This has resulted in a very tight schedule for Members in the completion of their work, and it is unfair that we, as legislators, should be so pressurised, especially on such important legislation.

The other effect is to impose an even more unfair burden upon outside organisations which are very dependent on voluntary contributions to their various internal and policy committees. We are therefore not getting the benefit of fuller presentations from those organisations. That is a further point for consideration by the Secretary of State.

Moving to the substance of the report and of the draft legislation, the Committee has emphasised the need for the commissioners to be truly independent of Government. The Committee has made several suggestions in that regard. A constant theme in the Committee was that independence should not just be notional but that it should be firmly established. It was suggested, for example, that the commissioners' terms of office should be for five years, which would guarantee their independence. Other provisions were also suggested.

Also, in that section of the report, the Committee suggested that representations should be made by victims or their families in relation to the decision-making process concerning releases. That is a very important matter which the House should bear in mind. Those who have suffered, or families which have suffered, as a result of the offences committed by the people with whom we are concerned today, should also be considered by the independent commission in the exercise of its functions.

In relation to schedule 2, a point was made regarding the disclosure of evidence and information to the commissioners but not to the prisoners. In the view of the Ad Hoc Committee, that creates problems. It was felt that that would be in contravention of article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. That is not just some sort of minor reservation. It is a very real reservation of the Committee, and it should be emphasised in the House that it is not right that such information and evidence should not be disclosed to a prisoner or his representative. To some extent the proposed legislation tries to meet that, in so far as the legislation indicates that a special advocate could be appointed by the commission to consider the evidence and information presented.

While that to some extent ameliorates the problems, it does not remedy in full the defect in this schedule. It would therefore be best if all evidence and all information were disclosed to the prisoner appearing before the commissioners.

There are differences between evidence and information. Evidence is subject to various proofs and has been brought to the commissioners with weight and authority; information has not necessarily been tested. It is important therefore that all information and evidence is brought to the attention of the prisoner so that his legal representatives can deal with any problems as they arise. A prisoner must be in a position to rebut defective information or evidence.

Under article 5, which is at the heart of the proposed legislation, a judge will fix the tariff. He or she will fix the punishment for retribution and deterrence. That is a crucial innovation because it will make our approach to sentencing compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. In no way will the sentencing of an individual depend on anything other than a court.

However, a distinction is made for "whole-life prisoners" - prisoners who receive sentences that do not have fixed terms. When a person is under 18 the Committee believes that it is appropriate for the Secretary of State to be able to say that that person can be referred to the commissioners. That is an important move by the Secretary of State.

The Ad Hoc Committee divided on prisoners who were over 18 when they committed the offence and received a whole-life tariff from the court. Although the Committee's majority view was to accept the provision that the Secretary of State could act, some members objected in principle, saying that that allowed for political interference with the court's power to sentence convicted offenders who were over 18 when they committed the offence. I agree with the majority view on this matter because I cannot envisage a situation in which a person should be sentenced to a whole-life tariff and suffer an indeterminate sentence for the rest of his or her life. In those circumstances someone has to intervene in order to review that sentence at an appropriate stage. There is no provision for a court to do so and the best possible alternative is for the Secretary of State to intervene or, if such matters are devolved, the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. We should support the majority view of the Committee, which is to accept this provision. I know that that deviates from the concept of there not being any political interference in sentencing.

However, for the reasons that I have just outlined, I believe that, in these circumstances, it is necessary for there to be an intervention, albeit from a political source. I believe that it is fair and just in all the circumstances. A better alternative would be for a court to review that, but there is no provision for that in this or any alternative legislation. In these circumstances, I support the majority view.

In relation to article 8, it was the Committee's view that the imposition of a licence or licence conditions on a prisoner for the rest of his life after release from prison was unduly harsh. I agree with that. There must be circumstances when a prisoner who has been released for a number of years should be given the opportunity of wiping the slate completely clean so that there is no longer anything hanging over him, and he can get on with the rest of his life. The stigma of having a life sentence would therefore be removed. Where a person has shown himself to be of good character and has rehabilitated himself, it is wrong and unjust that he continues to carry the stigma of a life prisoner. I believe that there should be some provision - and the Committee has accepted this - for the annulment of that licence. This would be of benefit to the released prisoner.

