Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: The effect of paramilitary activity and organised crime on society in Northern Ireland, HC 24
Wednesday 8 March 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 8 March 2023.
Watch the meeting
Members present: Simon Hoare (Chair); Sir Robert Buckland; Stephen Farry; Mary Kelly Foy; Sir Robert Goodwill; Claire Hanna; Carla Lockhart; Jim Shannon; Mr Robin Walker.
Questions 421 to 473
Witnesses
I: Rt Hon Chris Heaton-Harris MP, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland; Dominic Wilson, Director General, Northern Ireland Office; James Crawford, Deputy Director, Security and Protection Group, Northern Ireland Office.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– (PNI0022) - Northern Ireland Office
Witnesses: Rt Hon Chris Heaton-Harris MP, Dominic Wilson and James Crawford.
Q421 Chair: Good morning, colleagues, and good morning to our witness and support act—I suppose we could call it that, if they do not think that the incorrect term. A warm welcome to the Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris, to Dominic Wilson, the director general of the NIO, and to James Crawford, the deputy director of the security and protection group at the NIO. Gentlemen, you are very welcome.
Secretary of State, I know that you wanted to make an opening remark, but I just wanted to say for the benefit of those who follow these proceedings—and there are some people who do follow the work of this Committee in the public sphere, which is always welcome—that this is a session specifically with regard to our inquiry on the effect of paramilitary activity and organised crime on society in Northern Ireland.
We will want to see you in due course to discuss the Windsor framework. We all recognise that important consideration is being given in Northern Ireland to the proposal and we took a decision that it was sensible to provide the space as a Committee for that to take place. We will come to it, in case anybody thinks, “Why on earth are they not talking about that, given the immediacy and the importance of the issue?” Secretary of State, I reiterate the welcome and the floor is yours.
Chris Heaton-Harris: Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for welcoming my two colleagues as well—two gentlemen. As you know, I have had this job for only six months. This is a problem that has been tormenting Northern Ireland for a lot longer than that. Both Dominic and James have much more experience and knowledge of this subject, so, where I cannot provide proper answers, I am hoping and knowing that they will both be able to help me out.
Chair: No pressure, gentlemen.
Chris Heaton-Harris: And now over to them! [Laughter.]
Chair: Nice to see you. Bye! [Laughter.]
Chris Heaton-Harris: Thank you for your Committee’s interest in this subject; I am grateful to have this opportunity today. I have been monitoring the witnesses you have been hearing, and it has been quite a fascinating group of sessions, so I hope that we can add some value to that. You heard some really good people with great experience in this area who are, you could almost say, at the coalface of trying to deal with it as well.
Before I start, I just want to say how deeply appalled I was—and I know everyone on this Committee would have been—by the despicable shooting two weeks ago of DCI John Caldwell. My thoughts remain with him, his family, all those who witnessed the terrible events that day, and, indeed, the wider community of Omagh, who truly do want to move on, and thought they had. As we saw from the very public response there, they truly want to put all these things into the dim and distant past, so that they can move on as a community and a society.
I just wanted to use this opportunity, because I have not had one in public, to pay tribute to all those who provided immediate support for DCI Caldwell, and the emergency responders and the health service professionals who have provided him with care. I visited Omagh last week to meet with various people and to see how things were going. I met some unbelievably impressive people who were put in the face of something that none of us would ever like to have been in, and reacted absolutely brilliantly, including kids, adults volunteering at the sports club, and, indeed, the PSNI officers who responded, among many others.
I just wanted to use this opportunity to say thank you to all those and to express my best wishes for John as he, hopefully, speeds through his recovery.
Chair: I know, Secretary of State, that the whole Committee will echo and underscore those remarks that you have just made, and we are grateful to you for making them.
Chris Heaton-Harris: Thank you, and thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Just as a brief opening to this session, I know that this Committee understands completely that we are approaching the 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, and it is really important to remind ourselves, as we look at things that are maybe not so good and that still exist today, of the extraordinary progress that has been made towards peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland over the 25 years since.
There are so many people who have not been to Belfast or Northern Ireland for such a period of time, and have a reflection in their mind of what it was like and, therefore, what it is like. Belfast and Northern Ireland have been through transformational change. Peace has brought stability and opportunity, enabling Northern Ireland to develop all sorts of vibrant mini-economies throughout the whole place.
We must acknowledge that, despite this significant progress, there remain a small number of people involved in terrorism and wider paramilitarism who continue to cause significant harm to the communities in which they operate. It is clear, from the evidence that you have heard, that a sustained, long-term effort is required to tackle this enduring problem.
We, as a Government, remain committed to delivering our vision for a safer Northern Ireland and to working with all our partners to support efforts against this enduring threat and harms posed to communities by terrorist and paramilitary groups.
As Committee members will be aware, under the devolution settlement the response to threats to national security is the responsibility of the UK Government, and the response to wider paramilitary criminality and organised crime is the responsibility of the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland. The groups and individuals involved in terrorism and paramilitarism in Northern Ireland do not organise themselves according to these constitutional boundaries. We must be aware that they do not look at us and think, “That is a devolved thing”. They are just causing issues for communities and do not care about how we define them.
The threat and harm from Northern Ireland-related terrorism is inextricably linked to the enduring problem of paramilitarism in a wider context, and in the wider context of organised crime. The lines are often blurred between those involved in terrorist activity and in other forms of paramilitary activity and organised crime, and you have heard quite a lot of evidence to suggest that.
Across this ecosystem, these groups and individuals involved cause harm to their communities in ways that are obvious, such as violent attacks, and in ways that are much less obvious, including intimidation and fear, exerting influence and control, essentially to try to remain relevant. That is why we need to do all that we can to remove their opportunities to do this.
Q422 Chair: Let me pick up on a few of those points. There are things that, as you will know in your position, as your colleagues will know, and as we have been hearing about during this inquiry, you would not tolerate taking place in Daventry; nor would I in North Dorset or any of us in our GB constituencies.
I take it from what you have said that you will have no truck with the slight defence argument of Northern Irish exceptionalism: “It has always gone on. We have always had it. We just have to try to contain it rather than try to stamp it out completely”.
Chris Heaton-Harris: No, but I do have an understanding of the history as to where we have got. There is no exceptionalism at all. I am with you on that, but it comes from a very different context, and trying to understand the context from which it flows is genuinely important in trying to help crack this problem.
Q423 Chair: Can I turn to terminology? You will be aware that we have heard from both the PSNI and the prison service as part of this inquiry, and we are alert to the organic process of how the prison service is dealing with prisoners who are there on paramilitary/terrorist charges. In the terminology that we use, there is a vaingloriousness of paramilitaries—people who are working to either kick the Brits out or keep Dublin away.
In essence, these are thugs. They are drug dealers. They are destroyers of lives. They are child and young people groomers. Their activities fall probably within the broader umbrella of safeguarding issues. There is nothing grand or brave about these people. These are intimidatory thugs. Do you accept that? Do you accept that, if we move away from the quasi-militaristic language that they are inclined to use to describe themselves, the wider community still more clearly sees them for what they are and, therefore, makes them less relevant?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I can understand where the language has flowed from. It goes to my previous answer. There is a historical context here that I would like to think is no longer relevant to modern-day society in Northern Ireland, but that some people do hark back to. In some ways, you could say that the language used is a description of part of that, but I do completely understand your point.
I know that you have talked quite a lot about what these people are. You cannot compare—and I have been caught out trying to do this—organised crime in London, Northamptonshire or whatever with these groups in Northern Ireland. They are subtly and historically different, even though they might be doing the same things, and their network within society is completely different, but I completely understand your point about how society might be rewarding them, almost, with military attributes that they simply do not deserve.
Q424 Chair: You have referenced the shooting of DCI John Caldwell. There have been some other events in recent times that, of course, cause concern. Are you able to say a little bit about your assessment of the security level in Northern Ireland today and your concerns, if any, about the possibility of an increase in paramilitary activity?
Chris Heaton-Harris: The assessment of the security level is done independently of me, and rightly so—by other experts, based on a whole host of evidence. I do not really have anything to say about that, but this Committee will know that it went down to “substantial” last March, and that was a welcome step. That was based on amazing work that had been going on for a very long time by PSNI and its partners in the security space, who have been degrading the threats that have been emerging.
