Q175 Mr. Dave Anderson: I am going to ask you about the Historic Enquiries Team. Next week the Committee are going to meet the team in Northern Ireland. When we interviewed Sir Hugh Orde, each time he said the HET was "a burden worth having" and "a very positive thing", but what would the view of your organisation be about the work the HET has been doing and have they carried out the role they set out to do?

Miss Beirne: When the Historic Enquiries Team was first launched there was a lot of uncertainty in the early stages because there was uncertainty about what deaths they were going to cover, what their terms of reference would be and so on. Over time it has become clearer and they have been able to communicate that message very clearly to people to come to them. Some families will not engage with the Historic Enquiries Team because it is part of the Police Service in Northern Ireland, they see it as intimately tied in institutionally to the police and therefore they do not want to engage. Other families are very eager and pleased to engage with the Historic Enquiries Team. One thing which has been very positive about their work is that from the outset they have said that they are victim-centred and they early wanted to engage directly with families, keep families informed about what is happening and so on. I think they have had a whole range of problems, not least I was taken aback when I read the testimony you received from the PSNI about the turnover in staff. I realised that but I had not actually realised the percentages. I had realised that by virtue of the people we were dealing with; different people quite a lot. To some extent they had to get themselves up to speed, many of them were from outside our jurisdiction and they had to get themselves up to speed and take on a very difficult area of work. We have engaged with some families who have been unhappy about the process; it is taking too long, they are not getting answers and other family members who felt that this is a very useful mechanism. Mixed responses really.

Q176 Chairman: You would not criticise the general integrity of the operation.

Miss Beirne: No, I think this was a very genuine attempt. It is a very narrow remit, as they rightly say and as they make clear to potential people who come looking to them; it is a police response to the fact that there are so many household murders and they are carrying out a basic investigation of all of the deaths in the conflict and that is just one part of the puzzle. We make regular submissions to the Council of Europe because the Committee of Ministers is overseeing a number of Article 2 cases, cases which we in fact took to Europe. We always make it clear that the Historic Enquiries Team cannot be compliant with that standard because it is internal to the police. However, at the same time they have certain benefits and there can be a very effective investigation; the more recent the more likely it is to be effective. The victim-centred approach has been very positive.

Q177 Mr. Dave Anderson: The Police Ombudsman told us that the volume of work which has been produced by HET is giving him concerns about the ability of his Office to do the job. He said that the potential shortfall in funding could be £2 million to £3 million a year. Do you have a view on that?

Miss Beirne: I have mixed views. It was rather unfortunate that the current Police Ombudsman commented negatively about dealing with the past before he had taken up office and, rightly or wrongly, there is a certain questioning about whether he did not really think the Office should be dealing with cases in the past and now, surprise, surprise, he has agreed his earlier analysis that they should not be engaging with cases from the past. At the same time, clearly when it was set up it was not envisaged the Police Ombudsman's Office would take on the level of investigation they are carrying out and it was essentially to look forward to new cases coming to them, though there might be some grave and exceptional ones. Now that has understandably been interpreted to mean all deaths in which there may have been police involvement that is stacking up into a very, very large number of cases. It is a very genuine problem that he is now juggling with. I noticed that there may have been some reference to a protocol being agreed between the Police Ombudsman and the Historic Enquiries Team and that is something we would want to follow up on because we have been asked several times whether we can find that out. It did seem as though there was a potential gap between the work the Historic Enquiries Team was doing and the Police Ombudsman and who was actually taking responsibility at what level. That is one thing we shall be pursuing with both entities. It is a big job certainly.

Q178 Mr. Dave Anderson: Is there a risk from the continuing focus on historic conduct to the reputation of what the police are trying to do today?