I know that this will probably not be accepted by the Secretary of State, although I hope that it is, for it is a very important message for the Assembly to send to the Secretary of State so that this stigma can be removed from released life prisoners at some time in the future. We should all support it. If the Secretary of State does not accept the terms of the present draft legislation, perhaps at some point in the future he will accept them in alternative legislation before Parliament.

Finally, I have points in relation to articles 10 and 11. Article 10 deals with transferred prisoners, and article 11 deals with existing life prisoners. It was the view of the Ad Hoc Committee that these two provisions were incompatible with article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Again, we have the interference, as it were, of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has a sentencing function and can specify the remaining tariff that a prisoner has to serve. That is in relation to either an existing life prisoner or a prisoner who has been transferred, for example, from prison in England or Wales, or even from the Irish Republic. The Secretary of State should have no significant role in deciding the term or tariff that the prisoner will have to spend in prison. That function should be exercised by a court. I fully support that - I believe that the court should exercise such a function. The provision in the legislation before the House says that the Secretary of State should deal with the matter in consultation with the Lord Chief Justice.

However, I believe that that is insufficient to meet the terms of article 6 of the European Convention. It seems to be wrong in principle to allow that to happen. I support the Committee fully in its recommendation that a court is the appropriate body for dealing with this, notwithstanding the fact that the Lord Chief Justice would have some sort of role, according to the draft legislation before the House.

The Committee did outstanding work in the time available, and its members worked very well together in a non-partisan fashion. It produced a consensual report that it can be proud of, and I believe that the House should give it the fullest support.

Once again this House has demonstrated that it is able to put together a report under the difficult and, at times, perplexing circumstances in Northern Ireland. It allows Members to produce a report from which they can select á la carte, and which says, essentially, that we agree to disagree. That is a unique feature of this House. We did the same with the flags report. In that case none of the parties agreed with each other, but nonetheless we were able to produce a report. In this case, although the disagreement is on technical issues, we have been able to produce a report wherein we agree to disagree. We came up with a report that expresses and represents all the different points of view. That at least gives us the ability to come forward and suggest that we can support it, if the Secretary of State agrees to certain points.

On that basis, my party will be supporting the motion that was so ably presented this evening by the Chairperson of the Committee. I wish to add my congratulations to the staff of the Committee for the way in which business was conducted. We have produced a report, under difficult circumstances, which would not otherwise have been proposed or supported in this way.

The report deals with a number of issues, and I would like to break them down into four areas. The first is the issue of consultation. Both of the Members who have spoken on this have indicated their disappointment and dissatisfaction with the way the consultation process operates. I have to add my voice to their concern. There is a recommendation in the report that reflects our concern about the lack of consultation.

We asked the Secretary of State and officials from the Northern Ireland Office to make themselves available to consult with us, in a meaningful way, about many of the terms that have been introduced into this draft Order. As we see from the report, the Secretary of State had too many diary commitments, and officials from the Northern Ireland Office were too busy to attend. We must express our concern that neither the Northern Ireland Office nor the Secretary of State could make themselves available to discuss this very important issue, to give us their point of view and to answer questions. Many members of the Committee had questions and concerns about this proposed Order.

Once again, the way that the Northern Ireland Office has handled this makes a mockery of the consultation. It should take that to heart. If it is going to take this House and its representatives seriously then it must consult with them seriously, instead of treating them in the off- hand way that it did during the course of the deliberations of this and other Committees.

The Order raises an issue that divides us on fundamental grounds. That is the issue of whether or not the Secretary of State should have a role in the sentencing process. That was discussed at the Committee meetings.

My party is of the view that no politician should have a direct say in the sentencing of a prisoner. That is an issue for the court - the court should make a determination, and the sentence should be served unless it is overturned at appeal. This Order gives the Secretary of State a direct input into the sentencing of prisoners. I object strongly to that measure because I believe that it is open to abuse.