It is true that we have had this shooting, and there was the attempted bombing of police officers on 17 November last year by an IED. Previous to that, we had had a good period of time without such an attack. In the assessment of the security threat, the official answer that I have heard many times is that this assessment is being constantly looked at to see if it is the right level, by those who know what they are doing. I have nothing much more to say than that.
James Crawford: You heard from ACC McEwan in one of your previous sessions. I would reiterate the point he made about the statistics of paramilitary activities, shootings, bombings and punishment attacks. In 2021-22, they were consistently at the lowest level that they have been in the last decade. From a trajectory point of view, there has been impressive progress.
Q425 Chair: You mentioned there the traditional way in which they manifest their activities. As a Committee, we have been hearing about a very significant and identifiable growth in what you would describe as economic intimidation. This is lending at incredibly high interest rates and, if people then cannot make the payments, either finding payment in kind, effectively enforced prostitution, or saying, “Would you please look after this gun/drugs under the floorboards or in your loo cistern?”—whatever it may happen to be—or, “Can we borrow your 14-year-old boy to go and do something that we are not prepared to do ourselves?”
Those are not bombs and baseball bats per se, but they are hugely impactful on a very vulnerable group of people in Northern Ireland, predominantly, although not exclusively, young single mothers who, in a cost of living crisis, have been finding things very difficult. How do you assess that with regard to the levels of activity that are taking place and think about strategies to counteract them?
Chris Heaton-Harris: We have been talking about this quite a lot. It is one of the things that you would expect a Secretary of State and other Ministers in the team to do when we go and visit different places. One aspect of the visits has been to meet some of the groups that offer support to people in such situations and to talk to those who are trying to police such situations.
I do not think that paramilitary lending is a new thing. It might be gaining traction and happening more, but I am quite sure that it has been going on for a significant amount of time.
Q426 Chair: It has, but there is an identifiable increase and it seems to be manifesting itself. You will be aware of the Spotlight programme on the BBC recently, about people who seem to be finding out who is visiting a food bank, for example, or who may have been signing on for universal credit and awaiting their payment. “This is the tiding you over bit of money that will just help you. By the way, you now owe us £300 rather than the £50 we lent you”.
You are absolutely right. It has always been there, as it has been all over the place, but it seems to be getting far worse. Is there not a risk that, if those debts mount up, it acts as a rather active recruiting sergeant for younger people who are deployed, effectively, by their parents as a way of paying off the debt and the loan?
Chris Heaton-Harris: You asked me about the BBC Spotlight programme in the House, the night after it was aired. If you recall, I had not seen it, but I have seen it since. Those concerns truly do exist throughout the policing and security ecosystem, and, indeed, through communities in Northern Ireland.
We have to look at ways that we can try to get in right at the grassroots. I know that you have heard lots of great evidence about the work going on to try to strengthen communities throughout Northern Ireland, so that they can repel advances from paramilitary groups—or those associated with paramilitary groups but coming to people’s doorsteps to offer support, not necessarily wearing that paramilitary hat—and go through valid ways of getting support.
The thing is that it is not a new problem. I would not even know if it was growing or not, because it has not been exposed to the level that it currently is.
Q427 Chair: As a Committee, we can say with near certainty that it is growing. That is certainly the evidence that we have been hearing.
Chris Heaton-Harris: Fair enough. Because it has not necessarily been measured in the past, it is very difficult to say.
Chair: There is no baseline. I get that.
Chris Heaton-Harris: There are now a lot of projects throughout all the communities that are affected by this—maybe we will come on to talk about them—that are trying to divert people, invariably young men, into proper, good activities that might mean a journey to employment, as well as the more traditional sporting and other pursuits that there are. There is a great third-sector offering when it comes to helping people with their financial problems and other things, and trying to intercept a person who is possibly falling into the grips of these people before they get there, by having a whole host of other services and structures available to them.
Q428 Chair: Is there any merit in your Department having conversations with DWP with regard to the timetable of claiming, say, universal credit? It is very often that black hole of financial self-sufficiency that is being exploited, with an entirely different set of consequences from what we would experience in, let us say, England and Wales.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I have conversations with DWP Ministers about this, strangely enough, and about a whole host of other issues. The DWP offers great services. Sometimes there is an element of not wanting to go to the Government to get the right level of benefits, and we all have constituents who have struggled to make that first step and connect with the services and other things that are available. There is a bit of an issue in general, in Northern Ireland, in terms of connecting people to the services that already exist and making sure they know that they are there.
I know that my DWP colleagues are very aware that it is very important in Northern Ireland—like it is elsewhere, but very important in Northern Ireland—to try to address the gap that you describe for universal credit. Equally, there are other issues, such as first payment, sorting out bank accounts and a whole host of other things, that they can step in, step up to and help with.
Q429 Chair: Yesterday, the Government unveiled a set of proposals with regard to dealing with small boats and illegal migration. What conversations, if any, have you had or do you intend to have with the Home Office on a potential abuse of the common travel area, with people landing in, say, the Republic, travelling to the north and then moving to GB? I am aware of the Home Office proposals with regards to travel documentation and the like, but it is a window that is exploitable, is it not?
Chris Heaton-Harris: We have had a lot of conversations with the Home Office about this to explain the issue.
Q430 Chair: The Home Office very rarely seems to understand how the manoeuvrability on the island of Ireland works in practice. That is our experience as a Committee.
Chris Heaton-Harris: There is much more awareness about the common travel area now in the Home Office than there has ever been before.
Chair: That is encouraging.
Q431 Mr Walker: Thank you for your comments, particularly about John Caldwell, Secretary of State. I just wanted to come back to the Chair’s earlier point about the exploitation and targeting of children. We have all heard the stories about people in smart cars waiting outside the school gates, people being given guns or drugs to hide in their houses, as the Chair just mentioned, and children being deliberately targeted.
I absolutely accept your point about the different context in Northern Ireland in terms of paramilitarism versus organised crime elsewhere, but, sitting on two Select Committees as I do, we recently had a session at the Education Select Committee on county lines and the prevalence of that. We heard about exactly the same behaviours that we are talking about here and that we have heard about repeatedly at this Committee, when it comes to paramilitary groups targeting children, getting them involved in their criminal activity, and using those children as leverage on the parents and the family.
I just wonder if you feel, as Secretary of State, that there is enough co-ordination between the work going on across England on county lines and what is going on in Northern Ireland. I accept that there is a different context to it, but the crimes are very much the same. The approaches are very much the same. One of the things that both inquiries have drawn to my attention and to the attention of Members is the fact that very few people ever seem to be prosecuted for coercive control or child abuse in these cases, even though that is, effectively, what is going on.
I wonder whether we should be looking at what the guidance is for the prosecutions that take place and whether, in Northern Ireland, this dual layer of the PSNI looking at the domestic crimes and the UK Government being responsible for terrorism per se might sometimes get in the way of realising the seriousness of the crimes that are taking place against children.
Chris Heaton-Harris: It is a genuinely good question and one that I have asked. How does policing in Northern Ireland learn the lessons from or even help teach lessons to the various domestic forces in England, Scotland and Wales? There is a very strong flow of information across the system.
It has been demonstrated to me when I have asked this question previously. I asked it yesterday in a meeting with a high-ranking police officer, and it was very well demonstrated to me that lessons have been learned. There is now quite a healthy cross-fertilisation of expertise, where people have been moving to Northern Ireland, and PSNI officers have been moving into other forces elsewhere. The national College of Policing does a huge amount of work in this space. The National Crime Agency fits into this as well.
I go back to something you said in the middle of your question, which is really important to me and I needed to understand when I became Secretary of State. While I have described how it looks on an organigram—you have national security, domestic policing and what goes on in communities—there needs to be a natural flow of information through the system, with no one getting in each other’s way and, in fact, everybody helping each other. It is definitely not perfect, but I have been pleased to see the amount of information and co-operation that flows throughout the system.
I am not an expert on policing, and so I would not know how that compares to other places, although I was, in a previous job, the responsible Minister for the British Transport Police, which has a very strong counterterrorism arm. We have just seen in the Manchester inquiry that every force can learn lessons in different ways.
With the limited comparators that I truly have, it is in a good and healthy state, but it can continually be improved and should be. In terms of how that feels on the ground, there are people who have expertise in county lines and are talking to the PSNI, and there are people with experience of county lines within the PSNI, so I do not think that there is a gap in knowledge, but it is a very different understanding.
