Northern Ireland Affairs Committee
Oral evidence: PSNI data breaches, HC 47
Wednesday 13 December 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 13 December 2023.
Members present: Sir Robert Buckland (Chair); Stephen Farry; Sir Robert Goodwill; Claire Hanna; Tony Lloyd; Carla Lockhart; Jim Shannon; Bob Stewart.
Questions 316 - 332
Witnesses
II: Jon Boutcher, Chief Constable, Police Service of Northern Ireland; Chris Todd, Temporary Deputy Chief Constable, Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Jon Boutcher and Chris Todd.
Q316 Chair: We are very pleased to be joined by Jon Boutcher, the chief constable of the police service—welcome back, chief constable—and Chris Todd, the deputy chief constable as well. Welcome back. We are grateful to you both for coming directly to the Committee. Chief constable, you wanted to make a brief opening statement before we started asking questions. It is your opportunity to do so now.
Jon Boutcher: Thanks for the invitation to both me and Chris to come here this morning. Very briefly, in spite of the serious matters that we are here to discuss today, I want to start by saying that I am absolutely delighted to be here as the chief constable of the PSNI, an organisation that I have admired since almost the very beginning of my career in 1983. It is a genuine privilege to be here. What I have seen so far in the organisation in the first short months is extremely encouraging about the day-to-day work that it provides.
I have been getting out and about and speaking to colleagues. I am sure that we will talk in questions about some of the issues with regards to the data breach and how that has felt for those colleagues. By and large, the reaction by the men and women of the organisation has been incredible in the way that they have displayed stoicism, incredible resilience and a determination to continue delivering public services for the people of Northern Ireland with, I think, the best policing that is seen currently in the UK.
That is in a context of a very complex, challenging and uniquely dangerous environment for policing in the United Kingdom. We are an armed service for a reason—because of the threat that our officers face day in and day out. Only yesterday evening, I was out with John Caldwell and his family. It is very sobering to think of what happened to John only in February of this year, when he was attacked in front of his son, while he was simply taking a football training session, because he is a police officer in the PSNI. The impact of that incident on our staff was considerable. Then the data breach and the links to people’s details being shared in the way they were had a significant impact on the organisation. I am sure that we will get into that with regards to the questions.
I would like to additionally say, in response to the report, and I mentioned this when I spoke about the report on Monday, when it was released and I was with the Policing Board, that we have set up a data board. The chair of that board is our SIRO, who is Chris Todd, who is the deputy chief constable sitting next to me. The report highlights some really significant issues and I want to reassure this Committee now that I take those issues very seriously and personally. I am determined to make sure that we see through those recommendations.
I already have an agreement with the author and the review team that they will come back and review how we have responded to that report and the recommendations that have been provided. They have agreed to do that to assist us.
There is one thing I want to mention, though, about the context of where we currently are in Northern Ireland, generally, and the PSNI. That is with regards to the backdrop of talks ongoing at the moment around trying to resolve some of the issues that mean we do not have the Executive sitting in Stormont. What has welcomed me when I have taken up this post is the most severe financial crisis not just facing the PSNI but public services in Northern Ireland. The PSNI is at its lowest ever levels of police officers.
A number of different reviews have been conducted, of course beginning with Patten, around what the PSNI headcount of police officers should be. Generally, it has been accepted that that is around 7,500. That was also set out in New Decade, New Approach. In fact, an outline business case was agreed by the Department of Justice for that number of officers to be provided for. The Good Friday agreement requires that. As an organisation, we have subsequently done some work to make sure that there is a modern focus on police officer numbers. All of that work—there have been a number of iterations of it—comes in at around 7,000 to 7,500 officers. In March of next year, we will have 6,358 at a maximum.
We lose 60 to 70 people a month through the attrition of retirements and pensions, but there is another flow of officers now leaving because of, I think, the cost of living crisis, the pay issues in the PSNI, which I would like to get into in questions, the data breach and the challenges of being an officer today. There are some cultural issues that have been identified in a recent cultural audit. Finally, not least, of course there is the threat when you think about what happened to John. These people have families. This is not just about the officers and staff. This is about families who support them.
I am determined to make it very clear to everybody that the strategic priority for this organisation is to be properly funded, which feeds into this report and what we need to do to address the recommendations. I noted with interest the Lady Chief Justice’s speech earlier this year, where she described the increase in health budgets in the last 12 years at just under 70%. The increase in the educational budget is at 45%. The increase in justice has been at 3%. I want to make it very clear that I have every sympathy for the health sector. They are fellow public servants and have my absolute admiration. There are key and critical issues in education, but the PSNI is the emergency service of last resort for everybody.
When you consider what happened on 23 November in Dublin, we know that public disorder traditionally has occurred in Northern Ireland. If we go down to the numbers in 2025 of below 6,000 officers, it does not take my professional judgment as the chief constable to reach the conclusion about how difficult that is going to be for us to police Northern Ireland, with the unique challenges that are there, specifically with regards to the threat and the history. I want to make that severe position very clear to this Committee before I go any further.
The last thing I would say, as I mentioned at the beginning of this opening, is that last night I was with police officers in Omagh. Every day I speak to officers, rank and file staff. Their commitment to policing in Northern Ireland is something that I have not seen before, and I have some service in the police force. It is remarkable. They will go above and beyond to make sure that all communities in Northern Ireland are kept safe.
We have to give them a wage that means they can do that job as professionals. We have to support them. That is one thing that we intend to do through the findings and recommendations of this data breach and much more, with regards to how we can make sure that they feel valued. They are certainly valued by the senior team and, I am sure, by this Committee. I am very clear that they are valued by the communities in Northern Ireland, but we need to make sure that that value is understood in Westminster with regards to the funding for this organisation. I will close with those remarks.
Chair: Thank you, chief constable. I think that this Committee understands the value. We really do, and we appreciate the remarks you have just made. We welcome you to your post. The way that you have co-operated with this Committee, with me, is noted favourably. We welcome you warmly. I am going to now move on to the issue of the data breach.
Q317 Carla Lockhart: Thank you, chief constable and Chris, for coming before us today. I wish you well in your efforts. You have certainly hit the ground running. The approach that you have taken over the last number of weeks is commendable.