Politicians, by their very nature, are lobbied, and they can succumb to a lobby. On an issue of justice that should be arbitrated independently by the court, it is wrong that a politician should have that say. I have had some experience of that.

I was involved in a case, over 10 years ago, known as the "UDR four". The mechanism that was then open to us was to lobby a politician. We had to provide him not only with evidential issues but with political reasons why he should reopen the case.

Fortunately, as a result of an appeal relating to that case, that mechanism has changed. You have to go back through the courts, and an independent Criminal Cases Review Commission must come up with evidence and put forward a case that shows that there is sufficient evidence to warrant an appeal, as opposed to there being both evidential and political grounds for an appeal.

There has been a subtle change, but this Order allows for back-pedalling on that, which is wrong in principle and could be open to abuse. There have been a number of cases that have demonstrated in England and Wales - and, in principle, could demonstrate here - how this measure would operate.

Under article 5, for example, it is essential that those people who serve a whole-life tariff do actually serve that tariff. If you do the crime, then you must be able to serve the time. Although that is a cliché, any political interference with how a person serves that time should be restricted.

I believe that life should mean life. That is a view that raises the hackles of some people, but it is one to which my party holds firmly. We think that any attempt to undermine what life means, and what a court means when it sentences someone to life, should be resisted.

There are three types of case where we can see that abuse could arise. There is what I would call the Hindley- type case, where, under article 5(4), a person can, through political lobbying, ask for his or her case to be looked at again. That should be avoided. The Criminal Cases Review Commission should be the only mechanism used, and on an evidential basis only.

Then there are the Bulger-type cases. Those cases again indicate - even where juveniles and very young children are involved - that they can be open to political interference.

In addition, under article 7, the Secretary of State may, at any time, release a life prisoner if he is convinced that there are exceptional circumstances. We could name that the "Kray clause" - the Home Secretary was convinced that, under certain circumstances in that particular case, a prisoner could be released.

This Order does not allow for consultation. I am glad that we, as a Committee, attempted to plug the gap by saying that if the Secretary of State wants to use those wide-ranging powers he must, at least, consult. He must consult with people who are openly recruited and appointed as independent commissioners.

The third area that concerns me is the role of the independent commissioners. I think that the Committee was agreed that the commissioners should be independent and independently appointed. Indeed, on page 18 of the report, we recommended that the commissioners

We recommended that they should,

It is essential that those commissioners demonstrate that they have human rights experience, because to date most commissioners have not been able to demonstrate that.

There are two issues relating to the commissioners: who are they - they should be independent - and what are they entitled to hear? The non-disclosure of material to commissioners causes great concern right across the community. If we believe in fair trial, there must be a fair and transparent legal system. Such a system could not include a mechanism that would allow a prisoner to be shut out of a hearing so that he or she would not know who was making the accusations or what case was being made and would not be able to respond directly to the allegations. I share with most members of the Committee the concern that the draft Order allows for something that could lead to a travesty of justice. We should guard against introducing an Order that could pervert justice. That is why I support the relevant recommendations.

When we first considered it, the draft Order contained no article that addressed the issue of victims' rights. That was disappointing. I am glad that the Committee's recommendations in relation to article 3 proposed that the commissioners should listen to representations made on behalf of the victims. Prof Dickson, chief of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, gave evidence to the Committee and suggested that, at the very least, a victim should be able to make a case in writing. I agree. However, there should be a mechanism available to victims that would allow them to make their case to the commissioners, so that the commissioners would know exactly the feelings that they would evoke and the reaction that they would cause if they were to allow a particular prisoner to be released on licence.

It is essential that people understand how victims feel. Until now, they have been excluded from the process. The one thing that the Secretary of State should learn from consideration of the legislation is that victims have rights. He should give them not only a voice but an ear in the process. People must see that victims have rights and that they must be listened to.