I am sure that we will get on to how things work across the border and cross-border co-operation, but this is one area where I would say it is particularly strong.
Q432 Mr Walker: That is reassuring. You talked about the statistics, and we absolutely recognise that there is an encouraging trend in at least the visible statistics of punishment beatings, et cetera. I accept what the Secretary of State says about what has happened in Belfast and the improvement in the situation there in general. The question that I asked the police on a number of occasions and was not able, really, to get any answers to is whether we could have any examples of areas that were under paramilitary control at the time of the Good Friday agreement but were no longer under paramilitary control or influence. Sadly, I was not able to be given any reassurance on that.
Do you think that a geographical approach is useful in this respect, looking at areas where paramilitary control can be removed or can be demonstrated to have dissipated?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I have a very similar view to you on this, Mr Walker. It might be slightly crude to say, but it is fair to say that there are decent geographic areas where there is obvious paramilitary activity and has been for a very long time. I am afraid that my corporate historic knowledge does not go all the way back to 25 years ago, when the BGFA was signed. However, I know that we are going to talk about it, but when we come, hopefully, to getting to the point where we can transition these groups away from being paramilitaries, there is a very strong argument that they are not one big structural unit. You can do that by geographical area.
Q433 Chair: Can I pick you up on something there? You just said “transitioning”. There have been 25 years to transition, and those who have not, it would seem to me, are probably the hardest nuts to crack. When do we draw the line? When do you draw the line? When does the PSNI draw the line on transitioning and just do crackdown and annihilation? This may not be the most elegant phrase to use, but they have been given enough rope, and those who have not transitioned have now hung themselves.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I would love to think that we are near that point, but I am quite sure that we are not. There are some of these paramilitary-style groups that are still well organised and still not willing to go down a path to something. There are others that are, and some with the same group moniker in different places or at different stages.
I am not a policing expert and, again, Northern Ireland has its own specific, special and concerning history in this space, but I am pretty sure that a crackdown or an annihilation is not where police tactics would go. I am pretty sure that the reaction would not be the one that we would wish to see.
However, I get your point entirely that Northern Ireland is moving forward more quickly now towards a much stronger, more stable and more prosperous environment. In areas where there are better jobs, you can probably point to the fact that the traction of these individuals and groups is weaker. There is a proper route in policing terms, and in how you set up community structures and how they work.
We have responsibility as a Government to try to make Northern Ireland as prosperous as we can. All of those things contribute to this. Looking at the Northern Irish politicians in the room, the one thing that I have learned very quickly as the Secretary of State is that there is no point in having a timetable for anything in Northern Ireland, because you set up deadlines and then everybody is focused on the wrong thing.
Q434 Chair: I take that. Mr Walker was asking about sentencing. Given that we want to turn the dial to make their activities less socially acceptable, where they are hiding behind these flags of convenience, would you agree with me that a so-called paramilitary who inserts anally, against a child’s will, a cache of drugs to be transported across a town or a city, as well as being charged with drug dealing, should also be charged with rape?
Chris Heaton-Harris: My gut reaction is absolutely 100%, and probably a lot of other things as well.
Chair: Because we do not do it like that, do we?
Mr Walker: We do not seem to.
Q435 Chair: That is the problem. Could the prosecution authorities look at it in the round, instead of just that act? Nobody wants to say they are working for a child rapist, a child sexual assaulter or a child abuser, because that is what it is. Mr Wilson, you are nodding.
Dominic Wilson: It does come back to the point that you and Mr Walker made earlier about terminology and the language used. You used the phrase “child abuse”. This is not, in many cases, paramilitary-style beatings or punishment beatings. The harm is child abuse, and we should call it out for what it is.
Chair: We should stop calling them punishment beatings, because they are not.
Dominic Wilson: We should call it out for what it is.
Q436 Chair: These people are not arbiters of who should be punished and who should not be.
Dominic Wilson: As you will have probably heard from the Department of Justice and the TPP, a lot of what they are trying to do is to change the language used in some of those areas.
Q437 Mary Kelly Foy: Good morning, Secretary of State. Returning slightly to the issue that the Chair raised about young women, specifically those in some of these communities who depend on the money lenders and the criminal gangs, from the evidence we heard, the fundamental and overwhelming issue is poverty, which is the reason they are using these money lenders.
What surprised me was the fact that, without a functioning Executive at the minute, there is no formal childcare provision in Northern Ireland, which is a huge barrier to these young women getting into work or being allowed to train for work in order to even think about a career. There is no formal childcare because of no functioning Executive. It is a huge barrier to work and, therefore, led to massive poverty in these estates.
I would not say that these young women are reluctant to claim benefits. It is more that they are desperate and, if they do not have that income, they turn to money lenders, prostitution or people trafficking—all of those activities that these criminal gangs are carrying out. This will continue without childcare provision. It is something as simple as that.
I do not know whether you have spoken to the DWP about how the Government can step in while there is no functioning Executive to provide something as simple as formal childcare provision for these women. The evidence that we heard is that there are hundreds of them.
Chris Heaton-Harris: Forgive me for making the obvious point, but there not being an Executive has caused a whole host of issues that are not helpful in this space, in the tackling poverty space, in the education space, in the health space and across a whole host of areas.
Behind all of this, of course, DWP still does provide the level of benefits that people would expect to be provided, and all the statutory duties that are required are being fulfilled to the best of the ability of the Northern Ireland Civil Service in Stormont as well.
Your point is well made. I have had a number of meetings, including a fascinating one yesterday, with women’s centres in Northern Ireland about what services they can offer and what they are trying to do in their communities across Northern Ireland. While you have identified the issue as it is now, the vast majority of the people we are talking about are people who love to be called the big man in their area. What I am seeing in some of these spaces now are really strong women coming to the fore to almost counteract them.
You are right that we need to sort out all the issues of poverty, and prosperity hopefully does some of that. We need the Executive back, so that the issues that you found are being blamed on there being no Executive can be solved. There is something that is already going on, and I have met some of these individuals, where helping to empower the right sort of people in their local communities, lots of whom are women who have just had enough of what has been going on in the past, is an extra way of getting right to the heart of the communities that we need to help transition—and I am afraid that it is the word “transition”—away from paramilitaries.
Q438 Sir Robert Goodwill: Good morning, Secretary of State. We have already discussed the importance of terminology and, indeed, you have mentioned the danger of giving these groups military attributes that they do not deserve. How does the Northern Ireland Office define paramilitarism, and how does this definition differentiate from the definition of terrorism? Indeed, does the use of the word “paramilitarism” risk legitimising criminals’ influence on the communities that they seek to coerce or control?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I have learned so many things in six months; you would not believe it. There is not a simple definition of paramilitarism in the Northern Ireland context at all. The Fresh Start panel noted, back in its 2016 report on the disbandment of paramilitary groups, that no two groups or individuals within these groups were the same. They pointed to all the significant differences in the nature and evolution of the various groups themselves. A single definition just does not capture the complexity of these groups in the slightest.
As I said before, these groups resemble organised crime gangs in some ways, but, in other ways, there is this overlay of historical context that means they have organised in the way that they have. They organise differently. They use militaristic language and paraphernalia themselves. Quite different to organised crime in Great Britain, they sometimes do have political objectives as well.
Q439 Sir Robert Goodwill: It is up to them how they refer to themselves, but are we, in some way, legitimising them and referring to what they would see as their glorious past by just not calling them organised criminal gangs or armed groups?
Chris Heaton-Harris: As Dominic Wilson said, we are changing the way that we use language about them, but they are commonly known as paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. While I am very keen to make sure that these groups are transitioned away and do other things in their communities, it is going to be a hard ask to get the people of Northern Ireland to call them anything else. Like you, I feel that we should not be in that space of allowing them to use this terminology, but we are where we are in Northern Ireland.
Q440 Chair: Can we just turn to pounds, shillings and pence? Clearly, budgetary pressures on the PSNI are likely to have an impact on policing and, therefore, law enforcement’s ability to tackle paramilitaries. The absence of the Executive is causing significant short-term funding problems for a whole variety of people and organisations that are focused on trying to keep young people on the straight and narrow, or to get them back on to the straight and narrow, and dealing with the issues that Mr Walker and Mary Kelly Foy have been talking about, et cetera.
