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MAGINNESS: FULL PATTEN VISION REQUIRES SECURITY SERVICES
OVERSIGHT SDLP Justice spokesperson Alban Maginness MLA said the full vision and promise of the Patten reform programme for policing cannot be realised without extending the accountability and oversight mechanisms he designed to security services with a role in policing.
Speaking at an SDLP seminar on policing and intelligence to mark the 10th anniversary of the Patten Commission, he said:
"This event was planned and speakers scheduled before the dreadful events at the beginning of March, yet its theme – ‘Policing and its oversight in times of threat’ - is now more real than ever, and those events give us all a new resolve and a deeper conviction to resist the efforts to destabilize policing and political structures.
"This event vindicates how accountability around policing and the PSNI has been a sure way for confidence in policing to deepen. It is an essential part of the context in which the whole community now report crime and assists the police with information, not least in relation to the awful events of recent weeks.
"This Conference has a clear purpose. First, to acknowledge and understand better that there are a range of levels of oversight and accountability around policing that is and will remain cornerstones in the deepening of confidence in the PSNI. Second, to consider if, where and how there could be further oversight of intelligence-led activities, including on issues of national security. Third, to assess if and why there have been constraints on how intelligence has been shared and used, not least around the single largest atrocity of the last 40 years, the Omagh Bombing. And finally, a review of the experience of intelligence led policing over the years from a number of perspectives.
"However,
it is already clear that a new oversight problem has arisen with
the passing of intelligence primacy on national security from
the PSNI to MI5 in 2007. Our accountability mechanisms –
particularly the Policing Board and the Police Ombudsman’s
Office – are robust, dynamic and transparent. The same cannot
be said of the scrutiny mechanisms of the security services such
as they are, which essentially rely on documentation checks after
the event. The challenge now is to find ways and means of ensuring
that this aspect of policing can enjoy the same level of community
confidence as the PSNI, the Policing Board and the Ombudsman have
won for accountable community policing." |
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