Prof Dickson said that he would consider with the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission the issue of how victims should bring their case before the sentence commissioners. On page 59 of the report, we have published a letter from Prof Dickson that reveals a careless and flippant disregard for the rights of victims:

The professor goes on to say

I do not doubt that Prof Dixon is a busy man and that the commission is a busy commission. However, the fact that there was so much else on the agenda that victims' rights were not even reached will be a bitter pill for victims of crime to swallow. Their rights must be considered.

Many people perceive that more attention is paid to prisoners' rights than to those of victims. The letter from Prof Dickson and the Secretary of State's Order do nothing to dispel that perception. Many people will argue that that is just a perception and that prisoners have a hard time of it. However, that perception must be addressed. If life is too busy for the views of victims even to be taken into account, they will be justified in holding on to that perception. Victims have been ignored until now. I hope that the recommendations that we have made in respect of the Order will spur the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Office into recognising that they must take cognizance of victims' views.

Go raibh maith agat, a LeasCheann Comhairle. I too want to congratulate the Chairman and staff of the Ad Hoc Committee for the work that they did in a such a short time. The question of time is important, as Alban Maginness pointed out. The usefulness of the Ad Hoc Committees comes into question when no time is given to properly conduct an inquiry into the subject that is under consideration.

We asked the Secretary of State to attend a Committee meeting, but the invitation was refused. That is a further indication of how little regard they have for Ad Hoc Committees. The same is true of the judiciary and their non-attendance at the Committee.

We welcome any move that aims to put human rights legislation into practice. It is not enough to amend existing legislation or to adopt a model that has been designed for use in England and is fraught with problems. There are a number of radical progressive alternatives in Scandinavia, for example, that provide fair and more humane regimes.

It must be remembered that, for the most part, the intermediate and subjective elements of life sentences have been used against Republicans. There is nothing new in this system to guard against that happening again. My party has long argued in favour of the abolition of both mandatory and discretionary indeterminate life sentences. The proposed introduction of a tariff system throws up many new concerns that will only compound the problems associated with life prisoners and those that are being detained at the Secretary of State's pleasure (SOSp).

If the judiciary were given the power to set a tariff - with all the connotations that its loyalty to the Crown has - what checks and balances will be put in place to ensure equality under the law for both victims and perpetrators? Political prisoners are still being brought before Diplock courts with all their inherent bias and willingness to convict on the most dubious of evidence. It must be noted that the only two prisoners that were given natural life sentences were Republicans who were convicted of single killings. That contrasts sharply with the treatment in court of the Loyalist death squads such as the "Shankill butchers". There is much that we can do about that, but we should be mindful of these things when considering any new proposals.

If a commission is to be set up to oversee the release process, a number of safeguards must be put in place to ensure that the system is open and fair. The Secretary of State currently has extensive powers to deal with life and SOSp prisoners that should be given over to the commission. Sentencing should be a matter for the judiciary, and release should be a matter for the commission. The separate arrangements that are in place under the Good Friday Agreement are the appropriate mechanisms for dealing with political prisoners.

The commissioners should be representative of the community and not simply political appointees drawn from particular professional classes. The commission should be open to representatives of community organisations such as community restorative justice committees. We should be told clearly what skills, experience and training the commissioners will need. The commissioners will need staff. The staff should not be drawn from the Prison Service or the Civil Service but should be independent and accountable only to the commissioners.

There is a need for clear guidelines, definitions and directions to be given to the commissioners. Terms such as "risk to the public" need to be defined. There should be widespread consultation on the issue, and it should include the views of the community, ex-prisoners representative groups such as Coiste na n-Iarchimí and Restorative Justice and prisoners themselves. The review process should be transparent and open. There should be no secret hearings or undisclosed evidence.

Prisoners should have the right to be present, along with their legal representatives or any other person nominated by them. People serving life and those serving sentences at the Secretary of State's pleasure need to be able to challenge any aspect of evidence presented and any decision of a review or commission hearing.

