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

My Lords, Patten identified the problem of Catholic non-membership of the Royal Ulster Constabulary as one which required to be addressed. I do not think that any of your Lordships, or any of the people to whom I have spoken in Northern Ireland about this issue, underestimate the sensitivity of what was undoubtedly a necessary recommendation. I have worked with police officers for many years. I taught them, including chief officers, for 20 years. I served as a custody visitor to Northern Ireland’s police stations for seven years. I served on the Northern Ireland police authority and I served as Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, is quite right. Policing can operate only with the consent of those who are policed. That consent was not there for many years. The reality, however, was not simply that the IRA prevented Catholics from joining the RUC. Patten identified that significant change was required to facilitate and encourage this "ownership" of policing across Northern Ireland. The 50:50 recruitment model which Patten identified was supposed to ensure that the proportion of Catholic officers would quadruple within 10 years, and that has not happened. Patten recommended that the provision should stay in place for 10 years. He did not recommend any more. Changing the situation required action by the people and the police. It also required action by the Government in the form of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. Brave things were done on all fronts, and we have heard the current figures of Catholic recruitment. But that figure of 27 per cent masks the fact that some 80 per cent of all officers above the rank of constable are still Protestant. It will be a long time before incremental change means that we have a rather more balanced police force at all ranks. However, it was noted in the 19th report of the Oversight Commissioner that all recruits are now considered fully capable and qualified to perform the duties of a police officer. As we have heard and as we remember, on this day last year Constable Stephen Carroll was shot dead. Last month, a brave young police officer, Constable Peadar Heffron, was critically injured by a bomb. I pay tribute to Peadar Heffron because he took a public role as a GAA captain and, particularly, in the Irish language efforts which were being made by the police and by the Northern Ireland Policing Board. He must have known that that made him particularly vulnerable. He is a brave man. This was but the last of many attacks on young Catholic officers, and the Chief Constable has said that the dissidents are trying to kill another officer. The Catholic community—the whole community—will well understand the impact that the killing of a Catholic officer will have on future recruitment. However, there are brave men and women in the Catholic community, too, and they have moved to join the police force, but it is still the case that officers have to move because of threats; and it is still the case that those Catholic officers who are now able to live, very often, in the areas from which they came—which would not traditionally have been places where Catholic officers would have been safe—are vulnerable in such areas. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, referred to the fact that the number of Catholic officers leaving is still disproportionately high. I hesitate to correct the noble Lord, but I am not sure that as many are leaving as are joining. However, the police must find out the reasons for these departures by means of exit interviews and so on. The picture is not as good in police support staff as it is in police officer competitions. The number of Catholics employed as police support staff was 12 per cent at the time of Patten; it is now 17.65 per cent, still far too low. Part of the reason for this is that the 50:50 rules apply only to competitions where there are six or more vacancies to be filled at or about the same time. I endorse the call for the retention of the 50:50 rule for another year to enable the achievement of the critical mass of 30 per cent to which Patten referred. It would still leave Catholic representation in the PSNI well below the level of Catholic representation in the community, but it will facilitate the maintenance of the critical cultural change which has enabled so many of our people to give their support to policing and to the constitutional process.