ASSEMBLY AND EXECUTIVE REVIEW COMMITTEE
OFFICIAL REPORT
(Hansard)
Devolution of Policing & Justice
17 February 2009
Members present for all or part of the proceedings:
Mr Jimmy Spratt (Chairperson)
Mr Raymond McCartney (Deputy Chairperson)
Mr Alex Attwood
Mr Simon Hamilton
Mr Alex Maskey
Mr Nelson McCausland
Mr Alan McFarland
Mr John O’Dowd
Mr Ian Paisley Jnr
Witnesses:
Mr Victor Hewitt ) Specialist adviser
Mr Stephen Pearson ) Economic Research Institute of Northern Ireland
The Chairperson (Mr Spratt):
I welcome Mr Victor Hewitt and Mr Stephen Pearson. Victor has been before the Committee before, and both he and Stephen will be speaking to us over the next number of weeks as we delve into the task that we have been given. I remind you that the evidence session is being recorded by Hansard, although the record of the proceedings will not appear in the public domain for the time being.
I ask Committee members to declare any interests. I declare an interest as a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I am a member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.
Mr McCausland:
I am a member of the Belfast District Policing Partnership.
Mr A Maskey:
I am a member of the Policing Board.
The Chairperson:
If you are leading the discussion, Victor, we will go over the information that you have given us and ask questions afterwards.
Mr Victor Hewitt (Specialist adviser):
Thank you, Chairperson. We have received most of the returns from the various agencies to the letter that was sent to them. However, we are pursuing a couple of stragglers. We had only a few days to have a preliminary look at the responses. We have tried to put the information that they provided on to a common format, and we have translated some of it into a graph index, on which it is easier to see the trends in expenditure.
We have been sifting through the papers and making other enquiries. We detect that the various bodies are keen to have the opportunity to put their case to the Committee, but, indirectly, they also want to lodge bids for resources. We are not just receiving information; they are making a plea to their sponsor body, which is the Northern Ireland Office (NIO).
We have attempted to sort out those bids, and we have still to complete that work, but we are trying to put the bids into three categories. The first category is “major pressures”, which are clearly not covered at present and are inescapable. Money that has yet to be identified will have to be found to address those pressures. The second category is “other pressures”, which may become inescapable and appear to be difficult to cover. The third category might be best described as “aspirational issues”, and that category covers bodies that are bidding for resources that, in the normal course of events, they may be expected to absorb using their own funds, such as pay and prices pressures, to which all bodies are expected to make a contribution.
At present, we have identified four areas of concern under “major pressures”. The numbers in those areas keep moving around, but the first issue is legal aid, which is experiencing a substantial shortfall in its budget — I will return to the numbers in a moment. The second issue is the cost of inquiries. The third issue is hearing-loss claims against the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The fourth issue is the knock-on effect of the equal-pay claim, and the Northern Ireland Civil Service is dealing with that issue. I will explain how that interconnects with the NIO element — it comes in through the PSNI.
We asked for information across the entire comprehensive spending review (CSR) period; that is, starting from 2008-09 and going through to 2010-2011. We asked for information from all three years because, in a sense, we wanted to see how the bodies coped with any pressures that they identified in the first year — 2008-09. With only one month of 2008-09 to run, 2008-09 is almost completed. Any pressures that were identified in 2008-09 have been dealt with in some way or other. Therefore, it is only 2009-2010 and 2010-11 that are now particularly relevant. When looking at the figures, one should focus on the final two years of the CSR period rather than the entire CSR period. Somehow or other, the first year of that will have been covered, and the Committee may wish to raise with any witnesses that are called how they dealt with the pressures that were identified in the first year of the CSR period.
The main driver of legal-aid costs has variously been described as expensive cases or complex cases, and legal-aid provision has consistently fallen short. During the current year, a Legal Services Commission bid to the NIO for approximately £20 million was successful. To that, another £4 million was added from the Legal Services Commission’s own reserves and various other pots of money. Therefore, £24 million was made available on top of its provision for this financial year, more or less ensuring that this year’s bill was met.
The future years are always speculative. It is a bit of a moving feast, and I hope to have an opportunity to speak to the Court Service — the Legal Services Commission’s sponsor department — to try to establish a clearer view on that. Certainly, over the next year, and possibly over the next two years, one is looking at a shortfall of somewhere in the region of £36 million, although an upper limit might be almost £60 million. Obviously, clarification is needed.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
You say that you are looking at a figure of £36 million, but that figure could be as much as £60 million?
Mr Hewitt:
If one looks at its returns, the Legal Services Commission starts off with a very large amount of money, but that covered everything in year one. The figure remains at £60 million for the next two years. Figures that I obtained from other sources suggested that that might be a slightly large figure, so I need to sort out with the Court Service exactly what its overall —
Mr Paisley Jnr:
That would be the original £24 million on the £200 million to which your paper refers?