In relation to the data breach, I want to raise a couple of issues that you have touched on in your opening comments. In relation to the initial findings, we could all look at the 37 recommendations, agree with them and say that they need to be implemented. Ultimately, you have probably danced round the cost. What are the cost implications of implementing the 37 recommendations? Can you actually put a realistic figure on it? Ultimately, if we look at the hearing loss scenario—I know that it is slightly different—it cost a lot more than what was initially thought. Can you give us a realistic figure of what we are looking at?
Jon Boutcher: I cannot do that today. We have asked the authors of the report and they are now doing a supplementary piece of work to help us. Claire, who was the lead review officer for Pete, is costing the recommendations for us at the moment.
There are a number of broader costs, of course, that come from this as well, though, for the organisation. I am sure you are aware that we currently have a business case in with Treasury to help us deal with some of those costs initially. The finite details of what this is ultimately going to cost are not known. There is a group class action by a number of officers represented by different parties that will come down the line. There is an ICO investigation that is yet to report that could result in further cost implications, although that might not be the case because of the way we have dealt with the data breach, but we will wait and see on that.
I cannot give you a clear figure at the moment, but it is something that we are seeking to determine. I do not want to mislead you, quite simply. I do not know whether Chris has any wider views on that at the moment.
Chris Todd: In our bid to, ultimately, the Treasury, we submitted an estimate of what some of those preliminary costs would amount to. We discussed that last time I appeared before the Committee. Initially I estimated that at around £40 million. Our bid that was negotiated with the Treasury went through for around £30 million and parts of it are still being worked through. We had some promising news just last week, but it is still a work in progress.
It is fair to say that the report has highlighted some additional requirements that were not in that original estimate, such as the replacement of the SAP system, which I know you discussed with colleagues yesterday. There will be some additional costs and a business case will be required ultimately.
Q318 Carla Lockhart: Have we an indication as to when that secondary report will come forward in terms of costings?
Jon Boutcher: We are trying to get that work done as quickly as possible. There are things in the report, almost secondary elements to some of these recommendations. First is the prioritisation of data security. In Northern Ireland we are extremely good at physical security. With modern technology and the way organisations now collect data—the author of the report and I discussed this and it is set out in the report—I have said that every police force in the country needs to read this report and understand the recommendations and apply our learning to their own organisation.
We need to apply some modern thinking and technology. The SAP system, as I understand it, has been amended, improved and repaired. We need to start again. We need a new system that is fit for purpose. There are other technical solutions that I think can assist, having spoken to some other forces, around the release of data. With the way this happened, with the three dots and not realising that there was a file behind the file, there are technical solutions to prevent those things from happening.
There is a culture in policing that is extremely nervous about cloud-based solutions technology-wise. We need to explore, with partners, how we can address some of those failings that have been identified in the report. It is a really difficult question to answer. I spoke to Pete O’Doherty, who is the author of the report. I would like him to come back in the summer of next year to look at where we are. I would hope that we have progressed significantly, and that would include with procurement and funding of the sorts of fixes that the report generally describes are required being fully costed in the sort of detail that I think you would want. I can promise you that this is not going to be fudged. We are not going to shy away from this. We will progress it, but we have to do it within the context of the current financial envelope.
Q319 Carla Lockhart: Very quickly, in a slightly broader sphere, in relation to the 7% pay rise that you committed to give your officers, can you update members on how you feel that can or will be delivered? Also, you mentioned recruitment. Obviously recruitment is key to ensuring that our police force is well-enough resourced from a people perspective. What are the plans for kickstarting that?
It does no harm to reiterate from the floor again that the loss of the likes of the neighbourhood teams and the depleting of those has been a major bone of contention within communities. I believe that they are really the front line in terms of that flow of information. I am keen to understand what your thinking is around all that.
Jon Boutcher: Thank you for the question, because this is an underlying issue for all of what we are speaking about today. On the 7% pay rise, when I am told by the Department of Justice, Department of Finance and the Policing Board that we cannot pay the 7%, I am saying that the conversation is not that. It is “How do we pay it?” I have an accounting officer role. My analysis of that role is that I have to account for every pound note that comes into this organisation and that each pound note is being spent properly. We are very alive to our responsibilities as custodians of the public purse.
As the chief constable of the PSNI, I have a responsibility, an Article 2 responsibility and a responsibility under the Northern Ireland Act, to make sure that I keep Northern Ireland safe. There is a clear conflict if I do not have the funding, the money, to provide the services that the public in Northern Ireland deserve.
I noted earlier this year that the Metropolitan Police, which, probably with the PSNI, have some of the biggest challenges in UK policing, were given financial support to recruit 10,000 police officers. That was incentivised. Unfortunately, the Commissioner was unable to reach the 10,000. He was slightly short. He recruited 9,000. Because he was 1,000 short, the Commissioner—he has publicly spoken about this—had to return £60 million to the Treasury, which was intended for police recruitment.
Never mind a lay person, a chief constable finds it difficult to understand why that sort of funding cannot be made available for recruitment and for policing in Northern Ireland. The police officers in England and Wales have had their 7% pay increase from September. When they look at colleagues in Northern Ireland, who have unique challenges—a colleague shot in front of his son—we are not getting that 7% pay rise.
I was told last night that there is a bakery in Omagh offering more an hour in wages than recruits get paid. It is not a difficult decision. This is when wives and husbands are saying to the men and women in the police service in Northern Ireland, “We would love you to be police officers, but we cannot afford you to be.” I am lobbying hard. I am lobbying people involved in the talks at the moment around trying to get the 7%. I am lobbying hard to get the funding for the PSNI to start recruitment in April.
When you switch on that tap, it takes some time. With the actual training and the driving courses, it is going to be six months before we see people. We are not recruiting now. That stopped earlier this year because of the funding position. We lose 60 to 70 a month through retirement. We are losing—I became aware of this when I visited a station a couple of weeks ago—50, or maybe more, officers to Australia because of opportunities there. This was mentioned yesterday.
People are making choices because of the way they feel they are or are not being supported. Anything and everything I can do to get that money I will do. I mentioned if that means, legally, I have to challenge my accounting officer position, then I will look at doing that with regards to how we pay this money. Nothing is off the table for me with regards to that. On that example I gave you about the Metropolitan Police and the £60 million, our gap this year is £52 million. That would cover our gap. That would pay the pay award.
It feels like there needs to be a review, not only of the formula that provides funding to Northern Ireland, but how that funding is then disbursed in Northern Ireland. We need to lobby hard here in London to make sure the challenges that we are facing are well understood. When I raised this issue with the chair of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, she did not understand that. When I raised it with the Chair of the NPCC, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, he did not understand these issues.