The present system of phased release needs to be overhauled, to give a meaningfully structured release programme of paroles. Information and support should be part of the release process, but the Prison Service is not necessarily best equipped to provide that. Consultation with current and former lifers would be useful in that regard. After a period has elapsed, the commission should have the power to annul licences. Former life sentence prisoners and prisoners at the pleasure of the Secretary of State should also be afforded that facility. Release should be unconditional except in the case of sex offenders, who should be placed on the sex offenders register.

The criteria for releasing a lifer or a prisoner at the pleasure of the Secretary of State on compassionate grounds should be clearly laid out and administered by the commission. That would avoid situations where prisoners are discriminated against, as has happened in the past with British soldiers released after serving only a few years. The power of recall should be removed from the Secretary of State, who is, after all, a political appointee. Recall should not happen unless new evidence is brought before a court.

At the outset I congratulated the Chairperson and the members of the Committee for the work that they did in such a short time. The question of Ad Hoc Committees and their usefulness, considering the scant amount of regard that is given to them, should be taken up by the Business Committee.

I will start by declaring an interest in this, as a former life-sentence prisoner still on licence. I have not had that licence removed, even though I have been released for 11 years. Also, for the Hansard record, I will clear up misinformation from John Kelly, which I know he did not give deliberately. In the case of the "Shankill butchers", two people were sentenced to natural life, and on the day of sentencing the judge repeated that both should serve natural life. Also in the 1970s, two other Loyalists were sentenced to death for the killing of a policeman, but both had the sentence commuted. We should not give out misinformation. I do not know why we are talking about Loyalists and Republicans. I would like to think that that is all behind us. We are now dealing with a new breed of prisoner.

I have to agree with what John Kelly said about the tariff. I am concerned when I hear people talking about rehabilitation and then a tariff. We need to decide what happens to people when they go to prison - is it about rehabilitating or about punishing? I think that a tariff is about punishing, not rehabilitating. How can you sentence someone to life imprisonment and say that he should serve at least 15 years before you consider him for rehabilitation? You can only judge whether a person is rehabilitated by their actions in prison. There is no evidence to suggest whether a person is rehabilitated or not.

I agree with Alban Maginness that we need evidence rather than information, but the information that keeps, and has kept, people in prison for a long time has only been information - it has not been evidence. If we were to take examples of people who have been in prison for a long time, whether Republican or Loyalist, the information was given by the Prison Service and by people on the outside, who made a judgement of whether the prisoner would be a risk to society. How can someone decide that when there is no evidence, only information? In some cases that information was 15 and 16 years old - not current.

We need to be careful about that. I want to be careful about setting tariffs. Rehabilitation is an individual thing, and not something that you can lay down for everybody. People take different lengths of time to be rehabilitated - some can be rehabilitated quite quickly; others cannot. From my own experience, having been in prison, I think that some people are kept in prison too long - they have been rehabilitated, but actually start to turn back. They feel that they have been victimised, not because of something they have done but because of something that people think they are doing or have done. That is a big danger. We need to be careful about tariffs.

Like everyone else, I need to mention that we lacked enough time to respond to every issue. We can complain about that bitterly from now until the cows come home, but it is not going to solve the problem. However, the report is very good, and the Secretary of State and others reading it will get a lot of information from it. It should help them.

Someone once said that nothing concentrates the mind like a hanging - no pun intended. That is what happened to us: we had to concentrate on the job in hand. Mr Paisley Jnr was right when he said that we had to agree on some things and agree to differ on others. At least we produced a report, and it is an example of how this Assembly has worked well. We all set our minds to trying to achieve that, even though we may not necessarily have agreed on the issues.

There are problems as regards the Secretary of State retaining certain powers. I hear quite a lot of people saying - and I agree with them - that there is a difficulty with the decision being a political one. Politicians can be lobbied. However, I would remind them that very few judges in this country do not have a political view. Regardless of whether the view is a party political one, it can be either right or left of centre - and God help the prisoner if it is right of centre, for he will probably not get a fair deal.

We really have to be careful about pinning the responsibility on politicians. Judges also have a role, and I am not sure that the judiciary is independent from political thought or political beliefs. I would not expect it to be. Judges are human beings and they are entitled to hold political opinions. However, is it possible for them to detach themselves from their opinions when they are actually doing their job?