Mr Hewitt:
Yes.
The cost of inquiries is an interesting vehicle. Essentially, the NIO has been meeting the cost of inquiries on an ongoing basis but meeting it from the shortfall in its expenditure each year. That carry-forward is more or less exhausted, so the NIO faces a pressure of around £46 million for the remainder of the CSR period. Again, that figure is an estimate, because the cost of inquires tends to grow, and the NIO would not expect to have available end-year flexibility to cover that pressure, so it is a genuine one.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
Is that for the five specific inquiries, which are Wright, Finucane, Hamill, Bloody Sunday and Rosemary Nelson?
Mr Hewitt:
Those are the ongoing inquiries, as far as I understand.
The next two major pressures are pressures on the PSNI. One is an inherited claim on hearing loss that goes back quite a number of years. I understand that ear protection for training on firearms ranges was not available in the 1970s or the 1980s, and, when it did become available, it was not mandatory. By the time it became mandatory, it was nearing the end of the relevant period. A substantial number of individuals have potential claims. The estimate that I have for claims is somewhere in the region of £98 million, but, again, that figure is a moving feast.
The Chairperson:
There is only a 50% uptake at present, so that figure has the potential to increase dramatically. We must be careful about that and ensure that we quantify accordingly.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I assume that you received that figure from the police.
Mr Hewitt:
We received it from the NIO.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
Did the NIO mention any other pending inquiries or claims? Were flak-jacket claims mentioned?
Mr Hewitt:
The NIO mentioned equipment claims for injuries to backs, for instance.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I hear that the total could be twice the amount that you mentioned.
Mr Hewitt:
It is difficult to say, because few of those affected have come forward. There will be some environmental claims as well.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
Are those claims anything to do with Sammy Wilson?
Mr Hewitt:
They are not related to your colleague.
None of the environmental claims has crystallised to the point where it is possible to put a figure on their value. However, you should be aware that other claims are in the pipeline.
The equal-pay claim for low-paid civil servants is another interesting issue. You will have heard Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) announcements on the ongoing negotiations between itself and the unions about the size of that claim for the entire Civil Service.
The PSNI is caught up in the situation because a number of the civilian personnel of the PSNI was recruited through the same Civil Service mechanisms. There is a feeling, therefore, that if the Civil Service is liable for its low-paid personnel, the PSNI should be liable for its low-paid personnel. That bill is a moving feast, potentially, although not to the same extent as that for inquiries. It would be prudent to imagine something in the order of £20 million in back pay. To that, one must make provision for an ongoing cost, because salaries that had not been expected to increase, will increase.
Taken together, those pressures will amount to around £200 million. We regard those as inescapable pressures that will have to be met, one way or another, and for which there is not adequate provision at this time.
One can identify at least as much again in other claims, but we are still in the process of sorting the wheat from the chaff over what claims are inescapable and what claims will be absorbed normally by the body.
I want to take the Committee’s mind on how one might proceed with the financial inquiry. The Committee will have a range of options. First, it could act merely as the recipient of information provided by the bodies and collate it into an overall picture, or, secondly, it might wish to take a more active and probing approach to the information that it has been given, in order to challenge, to some degree, the validity of some of the claims that are made.
I am not sure as to how the Committee will wish to proceed on that, because it creates two different costing situations for us. There is a difference in the Committee’s having a role in an inquiry and in its merely collating information.
It is up to the Committee to decide whom to call, but I suggest that the groups associated with the inescapable pressures are candidates to be interviewed. Beyond that, groups with a substantial budget should be given some priority by the Committee — even if they are not identified as being a major pressure. Therefore, that is where we are at. I am now happy to take questions.
The Chairperson:
Thank you for that, Victor. You mentioned the policing budget, which the Committee has discussed to some degree. However, those of us who sit on the Policing Board will be aware that some of the pressures are being pushed. That budget must be signed off by the end of March, and it is now being frantically worked on. It is already in the public domain that some of the pressures are being pushed into next year’s budget, which leaves the PSNI in an even worse position as its moves into the next budgetary period. The budget will be more than £30 million, and we will have to tease that out. Therefore, we need to bring organisations along, and we need to put on record some of the substantial pressures that are being placed on the Budget.
Issues concerning the Court Service and the Prison Service also need to be considered. A document on newbuilds for courts is out for consultation, and I am not sure whether the NIO has costed that, but we need to get some idea about it. There are also pressures on the prison establishment for new prisons. The Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland has made recommendations on Hydebank Wood young offenders’ centre. There could be substantial spends in some of those areas, and we need to get an idea of those spends.
I will open up the floor to questions on the various papers, but, first, we need to decide on the order in which we can begin to contact people, because, when today’s meeting has finished, we will have to notify potential witnesses for our evidence sessions. I am not sure whether we can get any witnesses in time to attend next week’s meeting, but we need to start planning for the meeting on 3 March. We need to schedule the people whom we are going to see and decide how we will do that over the next few weeks.
