffered. Now we are to have yet another Bill that involves some aspect of policing. The Crime and Security Bill will deal with a wide-ranging list of proposals, as we have already heard. The part of the Bill in which I will have a specific interest are the proposals to change how the police report stop and search. The detail we have yet to examine, but any legislation that attempts to water down the requirement to monitor ethnicity will be vigorously opposed by these Benches. The research report Just Justice, published by the Children’s Society in 2006, found that one of the most persistent criticisms of the police relates to the way in which they exercise their powers in relation to stopping and searching young black people in the street. We are told that police community support officers are a crucial part of policing. Reading this month’s edition of Police, the magazine of the Police Federation, I came across an interesting article by Professor Martin Innes, director at the Universities’ Police Science Institute. The original concept of PCSOs was that they should become the eyes and ears of policing to reassure, and be visible in, communities. Under this Government, that concept has crept inexorably into areas meant primarily for warranted officers, who have not felt as warm and cuddly towards PCSOs as might have been expected. The article states that, ""too often PCSOs have been cast as surrogate cops and deployed into situations that really warrant the presence of a police constable. These are problems that have been compounded by the lack of guidance provided in terms of how to engage with communities effectively in order to diagnose what their key drivers of concern are … At the Universities’ Police Science Institute we have been working for several years on refining a systematic community engagement methodology that enables police to obtain a strategic and tactical intelligence picture of what really matters across different neighbourhoods and communities in terms of shaping levels of security and confidence in the police"." One of the "transformational results" has happened in Merthyr Tydfil, where we are told that, ""residents were telling PCSOs the names of Class A drug dealers and their dealing habits, because they were being interviewed properly about their concerns. The South Wales approach is effectively establishing a much clearer distinction and division of labour between the roles of PCSOs and constables. Rather than seeing PCSOs as ‘policing-lite’, and expecting them to be ""omnicompetent, they are being re-defined as a resource specialising in community engagement and support. Thus freeing up other officers to perform their tasks"." I hope that this challenge will be addressed by all forces. I turn to Northern Ireland. It is difficult to see how and when a devolved police service will become a reality. There is an interim agreement—we have heard that there is—so why cannot all parties go the whole way and agree to devolution of policing now? After the terrible events over the weekend, it is now even more imperative that this takes place. Too much of the legacy of the past continues in Northern Ireland. Racist attitudes, sectarianism and ingrained segregation all still need to be addressed before the shared future can be realised, as the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, has just reminded us. Everyone in Northern Ireland has a responsibility to make that future a reality, starting with the politicians, who together could work towards that goal. Policing in Northern Ireland is a very difficult and dangerous job. It has always been so. There was a general feeling, before the events of this weekend, that all was well in Northern Ireland. We now know that it is not. On reading the 22nd report from the Independent Monitoring Commission, we learn that the overall level of dissident activity is now much higher than the commission has seen since it first met in 2003. Its concern is that these groups have demonstrated an ability to plan and organise on a much higher level now and that they pose a major challenge to the police and other agencies on both sides of the border. Two groups in particular, RIRA and CIRA—the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA—are still recruiting, not only inexperienced young males, but in some instances former republican terrorists. Their targets tend to be members of the security forces, including members of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and their families, and their aim is to intimidate and control communities. There are, of course, a number of other, perhaps less well known groups also involved in serious organised crime. They are a very real threat to a stabilised and peaceful Northern Ireland and it is to be hoped that the money promised to the PSNI on the devolution of policing to Stormont will be sufficient for it to fulfil its role of protecting the whole of society in Northern Ireland. Loyalist groups likewise remain mired in serious organised crime. However, some arms decommissioning has taken place, which is to be greatly welcomed and encouraged. The deadline for decommissioning is February 2010. There is still much to do to achieve this timescale. Some groups, notably the UVF and the RHC—the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Red Hand Commando—have decommissioned a substantial quantity of firearms, ammunition and explosives. The report praises in particular the leadership of the UVF for moving the organisation away from paramilitary activity. However, it warns that there are still individual members who clearly pay no attention to their leaders and go on to commit the sort of brutal acts that we had hoped never to hear of again. In a small part of this country, it is unacceptable to have three paramilitary murders in the six months of the report’s review. It is unacceptable that the numbers of casualties, republican shootings and loyalist assaults were the highest for six years and four years respectively. I urge your Lordships to read the report. We have come a long way in Northern Ireland in recent years and it is unthinkable that it might return to the tragedy of the past. However, it will require clear political will, leadership and courage to take the steps necessary for all politicians to show the way to that shared future that Northern Ireland so desperately needs.