Mr Paisley Jnr quoted quite a good example, and I was thinking about it while he was speaking. I was thinking about his work with the "UDR four". Very few people wanted to get involved with the "UDR four", but Mr Paisley stuck his head above the parapet. He has to be commended for that. He proved to be right in the long run.

The point is that there are ills in this society. There have been travesties of justice the whole way along. Therefore we need to have some sort of mechanism to deal with that. At the end of the day, and irrespective of whether people go back to court to get their cases reopened on appeal, we have to have some mechanism whereby the Government can decide that cases need to be re-opened. These will be political decisions. However, we need to find the appropriate mechanism.

We cannot divorce the judiciary from politics completely. It cannot be done. It is a matter of fact and a matter of life. All of these things are cross-cutting, and we need to have powers whereby politicians or Government can have cases re-opened. It is a question of being above board and letting everybody see it being above board. We need to address the system that facilitates it and ensure that it is above board, so that every person can have that right. Criteria should be laid down, and if people meet the criteria their cases could be reopened. Those are all important issues.

We need to be careful regarding the recall of prisoners. I do not think that anybody in the Committee would have disagreed that there is a lack of clarification about when people could be recalled and when they could not. I am very concerned about it because it is a thorny issue. We need to ensure that there is no breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. That is very important. Some of the evidence given to us suggests that it might have been the case on some occasions in the past. Therefore we need to be careful about the recall of prisoners and take a longer look at it. We need to make sure that there is some consultation with others and that we get opinions from them.

I congratulate the Chairperson and Committee staff again for pulling this report together. We will have more Ad Hoc Committees, and we may not have the time to respond to every issue that we would like to have.

However, we need to respond in the short time that we have. If this is anything to go by, we can produce reasonable documents - in fact, good documents - in a short time. This report and the flags report are examples of how we will deal with legislation on reserved matters. We must respond, no matter how little time we have.

I associate myself with the comments of Billy Hutchinson, Alban Maginness and Ian Paisley Jnr about the work of the staff and about how agreeing to disagree meant that there was no more serious conflict on the Committee.

Several themes and principles that arise from the Ad Hoc Committee's report are relevant to this discussion and others. First, I share the concern that the Secretary of State's consultation with the Assembly on the matter was inadequate. However, as we also know, it goes further than that. At the public hearing, Brice Dickson, the chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, replied as follows to a question about whether the Northern Ireland Office had consulted the Human Rights Commission before the draft Order was issued:

The statutory body responsible for human rights matters in Northern Ireland, as laid down by an Act of the British Parliament was not consulted in any way prior to the issue of the draft legislation. That should not surprise us. At the Ad Hoc Committee on flags, a similar question was put to the chair of the Equality Commission, Joan Harbison, and she confirmed that the Equality Commission had not been consulted by the Secretary of State or the Northern Ireland Office in advance of the issue of the draft Flags (Northern Ireland) Order 2000. There is a structural problem with consultation with the Assembly and the main statutory bodies in the North that are responsible for the issues that have arisen from draft legislation. That structural problem must be addressed.

Like others, the SDLP welcomes the draft legislation, although not without objection. We welcome it for several reasons. First, as Prof Jackson said at the public hearing, the draft legislation introduces a principled and human-rights-based approach to the release of life prisoners. Although there are weaknesses in the draft Order, that principled and human-rights-based approach is the appropriate method for the consideration of future legislation. That should be made explicit, which is why the Committee has recommended that article 3 be amended to read as follows:

inter alia -

That makes explicit the principled and human rights-based approach to the release of prisoners that Prof Jackson said was implicit in the draft Order.

There are some even more compelling principles that inform both the draft legislation and the recommendations of the Committee. If the Assembly can agree to endorse those principles in relation to this draft legislation, I would like us to endorse the application of the same principles when it comes to our own legislation. They are good principles, and they represent good practice.

