Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 (Renewal of Temporary Provisions) Order 2010

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her statement today and I should like to be identified with her remarks about the gallant members of both the RUC and the PSNI and the brave young policeman who died one year ago tonight. I have debated this issue in this House on quite a number of occasions and I think that my views are well known. I am totally opposed to this concept of discrimination. To me, this is about whether you believe in discrimination; it is about whether you believe in the idea of human rights being available to groups collectively or to people individually. I go down the individual line. The order is interesting for me and perhaps for the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, as we are both former Members of the Northern Ireland Parliament—the House of Commons there. We could never have passed any piece of legislation so clearly sectarian as this order tonight. Under the Government of Ireland Act, anything that we did that was in any way sectarian was immediately null and void. In fact, the Government of Ireland Act had to be repealed in 2000 to allow this piece of legislation, and others offering discrimination, to go through. If only Members of this House realised the amount of hurt and discontent there is among the unionist and other communities in Northern Ireland about this form of discrimination. The noble Baroness, Lady Harris, made the point that the ratio is 50 per cent Protestant and 50 per cent Catholic, but then she went on to say it is 50 per cent Catholic and 50 per cent others, which is a significant difference. It is not 50 per cent Protestant: it is 50 per cent others. I would like to see and to live in a diverse, cosmopolitan-style Northern Ireland. I revel in all our new people who came from all around the world in a similar way to which my people came to the island of Ireland 400 years ago this year. I have no problem with a diverse police force and no problem with a diverse population and I would like to see the police reflect the diversity of the community. It is interesting to note that there has been no 50:50 quota or any form of discrimination for female police officers, whose numbers have moved up from 13 per cent to 24 per cent. However, there has had to be discrimination for the Catholic section of the community. Does this imply that the females are cleverer than the Catholics? I am not sure exactly what it means, but it is simply unfair. Why could not the same type of procedure to encourage more females to enter the police force be applied to the Catholic community? I want to see more Roman Catholic members of the police force. A lot of my close friends are of that denomination and are members of the force. They do an extremely good job. I just do not want to see them at the cost of people from another community feeling deeply hurt that they and their sons or their daughters are unable to get into the force because of what they see as discrimination. I am talking about highly qualified members of the public and highly qualified officers from other police forces on the mainland. I identify myself with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, when he referred, I think, to the threats and attitude of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland during the debate that took place in Stormont earlier this afternoon. I want to see the devolution of policing and justice to the Stormont Assembly, but not now. It is hard to find anybody in Northern Ireland who, when you ask them how their lives have been changed through the existence over the past three years of the Northern Ireland Executive, can think of anything. The Northern Ireland Executive have not exactly been a success; they are rather dysfunctional. Therefore, it is extremely worrying that we are now in the process of devolving security and justice, one of the major aspects of government in Northern Ireland, to a dysfunctional Assembly. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, when he implied that the Secretary of State had attempted to bully members of the community in Northern Ireland into supporting police and justice coming to Northern Ireland. If anybody knows the character of the people of Northern Ireland—and the Secretary of State should—they would know that the last thing that we are going to do is give way to threats, bullying or bribery. In fact, I would suggest that no one from any part of this House would be prepared to do that. I am also a bit disturbed to hear that the new chief constable is reported to have said today that he hoped that the vote at Stormont would be in favour of the devolution of policing and justice. The chief constable must keep out of politics. If he made those remarks, it was ill advised and I would like the Government to draw that to his attention. I and other members of my party do not support the order and we have aired our case a number of times. Obviously it is going to go through, but we hope that this is the last occasion on which we have to stand up and make these points.