Mr McFarland:
If representatives from the Court Service are appearing to talk about financial issues, presumably we can also discuss their thoughts on the structures in the Court Service, because, when its director, David Lavery, appeared before the Committee, he had some interesting thoughts on the way forward. We could therefore take the opportunity to discuss structures with witnesses from the Court Service rather than call them back to appear before the Committee a second time.
The Committee Clerk:
I do not see any reason why we cannot do that. I can inform the Court Service of our intentions.
Mr McFarland:
We will get only one go at negotiations with the Treasury and the NIO between now and the end of March. If we do not get those negotiations right, we will suffer further down the line. Equal-pay claims, for example, should be left to the NIO to sort out before the matter transfers across to us. Their messing-around led to the inequality in the first place, so it seems silly to expect us to resolve the issue.
Elements of the proposals from the Eames/Bradley Consultative Group on the Past might be adopted. The whole business of the inquiries and the work of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) should remain within the NIO’s budget. Presumably, costs will not come out of our policing budget. I will leave that matter to be dealt with.
On the subject of hearing-loss claims, Committee members who are on the Policing Board will know better than I do, but I sat on the Policing Board’s finance and general purposes committee for several years, and there was a great tendency to simply agree on issues without challenging them.
I spoke to the chairman of the Policing Board the other day. I wonder whether we are being robust enough about hearing-loss claims, but colleagues on the Policing Board will know whether we are. For a long time, the board automatically paid out on claims on the grounds that it was cheaper to pay out than to fight them.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
The board does not do that any more.
Mr McFarland:
I know that. When the Policing Board began to fight claims, the number of claims made decreased. I understand that the situation started with firearms instructors, who, given their job, are more likely to submit hearing-loss claims. Age affects people’s standard of hearing, and, in fact, my hearing is deteriorating. Therefore, if everybody jumps on the bandwagon, anyone who was ever a police officer will receive compensation. Is the board likely to fight that type of situation or will it simply put its hands up and accept that, at the moment —
The Chairperson:
At the minute, the board is putting up a fight. It is examining cases, and it intends to continue to do so.
Mr McFarland:
Therefore, the board is looking at claims case by case?
The Chairperson:
Some work is currently in the judicial system, and the Committee cannot get involved or ask questions about that, because the board will not discuss the matter with us, the police or anybody else. When representatives from the board appear before the Committee, they will not discuss details of specific cases. Some cases are driven by the legal profession, which is, in effect, advertising and telling people who served as police officers within a certain period that they are likely to have suffered hearing loss. Everybody trundles along and submits a claim, and it creates, as Alan said, a snowball effect. I mentioned the 50% uptake, because the figure of £98 million could turn out to be much more.
Mr McFarland:
May I ask a question about legal aid? Legal aid is, technically, unending. Is the budget for legal aid limited, or does it continue limitlessly each year? The only way in which to estimate budget requirements for legal aid is to analyse the previous year’s costs. Is it possible to cap legal aid? There was an argument in England recently because the legal-aid budget was capped as a result of its getting out of hand. Is that the case here?
Mr Hewitt:
I am not entirely familiar with the process, but legal aid is clearly a rising cost. I understand that solicitors consider people’s circumstances and what resources are available to them when deciding whether to grant legal aid. However, once legal aid has been granted, it appears to be difficult to control. However, as I said, I am not entirely familiar with the procedures, so I will look into that matter.
Mr McFarland:
In a busy year, if the legal-aid budget is used, is it impossible to grant legal aid thereafter? Or do we identify that the budget will run out and cap the level of legal aid to ensure that everybody receives some aid but not as much as is required? It is useful for the Committee to understand that black hole in the system.
Mr Hewitt:
I will enquire about that matter.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
The Committee must be careful about how it approaches the matter. I understand Alan’s view that some people in various organisations are over-egging the pudding and inflating their bid, and so on. It is not the Committee’s job to analyse how much money each body receives. We should deal with facts, and consider how much money bodies receive and for how much they bid. Moreover, as is outlined in Victor’s paper, we must determine what we believe they need for the remainder of the current CSR period. We proceed on the basis of expected costs and whether we can achieve sufficient supply in order to meet that cost. That is one level that we should take it at, but it is a very short-term level.
The paper provided does not address the longer view, and it is essential that the Committee get to grips with long-term issues. What will the policing and justice budget be after summer 2012? Assuming that the devolution of policing and justice powers continues, that there are no hiccups and that it rolls on with political support, how will we make a reasonable and fair calculation when submitting a bid to the Northern Ireland Office? Should we consider the current budget and estimate £200 million, plus 2% for inflation?