Miss Beirne: I do not think so. I think that it is much more risky if we do not find out what was happening in the past or something of what was happening in the past and ensure that we can test that against the changes which have been made. That is much more risky. A lot of people will look to the police and will want to have confidence in policing as it is now and as it will be in the future, but some of that surely has to be engaging with the pressures which were put on policing, pressures that policing created and making sure that anything we do now we have learned from the past. I do not know whether this is directly relevant, but in the wake of the McCord Inquiry last year the Chief Constable referred to the fact that these problems could not occur now because there had been a big clearing out of informers and very detailed analysis of all their informers and they had more or less sacked a very high percentage, something like 20%, of informers, half of them on the grounds that they had been involved or might have been involved in serious criminal activity, half because they were no longer particularly effective or relevant. We have said that is excellent, that there was a triggering off of this analysis of informers, but we have asked on several occasions whether, if so many were sacked because they were involved in serious criminal activity, charges have been laid against any of them, whether charges have been laid against any of the police handlers of those informers who were engaged in serious criminal activity. Until those sorts of things start to happen ... That is what is needed to ensure public confidence in policing, that there are no serious criminals being used as informers or that the police are not turning a blind eye to that kind of activity. That is the kind of learning we want to get from the past, making sure that whatever legislation we have now, whatever guidelines we have, overseeing amongst other informers, that we learn from that background.

Sammy Wilson: That is just what worries me about the approach which you have to the past. I noted very carefully what you said about whether charges have been brought against people, whether charges have been brought against the handlers, but many of those people were handled in situations where the protocols which are in place today and against which you clearly now want the police to be judged, were not in place. To have this kind of witch hunt - because that is how this is perceived and I know you paint a picture of a cross-community organisation but I have to say that is not how CAJ are perceived in Northern Ireland - this desire to have police prosecuted for how they handled informers in the past, even though the protocols in the past would have been different from the protocols at present, is the very concern that people have about this ongoing inquiry, that it is a witch hunt against one side where, as Gregory Campbell has pointed out, there is nothing. There is no paper trail, you do not even know the names of the people and in many cases there is no way of bringing the terrorists, who committed far worse atrocities, through the same process.

Q179 Chairman: These are very important questions and I should like you to give as clear an answer as you can.

Miss Beirne: Absolutely. First on the witch hunt, if I and my organisation were reassured, just to take that concrete example I gave, that in the clearing out of the large number of informers a certain proportion of them were considered to have been engaged in serious criminal activity - and to my knowledge there has never been a statement about what internal, never mind external, steps were taken regarding those informants who were engaged in criminal activity or the police handlers who were dealing with them - it is quite conceivable that if the Chief Constable would say "Here are the steps which have been taken vis-à-vis these people or vis-à-vis this system and it is impossible to get the information at this stage. We are not able to bring them to court for X and Y reasons" that would be a very understandable and in a sense a good public debate to have. What I am concerned about is that there has to my knowledge not been any exploration of how to convict people who engaged in serious criminal activity and what should or should not have happened to the police handlers of those informers. Personally I am not asking for a witch hunt. The only reason why any of this money would be justified is that people want answers but the key thing is that we learn from that past and make sure it cannot happen again. It is as simple as that both in Northern Ireland and there may be lessons for here. On the cross-community point, that is obviously a criticism which is regularly made of CAJ. Your own party and Gregory Campbell put down a resolution at the Assembly which accused us of being anti-British and anti-Unionist. Even though I took personal exception to that, I did appreciate the fact that you engaged with us at least. We are still hopefully awaiting a response. I am more than happy to answer both for our executive committee, our staff, our membership, the nature of the work we do, that we are a cross-community organisation. I can draw parallels in other countries where people who work on human rights and civil liberties are seen to have left-wing interests or be anti-state or anti-government, a label which is very easily placed on them. I would argue that in trying to make sure this is a better society, better policing, that we are a very positive and, I hope, constructive contributor to the debate, so I would challenge that. Lastly, to give a very concrete example of something that we did recently that related very much to a Loyalist group, I am not necessarily saying you are pleading that case particularly, but it was of concern to me in that CAJ met with the Chief Constable and had been pursuing this issue about the informers and the current practice about informers. We had received several complaints from individuals detained in Loyalist working class communities about being approached to be informers and when we raised this with the Chief Constable he directed us to the Police Ombudsman's Office. I said of course we directed individuals who had complaints to the Police Ombudsman's Office but it seemed to me that this was something important he should know about. That kind of concern, trying to feed back current concerns to the leadership of the police, is something we are trying to do.

Dr McDonnell: The insinuation that I was taking from Sammy Wilson's point and I would not like our witness to go away with the impression that it is the Committee's view was that somehow or other a crime is not a crime depending on who commits it.

Chairman: I do not think the witness is taking away any views. She is answering questions from individual members of the Committee. We will deliberate later and decide what weight we put on evidence we have heard from a whole range of people, including you and we are very grateful to you for coming.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

The full transcript may be read here.

Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT