Republican News · Thursday 28 November 2002

Policing proposals fall short of Patten

BY FERN LANE

The British government's proposals for additional police reform legislation announced on Monday have, despite Paul Murphy's claim this week that "Patten is the bedrock of the government's approach to policing change", fallen far short of the reforms promised by the Patten Report, particularly on the issues of representation, accountability, freedom from political control and human rights. The legislation, which the government plans to introduce before the parliamentary Christmas recess, also restricts the power of the Police Ombudsman.

The proposals are drafted in two separate texts; the first a set of proposed legislative amendments which, the British government insists, reflects "as much as it possibly can" the discussions held at Weston Park last year. However, even if the Weston Park proposals were fully implemented, which seem unlikely, the legislation will fail to meet the requirements of Patten, which, so far as Sinn Féin is concerned, in any case only provides what Gerry Adams has called "a minimum threshold from which to achieve acceptable policing".

The second, separate, text, which does not at present form part of the proposed legislation, theoretically removes the barrier to former prisoners taking independent places on the Policing Board, but only if the IRA agrees to what the British government and David Trimble have termed "acts of completion" - that is, disbandment.

The proposals pose considerable difficulties for SDLP leader Mark Durkan, who is likely to face some awkward questions from party members. Although Murphy insisted that he had "kept faith" with the promises made to the SDLP during the Weston Park talks last year - promises on the basis of which Durkan offered his party's endorsement of the new Policing Board - a number of key reforms the SDLP required have failed to materialise, particularly in the area of accountability.

Responding to the proposals on Tuesday, Gerry Adams was particularly critical of the attack on the powers of the Police Ombudsman. The amending legislation, he said "imposes a significant new restriction on the ability of the Police Ombudsman to root out human rights abusers within the PSNI and among those agents, for example in the UDA and other groups, who work for it.

"The Police Act prevented the Policing Board from being the accountable mechanism envisaged by Patten," he continued. "It did this by giving the Chief Constable the power to refuse the Board information relevant to an enquiry into wrongdoing by members of the Police Force or its agents.

"At Weston Park, the British government and the Irish government agreed a take it or leave it package, which included a small number of proposed areas for legislative amendment, which at the time we said did not go far enough.

"Weston Park also saw the British government reject, for example, the request for a full independent international judicial inquiry into the killing of Pat Finucane. Instead, a stalling exercise was put forward. And last month, with the postponement once again of the Stevens Inquiry report, we had another instalment in that effort to dodge the truth of the RUC Special Branch and MI5's involvement in the killings of citizens on behalf of the British state."

The legislative amendments published on Monday, said Adams were a missed opportunity "to put policing back on the Patten track".

"Instead, the British government extended the restriction on the Policing Board to the Ombudsman significantly undermining the second leg of the accountability mechanism recommended by Patten. Now both the Policing Board and the Ombudsman are restricted in their ability to inquire into human rights abuses by members of the PSNI and their agents.

"In particular, this helps ring fence the Special Branch as a 'force within a force' and bolsters it against the required changes. It makes a mockery of democratic and institutional accountability."

Predictably, unionists reacted to the proposals with fury and hyperbole. David Trimble said they were "disturbing", whilst Ian Paisley said they represented "the greatest constitutional calamity that we have ever faced".