These are serious problems. They are likely to interrupt the development of relationships of trust in many areas of communities where trust is at a premium. Therefore, any disruption to that sets progress back at a greater level than it would in, I am tempted to say, any other part of the United Kingdom.
Against that backdrop, what are you considering doing? What are you able to do? I know that you will say, “We have to get the Executive back up and running”, and I would say, “Amen to that”, but, in practical, short-term budgetary support, what can be done?
Chris Heaton-Harris: Forgive me for saying what you expect me to say, but we have to get the Executive up and running. While that is the easiest thing to say, let me just demonstrate why it is important. Without an Executive, there was no budget set last year.
Whether it be community groups that are reliant on part of their funding coming from the Northern Ireland Executive, or whether it be the police, because policing is devolved, having a budget that is almost ad hoc—you cannot even say from year to year, because not having a budget set means that it is all up in the air—causes great problems and issues.
I have met dozens of community groups and representatives of the sectors involved who would just love to know what they are going to get in this financial year and the next, so that they can plan and continue to do their work. That is as a direct result of not having an Executive up and running.
As you know, on 28 October, the Northern Ireland Office Secretary of State took over some of those responsibilities, and we did set a budget, but it was a budget set in circumstances where we did not have all the information available that was required. This is not an ideal solution, but, to answer your question in the way that you want me to answer it about what I am doing and what we can do, I do have conversations with the PSNI about this in order to understand what their asks are and what they need.
Just to completely clarify things that you all know, but which people watching might not, policing and justice is a devolved matter, and so it is a direct responsibility of the Executive. There are elements of the budget that the British Government have put in place. Arrangements have been in place since 2010 to provide ringfenced, additional security funding for counterterrorism activity in Northern Ireland. The UK contribution for the financial year 2022-23 is £32.1 million. This is the same that was provided for 2021-22 and has been provided each year since 2015.
That provision is agreed on the presumption that the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland match funds the money coming from the UK Government. There are elements of funding going to PSNI that are directly coming from UK Government. I have seen, in GB policing and certainly in the policing of the British Transport Police, that policing cannot stand still. There are definitely reforms and things that can happen. That is not my responsibility, but I am making sure that I am listening to the PSNI.
Q441 Chair: Let me just ask the question of Mr and Mrs Smith on the Ballymena omnibus. In answer to an earlier question, you mentioned that people do not really get involved with the process about what is devolved and what might be the responsibility of a local council, of Westminster or whatever. Nobody gives a toss about that—they just want to see good services, a peaceful society, a growing economy and all the rest of it.
Against that backdrop, joint authority, perfectly correctly, has been ruled out. Direct rule, perfectly properly and legitimately, has been ruled out by you to me at the Dispatch Box. I endorse that entirely.
You have said, both in front of this Committee and on the Floor of the House, that you would be responding to any reform to the rules governing the formation of the Executive—I slightly paraphrase your statement—from the grassroots up, from Northern Ireland, urging you to do something, with some suggestions, maybe, as to what it might be.
That is all well and good, but it does not address the fundamental budgeting issue. Those who are most vulnerable in Northern Irish society, irrespective of which, if any, tradition they put their cross or their loyalties against, are suffering. How do the NIO and HMG square that incredibly difficult circle? We cannot just stand by idly and say, “We know it is all frightfully difficult and we would like to do something, but that would be direct rule. We are not doing that. We need to get the Executive back up and running. There is no Executive; therefore nothing can be done”.
People who are involved in vital work with youngsters combating paramilitary activity are left without any budgetary certainty. They cannot recruit. They cannot retain staff. They cannot renew leases on properties, and so on and so forth. We end up probably with a whole raft of people, who we need to have faith in politics, giving up on politics and politicians in the political process and just saying, “To hell with it. We are just going to go back to a very feudal, tribal way of doing things, because that is the only way that we can get things done”.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I completely understand the point that you are making, but it is not as simple as that. Let me demonstrate that. I know that the Committee knows this, but the basis of where policing sits is not because there was just a dividing up of a piece of cake.
Two decades ago, the Assembly was suspended from October 2002 until May 2007 following the withdrawal of unionist parties after Sinn Féin’s offices in Stormont were searched by the PSNI. In a bid to reconvene the Assembly back then, multiparty talks were convened by the UK Government that led to the St Andrews agreement in 2006. As a part of that agreement, Sinn Féin was, for the first time, committed to support the PSNI.
Move forward a few years and you get the restoration order that is signed in March 2007, leading to the return of the Executive in May, with Ian Paisley as First Minister and Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister.
In 2010, the Hillsborough Castle agreement was reached, enabling the devolution of policing and justice to the Northern Ireland Executive, and trying to put it into the right space for policing to be trusted in the way that we would all like it to be.
People in Northern Ireland are very politically aware and know their history better than I do, but there are reasons as to why things lie where they are. Short-term leaping in to do something could create much more difficult problems or unpick things that have been done in the past and work, for just a short-term fix.
I am very aware of the responsibilities. I talk to the PSNI. I make sure that I am constantly harrowing Treasury Ministers and the like. However, I know that this is a very delicately stitched arrangement behind policing that has evolved over the years to ensure that all the communities in Northern Ireland can have confidence in their policing, and it is working. I am very wary of trying to do anything in the short-term fix area that undermines any of that.
Q442 Chair: Would you describe as a short-term fix sorting out the funding for the tackling paramilitarism programme for 2024-25?
Chris Heaton-Harris: No. UK Government have been involved in this space for ages. That fund has match funding from elsewhere too, so that is a longer-term fix.
Q443 Claire Hanna: Secretary of State, I wanted to ask about co-ordination and having an effective whole-system approach. In that context, it is absolutely right that the Chair has focused on the issue of budget, because we are in a scenario where there have been active murder attempts and lots of fighting talk from loyalism, as well as just the continued poison of organised crime. In that context that the PSNI is not able to fire on all cylinders, it is appropriate that the Government show solidarity with them.
In particular, to the extent that they have any particular aim and are not just obsessed with violence, what dissident republicans are trying to do is to ensure that policing is not normalised, that community policing does not happen, and that young people, particularly when they come into contact or engage with the police, are seeing them in a militarised TSG way. By not ensuring that the PSNI has adequate funding to do community policing, we are almost reinforcing that.
It is also the case, as far as I can tell, that the NCA spends 1% of its budget here, despite us having 3% of the UK population, and perhaps that is why there have been almost no unexplained wealth orders. I know that, under St Andrews, there were to be reviews of national security work, but they are not published.
In your view, are the structures and systems in place to tackle this appropriately? If you look at, for example, the dismantling work that has been done of dissident republicans, should that be extended into loyalism? Have those more collaborative approaches that the Chair touched on, with the likes of community resilience programmes that you mentioned, suffered in the absence of an Executive?
Chris Heaton-Harris: To answer the last question first, I do not think that many of the community resilience programmes that I have mentioned have suffered immediately from the removal of the Executive. However, they are very concerned about what their budgets are going to look like for the next financial year. I have heard examples of where contracts have not been continued for people who are working in these spaces, so I can give you anecdotal evidence on that, but I cannot give you an across-the-board answer.
When it comes to policing, the police are currently funded to a level that allows them to do all the things that we in this Committee would expect them to do. In fact, I said to the chief constable last week, when I was visiting Omagh, that not only was I impressed by the people I met there, but, when I have been around and about, community policing, which is not novel but relatively new to Northern Ireland, is paying great dividends. I met with some amazing police officers who are doing great work in their own communities. It is almost as Robert Peel would have liked it: local people policing their local communities.
Q444 Claire Hanna: Did the chief constable indicate that he thought he was adequately funded to continue to provide that?
Chris Heaton-Harris: As you know, he has plans for more officers and whatever, and I believe he has sent all the political parties in Northern Ireland some correspondence about what that looks like and what he would like. However, I just want to make the point that policing in Northern Ireland, at this point in time, with the resources that it has, is doing an exceptionally good job. The level of community policing, which is possibly the highest that it has ever been in Northern Ireland, is paying dividends, just to directly answer your question.
In budgetary terms, what else happens? Dominic Wilson is a member of the tackling paramilitary programme sponsor group and checks on where money is being spent, how it is being spent and the policies behind it. Dominic, I do not know if you could give the Committee a flavour of that.