How do we make a longer-term guess? When the NIO transfers powers, we should inform it that not only should the moneys come across, but that it should use a formula for transferring money to supply the very needy, and very greedy, bodies in the longer term. We need to take that approach.
We should not analyse how much money each body receives, but not because we do not have the appetite for doing so. We would all be very old men by the time that we assessed all the bodies to ascertain whether they were wiping our eye or were bidding for too much. That is not our role; that is the role of a scrutiny Committee. Let us get to grips with the ballpark figure of what the process will cost. We could then identify where the gap is, plug that gap and then take a longer-term view of how we receive moneys from the NIO to meet bodies’ needs. We should take that approach.
Mr A Maskey:
That is fair enough, but the difficulty is that, in order for us to understand what needs to be sorted out, we must perform some robust scrutiny. I do not want to spend the next year going through each body’s budget either, because that will take considerable time. From my experience of the Policing Board, it is like smoke and mirrors. It is a most unsatisfactory process.
We could not hope to conduct that level of scrutiny. However, Victor spoke about aspirational issues, of which that is one. We must be mindful that we are not a sounding board, or somebody else’s negotiator. The figures that have been presented may not be realistic. They may be, but when the police presented figures in different papers to the Policing Board, those figures were vastly different over a period of a couple of weeks, simply because there was a row at the Policing Board. I was very angry about that process.
I do not simply want to pass on somebody else’s wish list. Alternatively, I do not want to pass on very deserving bids.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
We will have a tab on that over the next 10 years.
Mr A Maskey:
In order for us to put a tab on what we think is realistic, we will have to conduct a certain amount of robust scrutiny. It is about achieving a balance, because I do not want to give somebody the opportunity to tell the Committee how much they want and need. What that person says may be 100% legitimate, but it may not be. Some of that may be a good idea, but we could do it next year, or in a different way.
Mr Hewitt:
Both points are well made. I am particularly concerned about the longer term. We envisage that a position will be reached at which those functions will be transferred along with a budget. Thereafter, they will fall within the purview of the Northern Ireland block — into the assigned budget, as it is called. That assigned budget is driven by the Barnett formula. For policing and justice in future years, Northern Ireland will receive a share of what is being spent additionally on the policing budget in Great Britain.
If the baseline at which the powers are transferred is not right, there will be very substantial deficits and very little additional moneys coming across. It is a very rough rule of thumb, but considering the numbers in this area in Northern Ireland, a 2:1 ratio would not be far off the mark. In other words, we tend to spend twice as much, on average, as is spent in Great Britain on many policing and justice issues.
This is an expensive area. I suggest that the Committee may want to work towards a statement of principle with the Treasury. At the time of the 1998 comprehensive spending review, it was envisaged that the Prison Service would be downsized and that certain arrangements would be made. The documentation for that comprehensive spending review included an expression about making provision for all known pressures. It is very important to know the pressures for which one should make provision before moving to a different financing regime in future. As I said at our first meeting, those issues tend to push their way up the priority list. They are very difficult to avoid, yet the resources would have to be found from elsewhere in the block.
I remember when the policing of parades drove up overtime hours to astronomic levels, and in those days, provision for that had to be found by removing money from capital projects, because that was the easiest way to make that provision. Given the nature of the public-expenditure regime that we have now, money cannot be moved from capital into current. Money can be moved from current into capital, but not from capital into current, so that route is closed off. Other areas of current expenditure would have to be raided in order to meet those pressures. Those are some of the longer-term options that could, perhaps, be thought about.
In relation to the other point made by Mr Maskey, I believe that — for the credibility of the Committee, if nothing else — it would be wrong to for the Committee to be a sounding board for organisations. The Committee should ask some questions of those people and require them to justify their budget claims. That is my personal view, of course.
Mr Attwood:
Thank you for the presentation. If nothing else, the evidence that we have heard this morning and all the documents that we have seen have given us a snapshot of the budgetary position for all these organisations, or at least the significant ones. That allows us to look at the issue with our eyes wide open.
My own view is that when all the figures are extracted, the situation that has been presented is benign. The situation is going to deteriorate generally, not least because, I presume, there is going to be a further demand for efficiency measures by the London Exchequer, which will work its way across the Irish Sea to here.
I was attracted to the idea of a statement of principle that Victor outlined. The Committee might be overreaching itself if it were to try to create that, but I hope that some statement of principle will be agreed elsewhere between the NIO and other people who are negotiating these matters. The NIO and London have to acknowledge, in order to help the North to become even more stable, that policing and justice arrangements must be kept stable for a significant period of time. Previously, those arrangements were such a point of friction in our community that it is important now to ensure that, one way or another, that is not the case in the future. Therefore, when it comes to these matters, a political statement of principle must be accepted by London.
Having said all that, I believe that the people whom you suggest that the Committee should speak to are the right ones. If speaking to those people will help us to identify where the hard issues are and where the real bottom line is, that is as good a place as any to start. Therefore, I agree that the Committee should speak to the organisations that you recommend.