We have to really start messaging people around the severity of the position here, because we already past the tipping point. Whatever I can do to get this money, I will do.
Carla Lockhart: I am sure we will not be found wanting as a Committee.
Q320 Jim Shannon: First of all, Jon, it is nice to see you here and in your position as well. We wish you well. You have already had a letter from me. I do it in my best writing. Sometimes it is a bit of a challenge, but they are best wishes. It is also nice to see you, Chris. You have the full support of the Committee in relation to the funding formula. It has been brought up by all parties in this Chamber. We are quite concerned about the disparity.
In particular, Jon, if you do not mind, I would just like to put on record my thanks not only to yourselves but to all of your officers. The chief superintendent, Johnston McDowell, is the man in charge in the area that I represent, Strangford, and the area of the hon. Member for North Down. We both work alongside him in a very good capacity. Thank you for the monies that were made available for the particular difficulties that we have had over the last period of time. The effort from your officers is greatly appreciated by everyone. I just wanted to put that on record, because it is something that we particularly like and are fond of.
In relation to the data breach, forgive me; I am probably fairly simplistic in my way of looking at things. I just cannot understand why the Policing Board are not more involved, even though they say it is an operational thing. Nonetheless, they could have been more proactive. We had them on earlier. You have probably seen them.
I am more concerned about the impact upon the officers, those who have come to me, those who probably did not even tell their families or close friends that they play sport with or socialise with about the job that they do, and then found out, while they did not tell them, everybody else seemed to be aware of who they were and what they did. The impact of the data breach is incredible. I know that you will understand that.
Secondly, there is an impact of the data breach in terms of trauma and their health, both for those who are serving officers and those who are retired. It seems that the knowledge was quite widespread.
Thirdly, in relation to the monies that are necessary for those people who felt under such personal, physical and emotional pressure that they needed to move house, I am just wondering if that money has been made available. If not, the Committee and the Chair in particular would be very keen to nudge that along the way.
Fourthly, I asked this question yesterday in the Committee. In relation to PPWs, I cannot for the life of me understand, chief constable, how some police officer applies for a PPW, has extreme circumstances, which are well laid out, and does not get it. They go through the appeal process and do not get it. I have to hand that to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and have him look at it.
In relation to PPWs—and without going into too much detail, because there is confidentiality in it—how on earth does somebody in the firearms branch decide, “No. That guy does not get one,” even in those circumstances? Those are my four questions.
Chair: Thank you for that comprehensive set of questions.
Jon Boutcher: I will be brief. I will deal with the last one first, if I may, and hopefully I will recall the other points you have made properly. First, we are an armed service and every serving officer has a personal protection weapon because of the threats to the organisation and the individuals—particularly the police officers, but also to staff. There are no issues with regards to those officers and those weapons. They will have access to those weapons. They have those weapons. They are their protection weapons.
The issue is wherever there is a concern about an officer having a weapon. There can be all sorts of concerns with regards to conduct, or wellbeing issues. On occasion, those weapons are taken from individuals and a review and assessment is done, in the interests of everybody. I am sure you understand why that would be. There are retired officers who, because of threats to them, will have support with regards to protection weapons. Again, if they act in a way that causes any concerns about their possession of those weapons or act outside of the rules within which they can have those weapons, those issues are revisited. For a period of time, the weapon will be removed from them while those issues are considered.
On the example you might be thinking of, it is probably worth you and I talking off table so I understand that better, but, broadly, what I have just set out is the position. There should not be a concern. It is not one that has been raised to me, but I am happy to talk to you.
Q321 Jim Shannon: Very quickly, if I can come back to you on the PPWs, there is no issue with the person individually. There are no issues about conduct, his relationships or whatever it may be. This person has applied for a PPW, but he is not the only one, by the way. I know of others who have applied for it and have been refused as well. It is a very complex issue and it frustrates me greatly to see an officer who is worried about his personal safety. He is asking for something which is endorsed and supported by letters from the community, from serving police officers. I do not understand the system.
Jon Boutcher: Maybe we can take that away, sir. I promise I am happy to talk to you about that.
Jim Shannon: I will pass on the details to you.
Jon Boutcher: I was not aware of that.
On your issue around how the officers are feeling and how we have supported them, I have been in the organisation now for a couple of months. I have walked the floors considerably and I have had a very mixed response about that. Interestingly, the more mature, more experienced police officers and staff, who have seen a lot in their time in the organisation, are more resilient to what happened with the data breach. Younger in-service police officers and staff, by and large, have probably been more disorientated and more concerned about what happened.
Even members of the public have spoken to me, saying that they had not realised until the data breach that somebody’s daughter worked in the PSNI as a member of police staff. This is a broad issue. People now know about our staff and who works in the organisation. We did a very quick and effective response from 8 August, when the breach occurred. It was managed very commendably by Chris. The review team have spoken very positively about that. I have met everybody involved in that response, that recovery.
There was an assessment of those who faced the most severe risk. That might be because of the roles they were in, unusual names or their community background. A number of people who were assessed to need immediate support and help received it. I think the number was about 79. I am very grateful to the Department of Justice and the Secretary of State for supporting our bid to the Treasury that Chris has referenced.
We had an agreement for an amount of money that provides us with what we are describing as a universal offer for all of our staff and officers to have a provision of £500 for security measures. That is a goodwill measure from us, but it is also a practical requirement. Some of those felt that they were more at risk, but in the assessments it was felt, even by their supervisors and colleagues, that they were not at that risk. Can I just say there is a perception and there is a reality?
I worry, again, about families. These officers and staff volunteer to work in the PSNI. Their families do not. We are looking at that universal officer as to how practically, from a user-friendly perspective, we can provide those officers and staff with that. I am determined, where there are any individual concerns still, after that process has taken place, that I specifically look at them to try to make sure that we are doing whatever we can to reassure those officers. I hope that covers the issues you have raised.
Q322 Bob Stewart: Jon, it is really nice to see you. We met by chance a week last Sunday. Jon is an old friend and I repeat what I said then: I am delighted that you are the chief constable. A better man could not have been chosen.
I have a follow-on question from Carla’s questioning. How much does a police officer joining today get in salary and how much does one, once qualified, get? I am comparing that with the military, for example.