First, there are a number of principles in the legislation and in the Committee's recommendations about the independence of membership of statutory bodies, the transparent working of statutory bodies and the belief that such bodies should be free of political interference. That is why the Committee said that in order to ensure that members are independent in discharging their functions, they should have security of tenure for at least five years in the first instance. That will ensure that people who are fulfilling a public function do so independent of obvious external pressures. A tenure that is limited to one, two or three years is an external pressure. By creating certainty of tenure, one creates greater certainty of the independence of a member. That principle should apply across the board in relation to public nominations. In due course the Assembly may have to consider that principle in respect of other public nominations.

Secondly, appointments to public bodies should be decided through open competition. That is an appropriate principle that should influence those who are appointed to public bodies. It should apply equally to other public appointments. In the North there are approximately 3,500 people appointed to quangos and similar organisations. We should have, and are beginning to have, a rigorous system of open competition for filling those appointments. That is good in practice and principle, and it informed the Committee's report.

Thirdly, and at the risk of going into uncertain territory, another principle was flagged up in the Patten Report on policing. It said that there should be a robust separation of powers between the policing board and the Executive. Those principles also informed the Committee in its recommendations to the Assembly on the powers of the Secretary of State and the powers of the Commissioners.

There are passages in the draft report where the Committee states that there should be a robust separation of powers between the Secretary of State and the Executive on one hand and the Commissioners on the other. Those examples include the power of the Secretary of State under the draft Order to recall a prisoner and the power of the Secretary of State and a judge to determine what part of a life sentence prisoner's life sentence should be served where he has been transferred to the North from another prison. There are a number of other examples, but they escape me at the moment. The Committee endorses the principle of a robust separation of powers between the Executive on one hand and a legal authority on the other. That principle should begin to inform the Assembly in other deliberations yet to arise.

Fourthly, the principle of transparency is also important. The Committee's report says explicitly that while there was discussion about transparency, it has concerns about the Secretary of State not discharging information about a prisoner in certain circumstances. While the draft Order introduces a special advocates clause in order to mitigate the prospect of a prisoner not being aware of matters that might be relevant in the consideration of his case, the Committee said that that was not adequate to ensure that there was an accountable and transparent process when it came to determining what a prisoner should or should not know.

It should be for the Commissioners to decide what information is or is not made available to a prisoner whose case is under consideration - not for the Secretary of State or the special advocate. That is an important principle. If the Assembly accepts that principle, it will have a wider application in other ongoing procedures in Northern Ireland where information is not made known to a certain person because it may be security-related or security-relevant.

As a consequence, in the North there are procedures where a special advocate process is already in place in spite of the difficulties that some of us think are associated with that procedure. If the Assembly considers that the special advocate procedure is not adequate with respect to the release of life prisoners, then the Assembly may, in due course, similarly consider that it is not appropriate or relevant in other cases.

The final point I want to make is about release on licence. While Alban Maginness and others have dealt with the substantive parts of the Committee's recommendations, I want to highlight that part relating to the release on licence of a life prisoner. It seems inconsistent to say that if the process of imprisonment is an exercise in deterrence and rehabilitation, and if a life sentence review board concludes that the deterrence principle has been satisfied, the licence cannot be annulled. The rehabilitation principle should be satisfied to the point where a prisoner on a life sentence licence should have that licence annulled. That person should be treated equally with every other citizen.

I support the report.

We have heard the views of many Members. This is a very complex issue. When the Committee was given the task to do, it got tore into it. Many loose ends had to be tied up. The Committee knew that there was a job to be done, and we put our backs into it. Overall, there is support for the report. The Committee worked hard to arrive at the report, and there was agreement on the need for this legislation. There was also agreement on the Committee's recommendations and concerns, and they are all highlighted in the report.

This is a good report. It speaks well for every Member who contributed to it. I would also like to thank the staff for their hard work. We have put into place, I hope, new legislation that will bring about change in an area where it is needed.

I have taken note of Members' concerns, particularly with regard to the consultation period provided for the Assembly in section 85 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. The point is well made in the Ad Hoc Committee's report. I will bring the matter to the attention of the Speaker on his return.

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