Dominic Wilson: In answer to your question on collaboration, it is difficult. It is a complex business. It is a hard business, so I will say that straight up. At an operational level, PSNI and the security service work very closely. There are other structures that you will have heard around some of the organised crime space with the National Crime Agency, HMRC and PSNI—the paramilitary crime task force and all that.
There is that operational collaboration and there is also reach-back into NCA capabilities in the UK. As for how that translates to your 1%, we could dig into how much is permanently allocated to Northern Ireland and how much is available as a reach-back as well.
Moving then to integration and collaboration, and the interface between operational delivery and the policy world, we have regular conversations, as the Secretary of State said, at his level with PSNI and the security service. There is not a week that goes by without James having a conversation with the likes of Mark McEwan and equivalents, so that conversation happens as well.
As the Secretary of State said, on the broader community outside of law enforcement through the TPP programme, James sits on the three benefits realisation groups that meet quarterly. I sit on the sponsor group. It is absolutely tied together.
It slightly returns us to some of the earlier conversation. The next step—you have probably heard this from TPP as well—is how we can take a whole-of-Government approach to tackling the paramilitary problem in Northern Ireland and, to a certain extent, here as well. You highlighted some examples of conversations with DWP, for example.
Certainly, it is important to tackle paramilitarism across all the resources that are spent and the programmes that happen in Northern Ireland. That preventive approach is what TPP is trying to do.
Q445 Claire Hanna: That is an encouraging assessment in terms of co-ordination, but I will just reiterate that all those sharp political contexts were not in place when the budgets were being established. We do not have the power to mitigate this in the absence of an Executive.
As you said, the people in community policing are doing a good job, and thank God for them. All of us would struggle to get up and do the job they do with the threat they are now facing. The context of being underfunded to the tune of £200 million is concerning.
Briefly, I wanted to ask for your view on the space and validation that everyday discourse gives to paramilitaries. How concerned are you that the constant flying of paramilitary emblems in loyalism and the constant eulogising and foregrounding of past exploits in republicanism, for example, are perpetuating this stuff and keeping society’s tolerance of paramilitarism too high?
I know the Prevent programme is not without controversy, but I cannot imagine for a minute that the overall noise and space provided to paramilitarism would be tolerated in this country.
Chris Heaton-Harris: Again, I have come to learn that everything in Northern Ireland is about understanding and balance. I understand the point about symbols completely. I have met with the commission that deals with flags and parades. They do amazing work behind the scenes to try to make sure there are proper conversations in the spaces where issues might have happened in the past or if things fall on certain dates that are important. That is not done at Government-to-individual level or by Government bearing down, but by people within the community, so there is an understanding of the pressures, the needs and the issues that might flow from doing something. There have not been many of these issues since Covid, and I hope that continues to be the case. There is a much better understanding.
James Crawford: On your specific point on flags, emblems and so on, the Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture and Tradition made recommendations.
Claire Hanna: Yes, a long time ago, and they have not gone anywhere.
James Crawford: Exactly, and that is one reason why the absence of the Executive is having an impact in this area. Those recommendations are out there. At this stage, they need to be acted on.
Q446 Claire Hanna: Coming back to the current moment, are we giving too much space in broadcast to this material? Earlier in this inquiry, senior PSNI officers confirmed to us that senior figures associated with paramilitaries were prominent in the loyalist protocol rallies. Loyalist community representatives are regularly in the media amping up the threat.
Throughout the Brexit years, we know that MI5, PSNI and others gave an assessment of the exploitation they thought dissident republicans might try to pursue in the event of a different Brexit outcome, but they were not given space in long form to do “good cop, bad cop” in the media.
Is that something we need to reconsider? Should broadcasters stick with analysis on that or a security assessment? Are we creating a problem when we constantly platform people to give us their personal views on the capacity or intent of paramilitary organisations?
Chris Heaton-Harris: Tempted though I am to give a personal opinion, the one thing I do know as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is that broadcasting, who goes on for interview and free speech are very thorny issues. I would not want to be the Secretary of State who leans in to suggest who the BBC should give a platform to.
Q447 Claire Hanna: I will ask you it in another way. Are political actors leaving too much space for aggressive voices in political discourse? Should political representatives attempt to close that space?
Chris Heaton-Harris: There is an opportunity that is presenting itself now for political representatives to be much more active in this area. That is what their communities would like them to do as well.
Q448 Carla Lockhart: Thank you, Secretary of State and panel members. Claire has given us her thoughts on that glorification. At the end of the day, if the Assembly is restored, there is a political party in Northern Ireland whose leader will be the First Minister.
There is the continual glorification of terrorism by those individuals. They are saying that there was “no alternative”. You only have to think about last week, when Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill carried the coffin of an on-the-run—someone who was wanted in Northern Ireland for the attempted murder of an Army warrant officer and who had convictions down south as well.
Secretary of State, can you outline whether you have any intention of outlawing the glorification of terrorism? Terrorism in 1983, 1984 and 1985 is no different to terrorism today. I would like to know what the Government intend to do on this. It is encouraging young people to take up arms and get involved in criminality. You only have to look at the age of the people who are singing, “Ooh ah up the Ra”. What more can we do? What more will the Government do?
Chris Heaton-Harris: There has never been any justification for paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland at all, and there is none today. I understand that commemoration is an unbelievably complex issue, and I have had representations personally from both communities on issues to do with this.
Forgive me, Ms Lockhart, but this is something the Executive leads on. We should not allow a culture to emerge that glorifies violence in the past. I completely agree with you. It risks individuals who are vulnerable to present narratives getting involved in things they do not want to around the justification of violence. That is absolutely right. Again, this is something that sits in the devolved space. Yes, maybe Government should get involved, but the Government that should get involved is the Executive.
Q449 Carla Lockhart: With due respect, the individuals who are glorifying the terrorism are part of that Executive; I am not certain they will take action against themselves. There was an opportunity within legislation recently around the glorification element. There still is an opportunity, and I believe it would be very fitting for the UK Government, who are sovereign in all of these matters, to take action and introduce legislation.
As a party—my colleague sitting to my right will back me up on this—we sought to bring forward an amendment that would outlaw the glorification of terrorism. It was written off by the Government; it was not accepted. In my mind, it is the Home Office that needs to deal with terrorism and the glorification of it.
Chris Heaton-Harris: The Home Office does so in Great Britain. There is good reason why this particular issue has been devolved. I hear exactly what you say about the people you mentioned and various things, but I do recall—this is more for historic interest, I guess—that, 25 years ago, people who had equally been involved in things we would not have tolerated then became some of the people who brought peace and stability to Northern Ireland, in no uncertain terms.
It is important to note the united condemnation from all the political parties in response to the shooting of DCI Caldwell, and the clear message of opposition that has been sent by all the political leaders in Northern Ireland to those who seek to drag us back to the dim, dark and horrible days of the past.
Yes, I understand the point you make. The Government could do more, but the Government that could do more is the Executive.
Chair: I want to bring in Robert Buckland, former Justice Secretary, Lord Chancellor and law officer, on that point.
Q450 Sir Robert Buckland: It is good to see you, Secretary of State. It was a pleasure to be a fellow Territorial officer with you and to take responsibility for warrantry for a time relating to your duties as Northern Ireland Secretary.
On the point about glorification and the encouragement of terrorism, the Terrorism Act 2006, which has a UK-wide application, makes that a criminal offence. It would be interesting to know the occasions on which that has been used in Northern Ireland. I am not necessarily expecting Mr Crawford to have all the figures to hand, but it would be interesting to note whether those provisions—it is section 1 of that Act—have indeed been used.
I remember they were extremely controversial at the time because of the definitional concerns about what it meant. It was an extension of the law away from either acts of terrorism or inciting, aiding or abetting acts of terrorism. A lot of people say, “There ought to be a law against it”. Well, there is. Are we using it?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I honestly do not know the answer to your question. I will write back, if I may.
Sir Robert Buckland: Of course—thank you, Secretary of State.
Chair: Carla, had you finished?
Carla Lockhart: I just go back to the fact that we have people today who are condemning the murder of John Caldwell, which is absolutely right and correct—
Chris Heaton-Harris: Attempted murder.
Carla Lockhart: The attempted murder—apologies; slip of the tongue. But they do not condemn and they think there was “no alternative” to the shooting of a gentle man in Fermanagh beside his son in a tractor.