Jon Boutcher: An officer joining will get around about £23,000. What I found interesting, again, on a visit to Musgrave police station is that the Harbour Police, which is a very small organisation in Northern Ireland, are recruiting and their recruitment starts at £30,189. The offer initially is not the sort of offer we would like. If you are married with two children, for instance, it is a challenge to bring up a family on that money. This must be set against the context of what we have been talking about already—the threat level, the responsibility.
There are some things in the culture audit that hopefully questions will tease out. The organisation at the front line, the rank and file, do not feel supported. They feel that there is a fierce culture around making mistakes. I have made more mistakes than anybody, but I am sitting here. You have to learn from your mistakes and make sure that we, as an organisation, benefit from any mistakes and that we do not make them again. It is not just the pay. There are a lot of factors in terms of how we can, without money, improve the organisation.
Interestingly, the pay points for the increases are loaded—as constables, if you are not going to be promoted—towards the latter years of your service. There will be little increase over the first two, three or four years. In the first two years in the PSNI, you do not receive an increase, whereas you do, for instance, in the Met. I am reading profusely at the moment to look at how we can improve things and learn from others.
That salary goes up considerably between seven and 10 years, but we are losing people at one to three years. We are looking at trying to bring the increases down to lower pay points, to try to encourage people to stay. That, I have to say, was an issue that was raised by an officer on a night duty shift I saw about three weeks ago. That gives you a broad sense of what the pay is for them.
Q323 Bob Stewart: Is a percentage of pay what the military used to call X‑factor or danger pay? Chris is nodding, so I presume there is.
Jon Boutcher: Yes, there is. There is for both police officers and police staff. For police officers, I think it is around £3,500 or something like that. That is for whatever rank you are. This is something else I have identified that we need to address. Police staff get a derisory amount. They have asked for an increase to £1,000. That was promised as long ago as 2019, agreed, and they still have not had it.
Bob Stewart: You have a hell of a lot of police staff, as well, in PSNI. I am really glad you made that point, because they are at a lower level than the police officers who carry the warrant, but they have exactly the same problems. Anyway, that is my only interchange.
Q324 Claire Hanna: It is good to see you both here. Congratulations. It is a big job at a challenging time but I know, certainly as a Committee and definitely as a party and constituency representative, we want to be very helpful.
It is a little bit off topic because you proactively answered my question about IT and Jim has set the pace by talking to you about pensions. I wanted to touch briefly on the issue of legacy. We had the PPS announcement last week that there would be no Stakeknife prosecutions. What is the timeline for the publication of your Kenova report in your previous role? Can people be confident that it is not being defanged, that blushes are not being spared and that the work that you put in will be reflected in the report?
Jon Boutcher: First, around the PPS announcement, that was for five cases that were periphery to the alleged Agent Stakeknife. It is important I say this, and I say it in the report. The terms of reference for the Kenova investigation were about the alleged Agent Stakeknife, his activities and what he did. A considerable number of files were provided to the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland about his criminal activity.
He died in advance of decisions being made, which was incredibly frustrating for the families and for many of those involved in trying to get the truth of what has happened. The cases that were decided upon were those in the margins of those particular cases involving the alleged Agent Stakeknife. The families were alive to the likelihood that there would not be prosecutions, but those families have already had—it is important I say this—a wealth of information about what happened to their loved ones. That has been well received. There has been significant praise towards the team from the families about the information they have. Many of those families are happy with what they have been told. There is more to tell them once the report is published.
Before I move on to the report, the PPS is still to make some decisions on the Stakeknife cases. I am obviously pushing the Director of Public Prosecutions—with care, because I want him to make those decisions properly—to have those decisions announced as soon as possible. The indication is that will be in the very early part of the new year.
I will say that the files submitted in the Kenova investigation broadly were with the PPS in 2020-21. The time it takes for the PPS to make these decisions is another trauma for these families. They have to wait for an endless amount of time to get those decisions. The case for the defence for the Public Prosecution Service is, again, they do not have the resilience or the resources to look at those cases, because they do not involve contemporary threats today. They are not about individuals who are awaiting bail applications or are seen as a threat to society today, so they get put in a lower priority.
I understand that the Director of Public Prosecutions has sought additional funding to deal specifically with the Kenova cases. I understand his dilemma, but that really is unacceptable.
With regards to the report, it was submitted by me to the PSNI in advance of me taking up this position. The report cannot change. I have recused myself from the strategic management board process, which is the internal process that manages such issues as a public-facing report like the Kenova report. Chris will actually manage that process. I fought fiercely for the independence of Kenova, so it would be wrong for me, in this final phase of that process, to be involved in the publication. I was the author in another role.
I would expect the report to be published in the new year. I do not see any impediment to that, but the strategic management board that will deal with those issues, if there are any, will be led by Chris. I will not be involved in that process. The headline message is that I would expect the report to be published in the early part of the new year. Iain Livingstone, who is now in my old role as the officer in overall charge of Operation Kenova, is in communications with Chris about that process, as I would have been.
Finally on this, I wrote a protocol that sets out how that report would be produced. Firstly, because some families were concerned that I would be influenced in the writing of that report, the Kenova protocol sets out that I am the author. Nobody else wrote anything; it is my report, every word of it. The next process was the Maxwellisation, also known as a representations process, where I notified anybody in the report who is criticised or whose reputation would be adversely impacted by what is in the report and gave them the right to reply.
That process took slightly longer than I had anticipated, but it still happened in reasonably quick time. I am grateful for all of those bodies and individuals for responding in the way they did. In April or May of this year, I called stumps on that, so we moved on to the next phase. The next phase was the security checking phase. To reassure this Committee, the Cabinet Office managed that and there is nothing in that report that in any way attracts any national security concerns. The report does not pull any punches. It is very forthright about what we found.
The final phase after that, pre-publication with the PSNI, is that the report goes to the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure there is nothing in the report that would prejudice any potential future prosecution. The Director of Public Prosecutions has agreed that there is nothing in the report, because it has a thematic base, that would do that. The report is then passed to the PSNI for publication.
The protocol was agreed in advance. We followed the protocol very carefully and diligently. We are right at the final end of that process and, as I say, I would expect that to be completed in the new year.
Q325 Claire Hanna: You are correct to set out the parallel issues. There is the issue of information to families, of course. There is the issue of prosecutions, but there is also an issue around proof of concept: that, with thorough investigation, information and truth can be arrived at. I have no doubt that you have written that without political interference and in line with your conscience and where the worthy evidence took you. That cannot be changed and that is reassuring.