This may be beyond the scope of your involvement to date, but in your contact with the relevant groups, are you getting any sense that the budgetary issues are getting resolved? The First Minister and deputy First Minister have said that they hope — that is the word that they used — that by the end of the financial year, which is now six or seven weeks away, the budgetary issues between the devolved Administration and London will be resolved.
Given that you have identified a £200 million budgetary pressure, are you picking up from those organisations that those issues are part of the discussions? If those matters are part of the discussions, are you getting any sense that they are getting resolved? In particular, are you picking up anywhere along the line an indication that a conversation is occurring between the NIO, the devolved Administration and the police about reducing the police numbers, as has been proposed by HMSC and the NIO?
The Chairperson:
I do not think that the issue of police numbers is relevant; we are dealing with financial issues.
Mr Attwood:
It is relevant because 80% of the police budget is spent on staff costs and thus relates to police numbers. Therefore, it is relevant to ask whether, in respect of the police budget, you are picking up on a side discussion going on about a reduction in police numbers.
Mr McCartney:
I do not think that that is an appropriate question to ask Victor.
Mr Attwood:
Of course it is.
The Chairperson:
No; I do not think that it is. Those are points that we can raise legitimately with the police.
Mr Attwood:
People are looking at the financial figures and are having conversations at some level, and it is fair to ask whether they are picking up on what those conversations are about.
The Chairperson:
There is no suggestion from the submission by the Police Service that any such discussions are going on. It is unfair to draw the advisers into that.
Mr Attwood:
There are other questions that they can answer.
Mr Hewitt:
I will give a partial answer. Clearly, the major axis will be between DFP and the NIO when settling the overall Budget Estimates for the NIO responsibilities that might be transferred. The Treasury will be the other major party in that. Those engagements are actively proceeding; it is no secret that the Minister of Finance and Personnel is determined that the financial aspects be resolved satisfactorily before those matters are taken forward. In that sense, a parallel operation is taking place to the Committee’s inquiry.
I am not aware about the issue of personnel other than the issue of the full-time reserve being phased out. That is now the subject of a security review. According to the Patten Report, the budget is predicated on the full-time reserve being phased out, but if the security review came to a different conclusion, that would bring an additional pressure. That is the only personnel issue with the police of which I am aware.
The Chairperson:
Efficiency measures and the fall in receipts of the sale of land and properties because of the fall in prices must have an impact on the some the budgets.
Mr Hewitt:
That has had an impact, but I am not sure that that is an enormously large problem in the NIO area. The fall in property prices is clearly a large problem in areas such as social housing. I do not have the exact numbers, but I can find out the amount of capital receipts that was budgeted for. Such matters are considered over the course of a single year.
To take an example from outside the NIO, the collapse of the Workplace 2010 scheme meant that a receipt of £175 million did not come in this year. That is an in-year pressure. It is not that £175 million does come in every year; that needs to be dealt with for one year, and once that year is past, one is in clear blue waters. There is a similar situation with the police estate. One can see that the police are under pressure to dispose of property and that this is not a particularly good time to do that.
The efficiency savings are not only a matter for the police. The Chancellor has indicated that he wants to raise the target for efficiency savings from 3% to 5% for UK Departments, including the NIO. Those efficiency savings are effectively cuts, because they are cash-releasing savings from Whitehall Departments. The consequence for Northern Ireland is that they will be translated through the Barnett formula, which works both ways, up and down. That will result in a “down” to the Northern Ireland Budget and to the Scottish Budget. I understand that that is being resisted, and the Minister of Finance and Personnel said that in the Chamber. That would be a further pressure on the overall Budget for Northern Ireland.
Mr McFarland:
Given that the Policing Board is responsible for people and buildings and that the budget is devolved from the NIO to the Policing Board, is there an issue of propriety or potential for a row with the Policing Board over why the Committee is talking to directly to the police, and not to the Policing Board, in the first instance? It is a question of how the issue should be handled.
The Chairperson:
We will be talking to the Policing Board.
Mr McFarland:
So, we do not see the Policing Board getting in the way of the list of three?
The Chairperson:
There will be another list, and I anticipate that we will call the Policing Board fairly early.
Mr McFarland:
So, the Policing Board will not get upset about not getting called before the police?
The Chairperson:
We will work that out in a minute or two. Once we get the list, we will work out the order in which we should call witnesses. Perhaps we should group witnesses, so that they are called on an ordered basis.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I wish to return to the issue of disposal of the police estate. The police may take an operational decision to close a building, but the building would remain the property of the Policing Board. The Policing Board can decide when to dispose of it. To whom do the receipts go, and to whom would they go in the future? Would they go to the Policing Board, would they go to the justice Department or would they go to the Treasury?