Q451 Jim Shannon: Secretary of State, it is great to have you here and to speak to you today. It is a pleasure. I am conscious of our past. Never forget the past, but always look to the future. That is the way we should be. I want to give three examples and then refer to one today, if I can.
When it comes to better working relationships with the Army, the police in Northern Ireland, MI5—because it comes across—and the Republic of Ireland, I am concerned that the Republic of Ireland is very often found wanting. I will give one example of that right now.
Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan were murdered on 20 March 1989—the anniversary will be next week—at Jonesborough. The IRA had a bomb by the side of the road, and they murdered the two of them as they crossed the border. At the time—my party leader Jeffrey Donaldson has referred to this in discussions as well—there were allegations, and some evidential base to prove them, of Garda Siochana collusion in what took place. That is an example of some of my concerns in relation to that.
The Omagh bomb is another. The Member for North Down and I were in the Chamber that day when the statement was made. I made the comment—and others did as well—that the bomb was constructed in the Republic of Ireland, moved from the Republic of Ireland through Northern Ireland and then detonated in Omagh. Twenty-nine people lost their lives, including two unborn. I am ever mindful that is another example of where the Republic of Ireland has fallen down when it comes to working better together on security.
As a third example of that, on 10 December 1971 my cousin Kenneth Smyth was murdered by the IRA. Three IRA men murdered him. His colleague was a guy called Daniel McCormick, a father of five. He just happened to be a Roman Catholic. He was also a former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. When the IRA murdered them, they crossed the border and escaped. They were never made accountable for that.
We look at these examples. We look at the Republic of Ireland Government and the security forces down there. We look at a Government that seem to turn a blind eye whenever IRA terrorists cross the border to escape their murderous campaign against people in Northern Ireland. Those are just three examples. I could give many, many more.
Mr Chairman, you will bring me into line. You will be saying that I have gone on too long, but these are people I feel incredibly annoyed about and I feel strongly about. We have never seen justice for my cousin Kenneth Smyth or for Daniel McCormick. We have never seen justice for those who lost their loved ones in Omagh. We have never seen justice for Chief Superintendent Breen or Superintendent Bob Buchanan.
Secretary of State, I ask you very respectfully: what discussions have you had with the Republic of Ireland when it comes to making them accountable and the collusion the Garda Siochana has been involved in to promote the IRA campaign against people who are custodians of law and order and who are tasked with that job?
Chris Heaton-Harris: If I may, Mr Chairman, Mr Shannon is quite rightly upset. Jim, you have also raised other cases with me in the past.
Q452 Jim Shannon: I have.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I am fully aware of the emotion you feel when you are talking about this. I completely respect the manner in which you have been able to raise this today. I will try to answer how we looked at things and how they worked in the past, and how it is working in the present.
Jim Shannon: The reason I mention those three examples from the past is that it is rumoured and alleged that the people who carried out the attempted murder of Inspector Caldwell also ran across the border. If it happened on 10 December 1971 and it is happening today, what has improved with the Republic of Ireland? What has improved with their security forces? What has improved with their police? It looks like nothing has improved.
Q453 Chair: Jim, in essence, your question is this: what is the state of the current discussions with the Republic and the Gardai, and what, if any, discussion is given to unanswered questions over the period the Troubles?
Jim Shannon: Yes, that would be it.
Chris Heaton-Harris: In my time as Secretary of State, I would like to think I have had a very good relationship with my Irish interlocutors. Both I and the two Irish Foreign Ministers I have dealt with have raised different cases over time. I had a conversation about what I was doing with the public inquiry for Omagh with my Irish counterpart because I recognise there is an Irish element to this as well. I understand the point Mr Shannon is making.
I would like to think that the partnerships between the UK Government, the devolved Administration in Northern Ireland, the security services and the police on cross-border matters are all getting stronger and stronger by the day. Certainly, the relationships between the PSNI and the Garda Siochana are strong.
At an operational level, there is strong cross-organisational co-ordination in place to try to ensure a robust law enforcement response to tackle those crimes, around terrorism, paramilitarism and organised crime. Going back to the county lines discussion we were having earlier, the lines of organised crime do not stop when you get to the border. There is quite a proactive approach to ensuring effective cross-border law enforcement and criminal justice co-operation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
What we have seen following the attack on DCI Caldwell demonstrates a proper understanding of how we can help each other with this. The day after DCI Caldwell was shot, Simon Harris, the Irish Minister for Justice, was on the phone offering not just an expression of support and solidarity, but whatever assistance the Irish state could give in the aftermath of the attack.
The Committee may have noted, as set out by Drew Harris, the commissioner of the Gardai, that, beyond the regular routine contact his officers have with the PSNI, they acted immediately in the aftermath of that attack to support PSNI with patrols in border areas, investigations and inquiries so that PSNI officers could do what we expect them to do in dealing with the immediate aftermath of the attempted murder of DCI Caldwell.
There is a whole host of agreements and arrangements. There are officers seconded into each other’s forces. There is a lot of cross-fertilisation. I am quite positive about the current and future arrangements and co-operation on policing, security and dealing with paramilitarism.
I also know that we have to deal with the issues of the past, and there is a strong difference of opinion as to how to do that. The Government have our own ideas, which we have brought forward in the legacy Bill.
Q454 Stephen Farry: Good morning, Secretary of State. I just want to ask a couple of questions about what constitutes a national security threat, looking at it from two particular angles.
First of all, it is my understanding that dissident republican activity is treated as a national security threat, alongside being a challenge for local policing in Northern Ireland, whereas loyalism is treated as essentially a criminal matter for the Northern Ireland authorities solely. In light of some of the comments and threats that have emanated from loyalism in recent months, not least the targeting of the Irish Foreign Minister, is there a case for saying that some elements of loyalism are effectively a national security threat and a threat to democracy and the state?
The second angle is around the evidential opportunities. It is worth praising both the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the security services for their recent successes in cracking down on dissident republicans, particularly Operation Arbacia, which was very successful. By contrast, there is frustration in the community at the impunity that some loyalists have and the inability to get arrests and convictions.
Is part of the issue there the wider use of intelligence-gathering and other evidence-gathering techniques on the one side versus an overreliance on human witnesses being willing to come forward and give evidence in court, with all the attendant risks that involves in a place like Northern Ireland?
Chris Heaton-Harris: While I am the person responsible for national security in Northern Ireland, I do not make the assessment as to what is viewed as an element of national security. These definitions, including what qualifies as a national security incident, are not mine to set. I do not know whether either of you can help me out.
Dominic Wilson: There is no set definition. As you know, the UK Government periodically produce a national security strategy. Every time they do, it differs in scope to some degree. For the purposes of this conversation, though, the current view of national security is that it covers a range of activities, from terrorism through to serious organised crime. There is nothing in the definition space that causes a problem.
Individual organisations have both statutory and operational responsibilities. The trick is probably in how they match their resources and work together, to get to your question.
Q455 Stephen Farry: Do you take my point about the different approaches to evidence gathering between dissident republicanism and loyalism, and how that maybe leads to differential impacts and successes in terms of securing convictions?
Chris Heaton-Harris: You mentioned the incident in north Belfast with the former Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, on 25 March last year. That was properly investigated. I believe charges were brought and, behind the scenes, I think the full weight of the investigative process was thrown at all this.
I am pretty sure that, following security operations in Belfast and Ballymena last summer, two men were arrested under the Terrorism Act and two firearms were recovered. Both men were subsequently released from police custody pending further investigations that are continuing.
Chair: Can I remind the whole Committee that that case is sub judice?
Q456 Stephen Farry: Let us move on from that case and talk in more general terms. For example, in recent times there has not been, to my knowledge, a conviction for someone instigating a paramilitary-style attack because you are reliant upon a complainant coming forward and saying, “That person threatened me and did this”. There is an obvious fear of retribution against their family or that they might be expelled from their house and moved out of their community.
Is there more that can be done, between the security services and the PSNI, to break that vicious cycle so we do not have to rely upon a human witness exposing themselves to all that risk?
Chris Heaton-Harris: There is a lot that goes on in this space. It is very difficult to comment on it in public.