Can we expect that report to be published in full? I appreciate what you have said about the timeline for publication, but should we expect it to be published in full and can people have confidence that the truth is not going to be contaminated by potential political embarrassment?
Chris Todd: I will speak on that point. As Mr Boutcher has said, he has recused himself from the strategic management board, which would have been meeting today. It will now be meeting this time next week, but that is not an issue. It gives us a little more breathing room. I would expect that the strategic management board would like to assure themselves that the conditions of the protocol referred to have been met.
I am picking up no indication that there will be any issues, but we do need to go through that formal process. It is stipulated in the conditions from the Policing Board and in the protocol itself, so we will follow that process. Hopefully, we will get that through next week and then we will be into Christmas. The likelihood will be publication in the new year.
Q326 Stephen Farry: Good morning to Jon and Chris. Jon, I will also pass on my congratulations on your appointment. It is very well deserved. Before coming back to the specifics of the data protection issue, I wanted to ask you a more general question in terms of your priorities for the police service. In particular, I reflect on what I perceive as being perhaps the biggest challenge for Northern Ireland, which is touching on the issue of confidence in the PSNI.
This probably relates to the ongoing reality of paramilitary activity across Northern Ireland. You will appreciate that the Committee is doing an inquiry into paramilitarism, which hopefully will report in the new year. The paramilitary taskforce is doing great work, but we still receive a lot of complaints, from one end of the spectrum on the proliferation of flags on lampposts marking out territory, through to coercive control in communities, drug dealing, organised crime and the expulsion of people from their homes under paramilitary threat.
There are issues around the law and resources, but what is your perspective on how the PSNI can better respond to that type of situation across Northern Ireland?
Jon Boutcher: First, I visited the taskforce. I sat down with all the different component parts. We have the National Crime Agency. We have His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs involved. I looked at some of the end-to-end investigations to reassure myself that we are using every tool in the box to deal with these issues. Interestingly on that—I will only mention this briefly—there is a bit of a test case around an unexplained wealth order. I am keen to make sure that we utilise all of those financial and legal opportunities to challenge and impact on these paramilitary groups.
This is a real priority for me, because they impact so disproportionately the communities in which they operate, whether that be through intimidation or drugs. We must have a meaningful plan to deal with them. Deliberately, one of the first groups I met was the Independent Reporting Commission, because I wanted to know if we were doing everything we can to deal with paramilitaries. They produced their report very recently and I have to say they were very complementary about the PSNI.
This goes into the point that was mentioned earlier about the importance of neighbourhood policing. It is about early intervention in those neighbourhoods with people who are being lured into paramilitary activity, often coercively. We have to have ears and eyes on the ground. That is why it is so important that we protect our neighbourhood policing.
That is the uniform, softer end of things, but the sophisticated side of dealing with these paramilitary groups is the lawfully audacious way. That is a term I often use, which makes people look at me and smile. We have to come up with ways to take these organisations down. That is something that I want to focus on. I have already met with Graeme Biggar, the director general of the National Crime Agency. We are meeting again in the new year to challenge ourselves as to how we can impact more on those groups. I want to reassure you that I am very alive to what they are doing and how they are impacting on the safety of the communities in which they operate.
Some of that comes down to funding again. One of the first things I was told—it was my second day—was that we have to have a 9% reduction in the taskforce. That means people. Fewer police officers is less policing. We need to make sure that it remains a priority.
We probably are going to have to think more outside the box about how we deal with these organisations. It is quite a few years on now from the Good Friday agreement. There is some work being done that I do not want to go into in this forum, because it would be inappropriate, about how we can tackle them in a more out-of-the-box way.
What I will say about the work of the people involved in the taskforce, though, is about the data, the statistics, drug seizures, firearms seizures and the interventions they are doing. If you were to see those in London, it would make a significant impact on organised crime on the streets of London. It is another area where a lot of the successes really do go unheralded. I did not quite realise the amount of work that is being done, with partners, to make sure that we tackle these groups.
We have reached a bit of a tipping point. We have to take a new approach. We are in a different financial context and envelope about what we can and cannot do but, for your reassurance, that is a focus for me and the organisation know that.
Q327 Stephen Farry: Hopefully we will come back to those in more detail at a further opportunity. To come back to the data breach issues for now, there were 37 recommendations from that review. Just to clarify, has the PSNI accepted all 37 of those? Flowing from that, there is work being done to put together some sort of action plan around those. 37 is a lot of recommendations. Is there work ongoing in terms of the prioritisation of what needs to happen in that regard? Some will be more significant than others. Some will be more resource-intensive than others. How is all that going to be worked out over the coming days and weeks?
Jon Boutcher: I saw Chris look at me there, so I will hand over to him. I will just say that, yes, I have accepted it. I read the report two to three times when I was first given it to understand it. There is a real leadership issue here. One of the things I have been asked previously about the data breach, and the report since it has come out, is around the blame game, the responsibility.
This is a responsibility of the leadership of the organisation. This is an organisational failing. The individuals who, at different stages—the report sets it out, as you will have read—had a part to play were following the existing structures and processes. They have been involved tirelessly, working incredible hours, to recover the position. It is important that I make a note of that on record for this Committee.
There is not going to be any disciplinary action against any of those individuals. Those issues have been looked at and the misconduct issues have been resolved to the point that this is an organisational issue. That is my position. This is about the leadership and this is not just about the PSNI. Any public body, any police force in the country, needs to read this report, as I have said, to understand that we must prioritise how we look after data. We look after some of the most sensitive data that any organisation will hold about vulnerable victims, rape victims. It is not just our own data about our staff.
I would say this is the most significant breach of this type so far in policing, because of the risk in Northern Ireland. If we do not wake up to the risks of mismanagement of that data, we will not be given a second chance. We accept the report in full. Chris is going to chair the data board that will see the recovery from this.
I have to say a huge amount of that work has already happened. Even the data that was leaked was devalued immediately by PINs, rank or identification details being changed. The value of that information to criminals would not be the same following it being released, because of changes that were made. We have also, of course, pursued anybody who has exploited the data with the full force of the law. I think there were five or six arrests and one charge. Anybody who seeks to exploit this data will be dealt with robustly.
As regards the plan to recover, I will hand over to Chris, but I will just reinforce that we accept this report. It has been done in a very mature and responsible way. I applaud the review team for how they have gone about the work. They have not pulled any punches and it is for us to make sure that we become an exemplar in dealing with data, especially in the context of Northern Ireland, in policing in the UK. That is the aim and that is what we want to achieve now.