Mr Hewitt:
That depends partly upon what has been negotiated between the bodies, and partly on the size of the receipt. If it is a very large receipt — probably over £10 million — the Treasury would take a particular interest in it. However, in the first instance, the receipt would go back to the body that owns the property and, normally, be used within its budget. We must distinguish between planned receipts and unplanned receipts. Usually, planned receipts are built into a budget; for example, a body is given a certain amount of money, and it is assumed that it will generate a certain amount of additional money from the sale of the property. Combined, those two things will fund that body’s operations. If, during the course of a year, something is identified as being surplus to requirements, but was not built into the budget, that is an additional receipt, and, quite often, it comes down to negotiation between the two bodies.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
Can we get absolute clarity on that point? It will probably take some good work from Victor, but as I understand it, the PSNI is planning to close around 50 or 51 stations. Even if it decides to do that, the decision of when to dispose of those stations, if ever, remains entirely with the Policing Board. One assumes that they would want to dispose of those stations; however, the timing of the disposal — involving as it does market place offers, and so on — would be crucial. If the Policing Board decides to dispose of those stations, up to, or after, 2012, who gets the benefit of that money? It might help us with our calculations if we factor in that a number of the receipts from closed and sold stations could come back to the Department or go directly to policing.
Mr Hewitt:
I will look into that for you. Most of the information about receipt lines should be within the Policing Board budget; however, I will make the necessary enquiries.
The Chairperson:
The forensic science laboratory feeds off the policing budget. It is something of a moveable feast from year to year, depending on the cases, and so on; however, it needs a set budget, too. As an agency, it charges the PSNI for its services; therefore, in order to make a projection, we need to tease out with the PSNI what the spend has been in that area over the past number of years.
Are there any other questions? We will try to put our questions into some sort of order, and work out a table as a result of that. Two issues are, I assume, the PSNI and the Policing Board. There is a table of spend for each Department, which might be helpful.
Mr McFarland:
The Ad Hoc Committee on Criminal Justice looked at the changing role of the Probation Board, which was mightily expanding its role to look after prisoners from the moment that they appeared in the dock until the moment that they left prison. One of the points made by that Ad Hoc Committee was that there had to be a proper budget allocated to that. Given that that is in the process of happening, it is worth keeping an eye on whether that is factored in somewhere. If it is not factored in until after the devolution of policing, suddenly, an extra budget will have to be found.
The Chairperson:
This is a bit of a lottery now. We will try to group them after that.
Mr McCartney:
Many of those groups feel that their budget is satisfactory. I assume that we can rule them out immediately.
The Chairperson:
I imagine that there is no point in calling a group that says its budget is satisfactory. I am looking for recommendations as to whom we should call.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I will start the bidding then. On this list, you have already proposed 1, 2, 3 and 4. I propose: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 13.
Mr McFarland:
Not the Policing Board?
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I want you to propose something, Alan.
Mr McFarland:
The bill for the Legal Services Commission is not due to its functioning. Have we a bill for the administration of that body? It is difficult to estimate: we have talked about it already, and it could be up, down or all over the place. The £65 million is made up mainly of legal aid costs.
Mr Hewitt:
Yes. Legal aid accounts for the bulk of that figure. The administration costs are a fraction of it.
The Chairperson:
We need clarity as to that figure. I heard it mentioned this morning that it may be as high as £80 million. You have a figure of £38 million and other figures have been talked about: we need to tease out of them exactly what the sum is. In other parts of the United Kingdom, budgets have had to be capped as a result of spiralling costs.
Mr Hewitt:
I have given some additional figures, but the sum varies a great deal. We covered those costs in 2008-09 by bidding for £22 million from the Department. They brought a £2 million transfer from Court Service funds and they used a £2 million cash balance. That made £24 million, which covered that pressure. However, the pressures built up again in the final two years, and according to the table, they amount to £60 million in the final two years. Later this week, I will meet with the Court Service and go through these figures with the officials in some detail, if the Committee agrees.
The Chairperson:
We will call them, anyway. Alan, do you wish to call any others?
Mr McFarland:
I would like the Committee to call the Ombudsman’s office, if the Eames/Bradley report is accepted. The bulk of the Police Ombudsman’s office now deals with historic matters, and it has taken on many extra staff and detectives from all over to deal with them. However, they will be hived off into the Historical Enquiries Team area, so that the Ombudsman will be left dealing with current policing matters. Presumably, an enormous swathe of his budget and personnel will go off with them. If that happens, and the historic stuff is left with the NIO, these budgets could change quite a bit.
The Chairperson:
Should we call any other organisations?
Mr Attwood:
OFMDFM and the NIO want to have this matter concluded. We have five or six weeks before the end of the financial year and we need to move quickly. Therefore, we should consult with a very short list of organisations. I agree with Victor’s recommendations. We should call the Legal Services Commission, the Court Service, the Northern Ireland Office and the PSNI. That is where the budgetary pressures lie, and given the time frame in which we have to work, that is the way that we can best direct our energies.
