Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 (Renewal of Temporary Provisions) Order 2007

That is a minor number compared to the thousands. The noble Lord homes in on discrimination for that number. I freely admit that that is the inevitable consequence of demand for places being so high. You cannot alter the figures. I cannot manufacture extra police posts when they are not available. There are 440—220 for each competition. Each place has 10 times the number of applicants. It is inevitable that qualified people will be discriminated against because they have got through to the pool, and the operation is trying to get a police service that is broadly representative—I do not think anybody is looking for the last decimal point—of the society it serves. The totality of our estimate within the 50:50 provisions means that less than 1.7 per cent of all non-Catholic applications will have been rejected as a direct result of the 50:50 process. The others will have been rejected because the demand for jobs is so great and the supply of jobs is so small. So we are talking about a very small number who are affected by 50:50 compared to the vast thousands of qualified Protestants and qualified Catholics who cannot get a job because the jobs are not there. Let us make a mountain out of this if we like, but let us be realistic about it: tens of thousands will not have got in from both communities and it is nothing to do with 50:50. That is the reality. A few qualified people will not have got in because of 50:50, and the 50:50 is the mechanism to achieve the policy objective of getting a police service that is broadly representative of the society it serves. That is not under the lateral arrangements. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, asked about ethnic minority applications. Those are broadly in line with the population. The ethnic minority population in Northern Ireland is less than 1 per cent. When you are dealing with tiny numbers it can be difficult to get any targets. There have been, as I have said, positive decisions to translate advertisements. I made the point that some applicants for the Northern Ireland Police Service did not live in Northern Ireland—35 Latvians applied; eight of whom were not living in Northern Ireland, but in Latvia, and half the Poles were still living in Poland. The point I wanted to make is that not all ethnic minority applicants are automatically classified as non-Catholics. That will come down to the monitoring forms they are required to fill in. We are committed to achieving the 30 per cent. We broadly think that that can be achieved, although the estimate is that it will be achieved by 2011. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, asked specifically about the Patten targets and what was in the memorandum. I am genuinely trying to answer the detailed questions. I fully accept that the matter is not that precise, but there is no play on figures. In recommending the recruitment of Protestants and Catholics on an equal basis as an exceptional measure to try to provide a more representative police service, the Patten report made proposals on compositional targets to be achieved within a reasonable time frame. With the help of consultants the report recommended the proposed 50:50 ratio. The proportion of Catholic officers could quadruple within 10 years to a figure of 29 per cent to 33 per cent. That was the estimate that was given at the time. As for the 30 per cent figure, I do not know who signed up to what at St Andrews but the matter was raised and the figure of 30 per cent by 2011 was set. That is the Government’s target. We have put it on record that when that target is achieved—and we expect to achieve it by March 2011—these temporary measures will no longer be required and will lapse. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, asked a question on devolution, which I have not yet answered but am determined to do so. I have a form of words for this as I must get it right. If these temporary provisions are still in force at the time policing is devolved—as everybody knows, we are not talking about next Monday—it is the Government’s view that responsibilities for the 50:50 policy, which are currently exercised by the Secretary of State, will transfer to the Northern Ireland Minister with responsibility for policing should the Assembly’s vote requesting devolution of policing specifically include a request for these temporary provisions. Putting that the other way round, it will be up to the Assembly to seek to continue this. If it puts it in the request for devolution, it would go to the Northern Ireland Minister with responsibility for policing. That is the position. I do not know whether that response answers the question of the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, but I am not sure that it fully satisfies him.