Chris Todd: It is worth pointing out that there is more than one plan here. The report itself is quite forensic. It is quite detailed and it gives us a good framework to work against and a technical plan to deal with the issue at hand. Equally, there is a cultural plan that is required, which the chief has alluded to and you as a Committee have rightly picked up on. I was listening to some of the questioning of our Policing Board colleagues earlier this morning and of our colleagues from the staff associations yesterday.
We recognise some of the cultural issues that are at play here and the need for our organisation to be one that has a learning culture, for example. This will not just be my plan as the senior information risk owner. This will be my plan as the temporary deputy chief constable responsible for conduct, culture and performance across the organisation.
Specifically around the technical details, yes, we do accept the report and the recommendations. It provides us with an excellent opportunity to learn. There are 37 recommendations in there. There are a number we have already addressed, the first being the elevation of the role from what was an assistant chief constable’s position to the deputy chief constable. Notwithstanding who sits in that role, that is where it will now remain.
That means that these issues are brought to the immediate attention of everybody in the executive team, including the chief constable. One of my colleagues yesterday suggested that there may have been a degree of silo mentality around some of the issues. That is clearly a risk and hopefully this will address that. That then gives me the ability to be the chair of the new data board.
We already have some fairly robust governance procedures in place. We have an information governance and development group, which is coincidentally meeting this Friday. That will be the first transition from the existing governance to the new governance arrangements. That group will remain. It still performs a very vital role, but then I will sit in an elevated position above that and bring in a different range of stakeholders, as the report refers to.
There are other areas we have already addressed as well. It makes reference to our engagement on the national level. On Monday of this week I was at the National Police Chiefs’ Council digital, data and technology coordination committee, which just trips off the tongue. It is a very important structure. I have a position on that committee and will continue to hold that position, which gets me engaged with leaders across policing such as Pete O’Doherty, for example, who leads police information assurance and is in that group.
Yesterday, I co-chaired for the first time the national data and analytics board for policing, which, again, puts me in direct contacts with leaders in this area across policing. I personally will be able to draw upon that support and that learning, and I will be able to dissipate that through the organisation. We need to take the same approach to all levels throughout the organisation, both leadership and practitioners.
The data maturity assessment is referred to there as well. Ironically, we were seeking to be an early adopter of this new process. There are only 15 services across policing in England, Scotland, Wales and ourselves so far out of the 50-odd, if you include the non-Home Office forces, that have yet undertaken a data maturity assessment. We should have had ours in September but, because of the aftermath of the data breach and what we were dealing with at that time, we had to postpone it. That is now back on schedule and it is absolutely something we will be picking up on.
From the conversations we have had, we have demonstrated that the last recommendation around executive support is recognised and is being embraced with immediate effect. That data board will deliver the action plan against all 37 recommendations. Within that are the recommendations from the Information Commissioner’s Office from our previous audit earlier this year. A lot of that is specifically around data sharing and we await the findings of the Information Commissioner’s Office investigation into the data breach, which we believe will report in the new year. The report itself is being finalised, but it sits with the governance arrangements, so we will expect to receive that some time in the new year.
Q328 Stephen Farry: I have one final question to the chief constable. I am conscious you are here with a platform in Westminster. Most of the responsibility for the PSNI sits inside the devolved space, but could you perhaps take the opportunity to articulate that there is nonetheless a UK-wide responsibility here, particularly around the national security angle? That points to wider responsibilities of the UK Government, not just those of local Ministers in Northern Ireland.
Jon Boutcher: That is a helpful question for me. What we have seen recently, because of what is happening in the Middle East, is that the PSNI, because we are very experienced in this space, has been sending over PSUs, officers, to deal with the protests you have seen in London in recent weeks. We are the first port of call because of the experience of our officers. Londoners will have seen the green uniforms of the PSNI dealing with that protest.
When the Metropolitan Police have any issues with regards to firearms, which they have had recently because of a couple of incidents with firearms officers facing sanction with regards to their actions, it is the PSNI that is the first port of call, because we are an armed service and we are experienced in dealing with these issues.
We provide a level of resilience with regards to mainstream policing because of our specialist skills. We will get to a position, because of the numbers we talked about at the very beginning of this hearing, where we simply will not be able to do that.
Equally, when we saw the disturbances in Dublin recently, I reached out to the Commissioner of An Garda Síochána. We were able to provide support to them with regards to what they were facing that evening. That support first reassured officers that the Commissioner was there for them and they were getting the actual kit—that was water cannon—they needed to deal with any challenges they may face on subsequent nights. It sent a message to people of how they would be dealt with. There are a lot of elements of what the PSNI do that almost go unseen and that we will not be able to do moving forward.
There is a broader issue I just want to mention, though, around the PSNI and other public services. It is something that you will have seen in England and Wales. Because of the challenges that are faced particularly by mental health services in Northern Ireland, we—I am sure all of you who work in Northern Ireland will have had this—routinely sit in hospitals with people suffering from mental health challenges, whilst doctors go and attend to other patients, on the basis that the patients we are sitting with are fine. They are safe, because there are police officers with them. They can prioritise elsewhere.
You get to a position where there are more police cars sitting in the accident and emergency car park than there are patrolling the streets and responding to 999 calls. I have made those sorts of decisions about how we are going to have to reduce those services. We simply are only going to be able to deal with our priorities and our priorities, because I am quite old-fashioned, are about protecting people, especially the vulnerable, and fighting crime. That does not include looking after people like that in hospitals. There will have to be other provisions made for that.
I just want to talk about that issue around the additional resilience that the organisation provides. As I say, an emergency service is a last resort for everybody. If the funding issues, as we predict them now, continue without any relief, we are going to have to come up with a new policing model. We are going to have to look at what we are doing around paramilitary groups. We will have to look at what we are doing around neighbourhoods. We are going to have to look at what we are doing around national security issues, because you can only do so much with so much.
We will understand where every single resource of the PSNI is and we have already started this work, to redesign the operating model to work at 6,358 officers at the end of March and below 6,000 officers at the start of 2025. That, for me, is untenable. We will be having some very difficult conversations with people. That includes, when we get the call for help from other organisations such as the Met, simply not having the resources to send to them.
Q329 Tony Lloyd: Chief constable, it is great to welcome you here and congratulations? Can I also thank you for the very candid way in which you have answered questions so far and the wide-ranging remit that the Committee has taken this morning, on what could have been a much narrower brief? Nevertheless, your comments are very helpful and informative for this Committee.