Mr McCausland:
The organisation that was left out earlier was the Policing Board.
Mr Hewitt:
Will the Committee ask the Policing Board about its own costs or about its responsibilities for the wider budget?
The Chairperson:
We will research the possibilities for the wider budget.
Mr McFarland:
The Prison Service is an enormous expense, and the cost per prisoner here is completely out of kilter with that in the rest of the UK and elsewhere. Why it costs something like £58,000 to keep a prisoner for a year here is going to become a major issue.
Mr Hewitt:
The figure is closer to £84,000.
Mr McFarland:
Either way, the figure is enormous compared with that in GB. The Prison Service is a big spender, and we may need to have a chat with some of its representatives.
The Chairperson:
Did you also mention the Police Ombudsman, Alan?
Mr McFarland:
If the Eames/Bradley report is implemented — and I do not know whether it will be — an entire chunk of the Police Ombudsman’s office will go to the Legacy Commission and the Historical Enquiries Team. Presumably, that will mean that the Police Ombudsman’s office will come to us with a much leaner cost base of about £9 million.
The Chairperson:
That is one of the issues that we will raise with the NIO. There is also an issue with the RUC GC Foundation. It was promised a museum many years ago, and the NIO was supposed to be involved in negotiations concerning a sum of between £4 million and £5 million. We need to tease out exactly what is happening between the NIO and the RUC GC Foundation, because that may be a pressure that emerges. I will not die in a ditch over whether the RUC GC Foundation is called before the Committee, but the issue needs to be raised with both the foundation and the NIO.
Mr McCartney:
The RUC GC Foundation has raised the issue.
The Chairperson:
My understanding is that a promise was made to the RUC GC Foundation. When policing and justice is devolved, I do not want us to suddenly find a £5 million promise that we did not know about beforehand.
Mr McFarland:
In the Ad Hoc Committee, an issue was raised about the rapid expansion of the Life Sentence Review Commissioners. Do you remember that that system was changing? Does the budget figure for the Life Sentence Review Commissioners relate to the new organisation or the old one?
Mr McCartney:
It relates to the old organisation.
Mr McFarland:
Do you remember that there was discussion about those commissioners increasing in number?
Mr McCartney:
They were to become sentence review commissioners rather than Life Sentence Review Commissioners.
Mr McFarland:
That is right. The commissioners were to dramatically increase in number and have more staff, premises, and so on. I wonder about the figure listed there, because I am not sure whether all that has happened yet.
Mr Attwood:
That has happened, and the paper states that the figure listed relates to the new organisation.
Mr McFarland:
Is that the new figure? I have not read the paper in detail.
The Chairperson:
We will clarify that.
Mr Attwood:
Alan’s wider point questions whether the Prison Service has enough money to do all that it is meant to do in respect of prisoners who may come before the parole commissioners. Big money is needed for that, and it is unclear whether the Prison Service has that money.
The Chairperson:
We can ask that question to representatives of the Prison Service when they are here.
Mr McFarland:
The Probation Board is also tied in with that issue. It is supposed to be delivering a lot of those things, but it is unclear how much of that is in its budget.
The Chairperson:
Meetings with those organisations need to be worked into a schedule, and the Committee office will do that. If an issue that is raised requires people to be brought before the Committee towards the end of the process, we will do that. We have still not been given any information on the state pathologist.
The Committee Clerk:
We have not received a reply; therefore, I have no idea on that one.
The Chairperson:
We will keep the pressure on, and we will pass that information on to you as soon as we receive it. The figure involved is almost £2·2 million, but we can make a decision once we receive the relevant information.
We will need a week in which to notify these people; we have to give them the opportunity to appear before the Committee. That will be at the meeting on 3 March.
The Committee Clerk:
It will be on 4 March.
The Chairperson:
Yes, 4 March. Those sessions will take place in the Senate and will be public.
Mr A Maskey:
Is there a way of asking some of them to be here next week, because people such as David Lavery —
Mr McFarland:
The witnesses will be expecting to come, because we have already told them that we are likely to call them. Some of them may well be able to come earlier, and if they can do so without inconveniencing —
The Chairperson:
If any of the witnesses is available to appear before the Committee — if we can get a couple of them to attend next week — the Committee office will notify members by email about who will appear. We have a short meeting planned, but if we can get some of the witnesses to come along, that will be some of the work done. I imagine that getting some of the bigger players might be difficult without giving them some notice; we will have to give a reasonable period of notice to people such as the Chief Constable.