Q457 Stephen Farry: Building on Claire’s point, could you clarify the official position of the Northern Ireland Office on the status of the Loyalist Communities Council? Do you see it purely as a front for paramilitary and terrorist organisations, or as a political actor? I am conscious that there have been meetings, not during your tenure, between them and some of your predecessors and officials.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I have not met with the Loyalist Communities Council or anyone, I believe, purporting to represent that organisation. You asked for a definition of what it is. I do not know what I would formally define the Loyalist Communities Council as.
Chair: Answer on a postcard.
Chris Heaton-Harris: To my knowledge, it has never been given a definition while I have been in the room.
Q458 Stephen Farry: The concern would be in the community. This is not solely an issue for the Northern Ireland Office. To many people, it is simply a front for two or three active paramilitary organisations. Some people treat it as a political actor with opinions that are seen to be as worthy as those of us who have elected mandates. There is a concern that this is an erosion of the democratic process—that we are bringing these actors in from leftfield and treating them as a de facto political party.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I understand that point. As I say, I have not met with anyone who purports to represent them. On the definition point, I honestly do not know the answer. I will have to come back to you. I apologise for that lapse.
Stephen Farry: Thank you very much.
Q459 Sir Robert Buckland: In your responses, we have already dealt with aspects of the tackling paramilitarism programme, and you will be asked about governance in particular.
Let us just track back to 2015 and Fresh Start, where there was a really sensible attempt to bring together the issue of paramilitarism itself with the wider socioeconomic causes and background to it, and to look at it more as a public health matter on the social model, rather than always looking at it as a criminal justice matter. This is something we have been banging on about for years in various contexts here in England and Wales.
I could ask you in general terms how effective it has been, but I am really interested in the metrics we are using to measure the effectiveness of this approach. Are we confident that the public health approach that was clearly presaged by the Fresh Start agreement is happening?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I will turn to James in a second to give you an idea of the kinds of metrics that exist. It is working in many areas. It needs the communities to want to respond in those areas. I have seen examples of where it is working, and I have heard of examples where it is not.
With what has developed in Northern Ireland—it is not my responsibility, and it is not because of me that it has happened in the slightest—there are people dealing with this problem all the way through the line, from a grassroots level to intercepting the proceeds of ill-gotten gains and crime at the highest level, using all the levers we have in our criminal justice system. I believe you have been given—in fact, I gave them to you in the letter—some good statistics that demonstrate how all this can work at the top level.
James Crawford: Ultimately, the tackling paramilitarism programme is very hard to measure. I have a lot of respect for the work that has been done. The methodology they are using, benefits realisation, is hugely important here. Rather than just focusing on the outputs from the 80 or so projects they have, which are important and can be measured—engagement and so on—they are looking at the overarching outcomes and the societal change we want to see. That is hard to measure and is a long-term thing to look at as well.
We use things like the life and times survey to measure those attitudinal changes, but at the behavioural level a lot of the information can be quite anecdotal.
Take the developing women in the community project. We have seen engagement with that going up. We have statistics for the number of women who have been engaged in phase 1, which was about 250. The plan for phase 2, from December last year through to March next year, is aiming for just under 600. We are seeing that engagement go up, but the long-term outcome is difficult to measure.
As for the governance of that, we talked earlier about Dominic being on the overarching sponsor group. I sit a level below on the benefit realisation group. A constant discussion that happens there is about the data, how we get better data and how we can use that data to ensure the projects are being mainstreamed in the right areas, the right geographical places and so on.
The methodology is right, but there are two levels of metrics. There is the project, which has some really good data on it, and the longer-term outcome of a safer community, which we are seeing on the right trajectory but is so difficult to measure.
Q460 Sir Robert Buckland: Let me take an example: reported incidents of violence. On one level, you could say that a reduction in reported incidents of violence is a reflection of a more peaceful society. However, you could equally say that an increase in reports shows an increase in engagement and a willingness in communities to engage with the PSNI, which in itself is a good thing, since we know that a lot of these problems are being contained within communities because of fear. I appreciate the difficulty.
In terms of getting that uniformity, these programmes are all different and they are doing different things, but are you satisfied you have an overarching or uniform way of measuring this that can be easily understood and will help inform policy-making in the future?
James Crawford: I am. I would put it in the context of the NIO role. We are not leading the project; we are a key stakeholder in it. The work being done is hugely useful and the data being gathered is really helpful. We are coming to the end of phase 2 of the tackling paramilitarism programme. There is a big decision as to what happens next. To answer your question, I think we have the evidence base to inform those decisions. Is it the amount of data we would wish to have? No, but that is the difficulty.
If I can go back to your earlier point about how you look at reporting and so on, you are absolutely right. One of the biggest issues we have come across is how underreported things are. The work to build community and individual resilience, and to encourage people to speak up and report these things, I would see as a positive.
Q461 Sir Robert Goodwill: One of the ways we can combat how these paramilitary groups are so embedded in their communities is by giving young people alternatives through education and employment. There is always a danger that some of these groups may be masquerading as community groups when in fact they have roots within paramilitary organisations. What are we doing to ensure that all of this funding reaches the desired target and none of it is siphoned off to the people we do not want to give any assistance to?
Chris Heaton-Harris: If I may, I will ask Dominic to answer that particular question. It is a fair point; there has been the odd example in the past.
Dominic Wilson: It is a very fair point, and it is one TPP spends a lot of time thinking about. I would draw out two things. First, there is sometimes a short-term expediency in the decisions that are made, which can be problematic. In order to make a short-term intervention in a particular community, it might have to rely on an individual or a group that does not have the long-term benefit of a community at heart.
For example, it might be a gatekeeper of funding that provides quite a convenient way of dealing with an acute problem in a particular circumstance—for example, the housing of a family under threat, where there is a temptation for programmes to be targeted at individuals. They are very conscious about that short-term problem.
In the longer term, there are a series of values that govern the programme, which are designed to get after the issue you raise and ensure that all the money is going to people who are fully committed to moving away from paramilitarism and see a different future for communities. We also have a framework in place for escalating the risks. In some cases, without a little bit of risk you do not always get the reward. Sometimes people are operating on the borders of a risk, but there is a risk framework in place to make sure those judgments are being made at the right level.
Q462 Sir Robert Goodwill: What degree of co-ordination has there been between the Northern Ireland Office, the Executive, when we have one, and the Republic? Sometimes funds go to groups from south of the border to ensure there is a consistent approach and we know exactly where the money is being funnelled.
Dominic Wilson: There is a lot of money being spent, and there is a risk that not every project is embedded in the ecosystem of tackling paramilitarism that we are talking about today. We have just launched a bit of work to try to capture all that funding and ensure that everybody—of course, they are operating to the same values, as you would expect—has the requisite knowledge to make the right decisions about where the money is going.
To be honest, a lot of the delivery is done by partners on the ground in Northern Ireland. They know the lie of the land far better than I or anybody else in the Northern Ireland Office does. That is one of the advantages of having the delivery done there rather than here. It is something we really watch.
Q463 Sir Robert Goodwill: This Committee has seen some excellent work in communities in Belfast, Londonderry and elsewhere. We have seen community groups that really have the benefit to their community close to their heart. There is always that risk, though. In that regard, could we have a standard code of practice and behaviours that all community organisations must adhere to and, if any of them cross the line on that code of practice, they would not receive funding?
Dominic Wilson: Yes, for the TPP generally we have the values document, which I can certainly let you have if you have not seen it already. For certain projects, we also have a contractual arrangement that enshrines those values in the delivery agreement.
Q464 Chair: On this issue of budget and community groups, Secretary of State, you may not be able to answer this directly; you may need to go away and think about it. We have heard in evidence and anecdotally, in informal discussion and briefing, that quite a lot of projects are teetering on the precipice of durability because of the absence of the Executive and its funding coming in. We have heard some considerable praise, I have to say, for your Department. Where you have a percentage of funding to give, that has almost been guaranteed. This is not a criticism of the NIO.
In order to allow groups to work in this particularly important space—tackling paramilitarism, supporting families and the like—is there scope for de facto direct funding from Westminster but with a concomitant top-slicing from the block grant? It would be as if it had been done by the Executive but, given the importance of the work, you did it. It is not direct rule funding. In essence you would be acting, for want of a better term, in loco parentis.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I have not been asked that question before, though in other guises I have been asked by all the political party leaders to step in to do something that would normally be done by the Executive. I am very wary of that. The only times I have stepped in have been either because I have had a legal duty to do so or, as I say, all the political party leaders have written to me and asked me to step in, in the case of Dáithí’s law.