Can I, Chair, start off slightly wide of the agenda? On this issue of recruitment, you have very strongly emphasised the very low levels now that the PSNI are operating with. I can recognise and we can all recognise that that forces choices that, frankly, you and your leadership team should not have to make. Specifically in terms of the data breach, one of the issues is about trust and confidence in the PSNI, both as a service and amongst your officers and staff.
If we look at recruitment, in the hope that we can now see you offered the chance to recruit, how far can you guarantee that that recruitment will follow the ambitions of the PSNI and those who have established the PSNI, that it should be a service that reflects the communities of Northern Ireland? That recruitment has to be seen to be part of the process that maintains community trust in what you are trying to do.
Jon Boutcher: It is a really good and valuable question, because that goes to the heart of trust in the Police Service of Northern Ireland. There is that well-trodden phrase, “The public are the police. The police are the public”. We have to represent the communities we police. There are emerging communities in Northern Ireland, such as eastern European communities. There are the predominant communities—the nationalist and unionist communities, Catholic and Protestant communities—and I have spoken to Lord Patten on a number of occasions about his work.
That provided the direction around the 50/50 recruitment and I have already had a number of people raise with me, if we do get the recruitment tap turned on—just to your question, sir—how we are going to make sure that that recruitment reflects the broad church of different communities in Northern Ireland. Again, if I am honest, that is about leadership.
I faced this problem previously, when I was the chief constable of Bedfordshire, around black and Asian communities and a mistrust of the police. We went from being the lowest in terms of representation—we were one of the lowest in the country as far as black and Asian community police officers were concerned—to the second-highest. That was not through any statutory responsibility to have 50/50 recruitment. That was through speaking to those communities, listening to their concerns and working with them to provide them with reassurances.
This is linked to the data breach because, specifically, it has been suggested to me that the nationalist or Catholic community will feel more vulnerable and concerned about the data breach than some other communities. We have to work even harder to make sure that we can absolutely reassure people that this sort of data breach and failing will never happen again, and that we become the example across the UK landscape for how data should be held.
We should be that example anyway, because of the risks in Northern Ireland. As I have already mentioned today, around physical risk we are excellent, but the culture does not move to how we manage that data. There are three key principles that stuck out from the report, for me, about the support mechanisms: how we look after our people, how we look after our finances and we also have to include now how we look after our data, because of the amount of information that we hold that is so sensitive. To gain the trust of our communities around victims, as I have mentioned already, we need to demonstrate that we are the safe custodians of that information.
Around recruitment, I raised this yesterday with Archbishop Eamon Martin. I have raised it with politicians. I am currently open to any ideas around the bespoke set of answers for Northern Ireland. Just over 30% of our officers are from the Catholic community. Interestingly, our retirements, which, as I said, are around 60 to 70 a month, are predominantly Protestant officers. When you look at the figures, there is a sort of misrepresentation, because we are not recruiting at the moment, about how we are managing to maintain that number of Catholic and nationalist officers.
It is something that we have started to focus on. I have spoken to our HR lead about it. We are scoping out how, when we get the green light to recruit, we best do that. There are a number of things that we will be looking to do, but certainly it will include reaching into those communities directly. An example of what we did with regards to black and Asian communities is, because they did not have any family members or friends in the police—it sounds quite a simple thing—they did not know the language for the application form. It is called the national search process, to join the police.
They did not know about the competency process to join the police service, whereas sons, daughters, relatives of police officers do. We did workshops over weekends and we brought them in. I described it as levelling the playing field. Those sorts of measures, which do not require statute to direct that we have to have percentages of recruitment, can be very successful. They are the sorts of things we will be exploring and seeking to do.
Q330 Tony Lloyd: With a more narrow focus, the data breach resulted from an FoI request. One of the recommendations from the review is that there should be one standing operating procedure around FoIs. As well as that, the guidance around it should be more “user-friendly”. The third part to my question would be this: what steps are you taking to revise the guidance on safe data extraction?
If I can put those technical questions in a final context, one thing that the Chair has been very keen to pursue is whether in fact you can reduce the number of FoIs, a lot of which are generated internally and a lot of which, perhaps with greater transparency, could be simply resolved in the first place.
Jon Boutcher: I will deal with the last issue first, on FoIs, then I will move on to the issue of the standard operating procedure and some of the remarks in the report. I am still fairly new in the organisation, and some of this links to the culture audit that we have shared with the Policing Board. We have socialised with the staff associations and then shared it with all of our staff. That culture audit, by the way, involved some 4,000 members of our staff answering questions about what it feels like to be a member of the PSNI.
Broadly, it felt like to me, reading it, there were two organisations. There is the front line which, really importantly for me, is really values-driven. They are doing this job because they care. It really came off the page. There was lots of discretionary effort. They will do whatever it takes. They will stay as long as they have to stay to make sure jobs are finished. There was a real sense of brigading together. If there is a crisis, if they face something extraordinary, whatever needs to be done, will be done. There is a can-do approach.
Interestingly, what also came out of the audit is this sense that they are not supported. There is a fears culture that, if they make mistakes, they face punitive action, disproportionate action. By the way, when things are escalated in the misconduct arena, it disables an organisation because people cannot move. People cannot be promoted. It is like cholesterol. It clogs up the organisation. There was a sense of this fears-driven culture and no forward planning and no modernisation in the organisation.
It is almost like we have the front line, where everything looks pretty healthy and good, and from the leadership there is some work to do. Freedom of information requests is one of the areas with an underlying message surrounding it. We have staff associations that are not involved in the preparation and moderation of our promotion processes. When a promotion process happens, those organisations ask lots of questions through FoIs.
If we involved them in those processes, if they are moderating those processes, they know. Their members tell them what was wrong with the last process. We will save ourselves a lot of heartache. I did watch Warren yesterday, from NIPSA, giving some evidence to you about the number of FoI requests his organisation does. I would suspect—but I will look now—that a significant number of those are unnecessary, because they could just talk to us.
They should be involved. This is Team PSNI. They should be part of those processes. I have given those messages already, but we need to embed that now. It is not just about talking; it is about walking. Some 20% of FoI requests are internal. Northern Ireland is a very litigious environment. We need to shift that culture and that is through transparency and listening to what they say.