The Committee Clerk:
I gathered from the discussion earlier that it would be better to have witnesses appear before the Committee on a single subject. If representatives from the Court Service and the Legal Services Commission were invited to appear on the same day, that would allow the structure of the questioning to run with a theme. If the Chief Constable and the Policing Board were to be invited to appear together, I may then have some scope to slot in the other witnesses around those arrangements.
The specialist adviser has said that he plans to have discussions with the Court Service later in the week. There may be a question over how soon the Court Service would be in a position to come along. If we could manage it that way, I would have some flexibility to organise a programme, which would then be issued to members as soon as possible.
The Chairperson:
Are members satisfied with that approach? That is a reasonable approach.
Mr Hewitt, are there any other issues that you want to cover? You will be with us at the sessions —
Mr Hewitt:
Yes, we had planned to provide the Committee with briefings for those sessions, provided that we can get some advance notice of whom the Committee is going to see. I take it that the Committee has no objection to our speaking to the organisations to clarify detail beforehand?
The Chairperson:
I do not think so. You will be available if there are questions on the day; the Committee Clerk tells me that the system can allow for that.
Mr Hewitt:
Yes.
The Chairperson:
You will be with the Committee anyway, and you will be able to feed questions through to members. Although you will not be able to ask a question directly, you can feed questions through to anyone through the Committee Clerk if there are issues.
Mr McFarland:
Do we all get earpieces?
The Chairperson:
We can talk into our sleeves.
I ask members to bear in mind that the Committee felt it important to have this discussion in closed session today. We are not hiding anything; everything will be revealed as witnesses are brought along to the various sessions. I ask members to bear in mind the confidentiality of the discussions this morning, and I ask that there is no speculating in the press. I do not think that that would be helpful to this process. We are trying to get the best deal possible for the eventual devolution of policing and justice issues. It is a big area on which there could very easily be speculation. There is a whole range of areas to cover. The other meetings will be in public session, so issues will be coming into the public domain as we question people. Are there any other issues?
Mr McCartney:
Can we have the completed list of whom we are calling?
The Committee Clerk:
One through to 12 are: the Legal Services Commission; the Northern Ireland Court Service; the Northern Ireland Office; the Police Service of Northern Ireland; the Northern Ireland Prison Service; the Public Prosecution Service; the Youth Justice Agency; the Probation Board for Northern Ireland; the Forensic Science Agency of Northern Ireland; the Compensation Agency; the Northern Ireland Policing Board; and the Policing Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust. There may be more clarification from the RUC GC Foundation by correspondence or through our specialist adviser.
The Chairperson:
Clarification on the museum issue.
Mr McFarland:
Why is the Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust on the list?
The Chairperson:
The Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust is based at the Maryfield complex in Holywood. There is an issue around the Forensic Science Agency’s laboratory, and a section of the NIO is in some sort of discussion, but we do not know —
Mr McFarland:
If there is a reason for that, that is fine.
The Chairperson:
The reason is that there would have been a £5 million pressure on the NIO had the Police Rehabilitation and Retraining Trust been moved from Maryfield to re-accommodate the Forensic Science Agency, which is currently located at Seapark, Carrickfergus. The Seapark site would have required an entire rebuild had the Police Rehabilitation and Training and Trust been relocated to there, which, obviously, is an issue.
Earlier, we mentioned other issues around the Court Service, such as the consultation document on the IT equipment that has to be installed into various courts around the Province. The document mentions six, seven or eight courts. Obviously, there is spend there, and we must get to the bottom of that.
The Committee Clerk:
As regards Mr McCartney’s question, I wish to clarify that, at present, the Office of the Police Ombudsman is not included on the list. The Committee will want to pursue, with the Secretary of State, the question about the Historical Enquiries Team and whether that budget will transfer across to result in a leaner Office of the Police Ombudsman, and whether, at this stage, the Committee wishes still to call it the Office of the Police Ombudsman.
The Chairperson:
On the financial issue, the Committee must talk to some of the players — from the Police Service of Northern Ireland and some other bodies that members mentioned already — before we bring in the NIO. Once we have clarity on some of those points, we will raise them with the NIO.
Mr Paisley Jnr:
I thought that we were leaving the NIO until near the end.
The Chairperson:
I know that the Committee wants to speak to the NIO about other issues, but I am merely talking about the financial issues. It may well be that some of those other issues will arise when the NIO officials are before the Committee.
We agreed that the Committee is open to suggestions as to who should be called to give evidence. We can do that once we have held a meeting to clarify certain points on some issues. Are there any other issues?
I thank Victor Hewitt and Stephen Pearson for attending this evidence session. I hope that from your point of view, this has been a helpful exercise. I know that your work is ongoing, and I understand that the Committee Clerk will review the list as soon as he makes arrangements with the various bodies. We will keep you up to speed with who is attending the Committee and when. That will also help you to sort your diary. The Committee appreciates your help and assistance with the matter, but much work remains to be done.
Mr Hewitt:
Thank you, Chairman.