In budgetary terms, it would be tremendously difficult to do. The method would be difficult, as well as the practice. It would not be the best way forward.
Q465 Chair: Even in the very specific and narrow space of community activity focused solely on tackling the impact of paramilitaries? Given that we know this is a relative fragility, and given the continued question marks over Windsor and the like, while this work is always important, it is particularly important now. I know one can carve things out and say “This is important; that is important”. There is a slippery slope argument. I take that entirely.
Chris Heaton-Harris: As the NIO, we do have small bits of funding that we use.
James Crawford: One of the big priorities for us on the funding of community projects at the moment is looking forward to 2024-25, with the funding of the tackling paramilitarism programme. We have been match funding at £8 million in recent years. Out of SR21, we will be funding to 2024-25 at £5 million. That does leave a shortfall in comparison to previous years of £3 million.
That is purely because the funding stream is slightly out of kilter, as the £3 million comes from the New Decade, New Approach unique circumstances pot. As TPP phase 2 is due to run out at the end of the next financial year, we are now starting to have that conversation. That is the big priority for us.
Q466 Stephen Farry: Coming back to the issue of transition mentioned by the Chair earlier, maybe we could explore that in a little more detail. There are potentially three strands to transition.
First, you can talk about the individual transition for a person who is in a paramilitary organisation and getting them out. The second thing is the group transition, transitioning the paramilitary structures themselves into something else, whatever that might be. The third is about communities transitioning away from coercive control and getting more opportunities, et cetera. Where does the balance needs to lie across those three potential strands?
Chris Heaton-Harris: We are trying to get all three, are we not? I am not sure there will ever be a correct balance. It would depend community by community and group by group. There are elements within each group that will be interested in moving more quickly.
Projects exist for all three as well. The correct balance would be about getting the biggest shift in transition in the quickest possible time. If there were a very simple formula to do that, we would have done it ages ago.
Q467 Stephen Farry: Of those three, the most controversial by far is the notion of group transition from X to Y. What exactly is Y going to be and are there any incentives for that process? We are conscious that the Independent Reporting Commission has made some recommendations around group transition. To be fair, though, what they are getting at in that process is fairly ill defined. Have the Government had any discussions with them around those recommendations? What is the Government’s view on what group transition should look like?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I have had conversations with the IRC, and it has done a huge amount of work in this space, which I truly welcome. Its idea of appointing an independent person or even independent people to carry out exploratory engagement on the issues of group transition is an interesting idea, one I have taken very seriously and have had lots of other conversations about.
I have tested wider views on that recommendation with all sorts of people, including statutory and community partners in Northern Ireland. I discussed this issue and other aspects of the IRC’s fourth and fifth reports with the Irish Government at the October and January meetings of the British‑Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
We are continuing to talk about this, because there seems to be a view that in the past attempts to get group transition have fallen down at different hurdles. Maybe there is someone who could be a halfway house in the communication process to guide people who want to go on this journey and help them through it. It would be very difficult to go to someone in Government or the policing service and ask this, but someone independent could help point people to the right expertise. There is value in it. I am seriously looking at that recommendation.
Q468 Stephen Farry: To push back on that slightly—to be fair, you have not given a firm opinion either way on the issue—do you see some of the potential pitfalls people have raised around this? For example, if this involved money to paramilitaries in the context of what is a very straitened time, that might seem unfair to people. There is also a fear that this is simply disingenuous, in the sense that organisations are reforming under different labels but continuing some of the coercive control.
In communities that have been plagued by paramilitarism, how will we encourage other voices to come forward if they simply see one structure of oppression being transformed into something else while still crowding out the community space for other voices that have always been law abiding?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I hear your concerns here. The IRC recommendation on group transition is quite straightforward. To go down this route, you have to end recruitment to your group; give up your structures and activity; cease the mobilisation of your members; cease coercive power and control of communities; end paramilitary-style attacks and other forms of violence; end the threat of violence or intimidation; dispose of any weaponry and material; allow people to exit your group without cost or consequence; publicly support the PSNI and the criminal justice system in tackling criminality; commit to democracy and the rule of law; and engage with legacy bodies.
If they are willing to do that, we should be willing to allow these people to make that change.
Q469 Stephen Farry: Is there anything stopping anyone from doing that transition at present in society? What are the barriers? This may be rather simplistic, but, if you want to stop being a paramilitary, stop being a paramilitary.
Chris Heaton-Harris: I am not the right person to answer the question because I cannot put my own mindset inside the head of a paramilitary person. I do not know what the drivers are. I can guess, but I honestly do not know the answer to that question.
Q470 Mr Walker: I apologise for taking the conversation backwards a bit, but this follows from the Chair’s point about funding. I know from experience how incredibly difficult and frustrating it can be to join up different pots of Government funding, particularly between the devolved and UK space. We have had a really welcome announcement today in England around the PE and sport premium, which is doing exactly that. It is providing a multi-year funding settlement, which has been long sought after and mechanistically very difficult to deliver.
Due to the absence of an Executive and the incredibly difficult position you were put in over setting the Northern Irish budget, there are big cuts due to come through to education funding in Northern Ireland. Hopefully there will be some Barnett consequentials from today’s announcement, which may help to some degree with that.
Would you agree that looking to join up funding and provide multi-year settlements when it comes to education, community sport and activity for young people is an important part of the solution for tackling paramilitarism and diverting those young people from being drawn into the criminal networks that are there? Is there anything that is in your power to encourage and foster that? I absolutely accept that the first element of that is to bring back the Executive.
Chris Heaton-Harris: The answer to the bulk of your question is yes. You are absolutely right. Multi-year funding for organisations and, indeed, community sport is nigh on vital. It helps planning and it means that everybody understands the parameters within which they are working.
Just in my constituency, let alone in Northern Ireland, I have met so many groups. From an English constituency point of view, today’s announcement is a truly good announcement. If you look at it in the Northern Ireland context, yes, you would like to see a similar announcement in that space after a period of time working through the issues of the budget.
It is one for the Executive, but I agree with you entirely on the value of multi-year funding for organisations like this, so that they do not have to be looking over their shoulder for a period of time and can look forward to delivering on the job they are meant to be doing.
Q471 Carla Lockhart: Again, this may be slightly off-topic, but I have recently asked a couple of written questions of your good office around the 2015 Paramilitary Groups in Northern Ireland report. I am going to try again because I have not been able to get an answer. I am keen to know your assessment of the links between the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, as determined in that report in 2015? Are those links still in existence?
Chris Heaton-Harris: I believe James would know the answer. I do not.
James Crawford: The assessment of paramilitary activity is the responsibility of MI5 and PSNI. It is not something I feel I am well placed to comment on.
The circumstances of the 2015 assessment were very unique. There was no commitment from the Secretary of State at the time to repeat that public assessment. I am comfortable that we get regular classified assessments of paramilitary activity from MI5 and PSNI, but, as with assessments of that ilk across the national security community in GB as well, they are classified reports.
Q472 Carla Lockhart: My understanding is that that was a report done by the Northern Ireland Office. It was published back in 2015.
James Crawford: The 2015 report was commissioned by the then Secretary of State, but it was written by PSNI and MI5.
Q473 Carla Lockhart: If it was commissioned by the Secretary of State then, can we seek assurances that the Secretary of State will look into this issue?
We have seen a number of issues around this recently. There was a search in north Belfast in which Provisional IRA clothing was found. If the links between Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA still exist, as indicated in the 2015 report—there has been nothing to say that they do not—it is very serious. What investigations are being taken into that, as well as the Dowdall case in Dublin, the Dublin crime gangs and the money that is being used there?
Chris Heaton-Harris: The assessment was done in unique circumstances in 2015; I am yet to see similar circumstances that would lead me to do another assessment.
Chair: It is not fair to ask the Secretary of State or his colleagues to comment on anything that is either ongoing or in hand, for clear and obvious reasons. I am sure you will follow it up with the Secretary of State, if required, Carla.
Secretary of State and colleagues, thank you very much indeed for your attendance this morning. It has been a difficult session, given the issue at hand. Clear action is needed, and we are grateful to you for taking the time to answer our questions and share with us your thinking on a variety of those important issues.