With regards to the earlier ask around standard operating procedures, there are a number of things in that report that caused me huge concern. We had had a number of warnings with regards to the use of PDFs. I think the report references the National Police Chiefs’ Council in January and June of last year sending out notifications about best practice. Some of it was adopted in the PSNI and some of it was not. There was no standard operating procedure to bring that all of that together. That is the sort of stuff that Chris is now addressing.
What I would say is this: I am going to do a message for the organisation before Christmas. It feeds in a little bit to what I have already explained, but data is everybody’s business. It is not just for that part of the organisation that manages FoI requests. This whole experience has shaken the organisation. We all now know, even beyond the recommendations in the report, that we have to be far more alive and focused on how we manage data.
For me, the report was really about organisational leadership, to make sure that we prioritise this and make it business as usual within the organisation. It is about making sure that we have processes that work and that are reviewed, examined, audited and monitored. It is about making sure we have the right people in this part of the business. There are some bespoke skills that we potentially need. I am very conscious of the police staff organisation focus on roles, functions and protecting their staff, but we might need some specialist help that we currently do not have.
It is then about making sure that we regularly review the end-to-end business of how we deal with freedom of information requests and subject access requests, to make sure that every single component part is working properly. I know the SAP system, the HR system, is at end of life and probably was some time ago. It has just been patched. There is something about spending to save in technology that would prevent that disclosure that occurred, simply because the technology would not have allowed that document to go out. It would have stopped it, as opposed to human alertness. We need to embrace the technology more.
There is a culture, currently—because of security, ironically—that is nervous of technology. We need to change that, because the technology can be our friend. I have spoken to other chief constables and other technology leads in the NPCC family and they are doing stuff around redaction tools. We are not using these tools because we are fearful of them. We have to modernise some of that thinking. We want proofs of concept because of the specific risks of Northern Ireland, but we have to embrace these technologies.
Chris Todd: I will just add a couple of brief things. Around the FoIs, there are two points. One is that people should not have to ask the question, wherever possible, because the information is already available to them. That is the transparency point. That is internal and external as well. We need to put more stuff on our website, so that journalists and academics can access the material that they need for their research.
This is actually something that was highlighted under a previous ICO inspection, where there was a threat of enforcement action around our failure to meet our statutory requirements to return FoIs within the requisite time. We did a lot of work there to improve our systems and we recognised then that actually, if we reduce the demand, we help ourselves.
It probably goes back to that earlier point about the risk of a siloed culture, when the responsibility sat in one part of an organisation. Now, it sits at the top of the organisation, so we can look across the whole organisation and help that along. We need to not only make the information available to people; we need to change the culture in the organisation, so people do not feel the need to ask for it because they trust the processes, as Mr Boutcher just alluded to.
There are a couple of things there that we will definitely be working on. Around the SOPs, the report highlights that it is not so much that the detail within the SOPs was incorrect. They were just very lengthy, difficult documents to work through. This probably goes to the culture of litigation that we defend against. We do not want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but if you spoke to our comms team, they would tell you that, if we put a video out on our website for our staff to view, there will be a drop-off point after a certain period of time. The attention will fade, because people are very busy.
Nobody is going to ready 20 pages of a standard operating procedure. If they can read one page and get the key points, there is a better chance we will change the culture. That does not mean that we hide the other 19 pages away. We must keep them available as well, but we present the facts up front. That is where we need to get to, so that people across the organisation are embracing the changes that are required and understand what those changes are.
Q331 Chair: Can I suggest that a benchmark of progress would be a reduction in the number of FoIs that you receive? I am keeping a very close eye on those figures, particularly the proportion of FoIs from staff. It would be a very good way to measure that change and that transparency. Will you be keeping a close eye on those figures? I am not going to ask you to set a target, though sometimes it is quite good to get that concept moving, so that people are moving towards a goal that you can measure.
Jon Boutcher: I understand what you are saying. I am very alive to the internal issues around FoI and around civil actions, and that all goes to trust. This culture audit that was done in April and May this year, which predates the Scoffield judgment that talked about the Ormeau Road case. It predates the data breach. When I speak to staff, it still feels like they are the key issues, even though the organisation has been through some big challenges since then.
This is about the organisation trusting us, because they will ask fewer questions if they feel confident in the organisation and if we are an employer of choice. Next year—we have announced this—we are going to build on that culture audit, because some questions were not in the audit that should have been, in my view, as a new chief constable.
Every member of our organisation—whether you service our cars, whether you clean our buildings, whether you are in our neighbourhood policing teams, whether you are in the paramilitary crime taskforce—will come to those workshops and we will talk about the organisation and what it feels like to be in the organisation. We—the senior team and I—will answer their questions. There has been a disconnect, it feels to me, between the organisation and the senior team. If we reconnect that, I am confident that some of these issues around requesting information, almost the “them and us” bit, will erode. We will be a far healthier organisation and people will feel the support that currently they say they do not.
Q332 Chair: I have one final question. Do you feel that the mechanisms of scrutiny and accountability of the NI Policing Board are working as well as they should?
Jon Boutcher: It is probably a bit early for me to answer that question. What I will say is that we are facing huge strategic challenges around our financial position. I will get told off by the board for this, but I was surprised that there was not more impetus around that at this stage of the journey. The board have been incredibly supportive of the organisation since I have landed in the chair. They all care. They do the functions and the role of being on the Policing Board because they want to make a difference and they want to support the PSNI.
It is a big beast. There are 19 of them. I have said very clearly that there is more scrutiny of the PSNI than anywhere else in UK policing. That can be a good thing, but it also can be a challenge with regards to decision-making and focus. From my experience of the board so far, I have nothing but positive things to say about their intentions towards the PSNI. They have been trying to help us since I have been there. Long may that continue.
There is a review of the board that has been mentioned. I am a great believer in continuous improvement and independent reviews. That can only help. The answer to your question will probably lie in a review of how the board functions and whether it is doing the job it was set up to do by the Patten commission.
Chair: Chief constable and deputy chief constable, we are very grateful for a wide-ranging evidence session. As the only Committee working at any level at the moment to scrutinise the work of the Government and agencies in Northern Ireland, we are grateful to you for leaning in to our particular role at the moment and answering wide-ranging questions. I am sure they will be looked upon with interest by the communities and wider society in Northern Ireland.
We wish you well. Compliments of the season to you and to the PSNI as you continue your invaluable work over that season. We will no doubt follow up these issues again in 2024 with great interest. Thank you very much indeed.