Patterns of Policing and Policing Patten
By Paddy Hillyard & Mike Tomlinson
By this stage it is hard to envisage any circumstances in which a Police Board initiated inquiry would ever be held or completed. But if the unimaginable happened, it would be up to the person conducting the inquiry to decide if it should be held in public or not.(72) The new Police Board will not be able to tackle 'unfinished business' from the past.(73) Section 56(9) states: 'an inquiry under this section may not deal with acts or omissions which occurred, or are alleged to have occurred, before the coming into force of this section'. Amnesty International has been highly critical on this point.(74)
This is an extremely significant clause. There are many outstanding controversies over police actions from the last thirty years, including state killings, undercover surveillance operations, allegations of RUV/loyalist (and British Army/loyalist) collusion, and the political cover-up of specific events and operations.(75) The Police Bill makes it clear that these issues will not be processed through the new structures and raises a question mark over the role of the Ombudsman. Section 61 states that:
The Chief Constable and the Board shall supply the Ombudsman with such information and documents as the Ombudsman may reasonably (our emphasis) require for the purposes of, or in connection with, the exercise of any of his functions.
But given that the 1998 Act defines the Ombudsman's role in terms of 1998 as year zero, it seems improbable that the intent of section 61 is to facilitate access. Nevertheless, the powers of the Ombudsman as defined in the Bill represent the only significant mechanism for drawing to the attention of the Chief Constable and/or the Board 'any matters concerning the practices and policies of the police force'.(76) There is no obligation to make such Ombudsman's reports available to the public, however.
Another significant part of the Bill concerns measures to increase the number of police officers with a Catholic community background. The PCR proposed a target for increasing the proportion of Catholics in the RUC from 8 per cent to 30 per cent in the reformed force within ten years (Catholics comprise approximately 45 per cent of the overall workforce). Even this modest targets presents a serious problem given that the force must contract substantially in the initial phase of restructuring. The PCR's solution was to place recruitment in the hands of an outside agency and to require a one-for-one Catholic-to-Protestant recruitment policy for any new posts.(77) The Bill contains this radical proposal: never before in the history of three decades of fair employment debates has a British government backed one-for-one recruitment as a way of remedying an unrepresentative workforce. This power, however, is restricted in the first instance to three years. The Secretary of State must then renew the section for a further three years, subject to a maximum of ten years.(78)
As currently worded, it is not certain that the Bill requires an outside agency to take over recruitment: the Chief Constable 'may' appoint such an agency or person.(79) If this were not sufficient cause for scepticism over the PCR's 30 per cent target, then section 42 covering civilian support staff certainly is. In a somewhat unfathomable provision, s.42(5) appears to exclude support staff from the one-for-one recruitment requirement unless at least ten posts are vacant at any one time. Whatever the section's intent, it would seem to provide a loophole preventing the recruitment of Catholics as regards the increasingly important civilian sections of the police force.
The Bill accepts membership of a number of listed organisations, including
the Masons and the Orange Order,(80) and states that officers must register
membership 'at the request of the Chief Constable'. There is no obligation
on the Chief Constable to make such a request, even though it is widely
anticipated that he will do so, but once the information has been collected,
a statistical summary must be presented in the Chief Constable's annual
report. This section is indicative of the whole approach to human rights
in the Bill and its drafting. When the Bill was published the Chair of the
Human Rights Commission, which has a statutory responsibility to advise
the Assembly and Secretary of State on draft legislation, complained that
the Commission has not been shown the draft. Even more importantly, while
the Bill makes a general statement obliging the Police Board to carry out
its functions in compliance with the Human Rights Act (1998),(81) the Human
Rights Commission is cut out of the picture at every opportunity. In at
least six sections (82) there are provisions for consultation with relevant
bodies and persons over drawing up codes of practice and ethics, efficiency
criteria, and guidelines for use of equipment for maintaining or restoring
public order, but nowhere is the Human Rights Commission mentioned as a
relevant body to consult. |
