rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Northern Ireland Policing Board (Northern Ireland) Order 2007.

The noble Lord said: This order was laid before the House on 6 February and debated in the other place only yesterday. I will explain the background to the order and its contents before I go through some of the details, because it is important that the dates and the chronology are fully taken on board. The Northern Ireland Policing Board is one of the vital elements in the policing accountability architecture recommended in the Patten report.

The Government, and indeed everybody else involved, are very grateful to the Policing Board members, both past and present, for the key role they have played in policing in Northern Ireland. Indeed, some noble Lords have firsthand experience of the work of the Policing Board, having been members themselves. I am sure they share the Government’s view of the board’s importance to policing in Northern Ireland.

The Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 sets out arrangements for selecting the members of the Policing Board. The Act provides different arrangements for constituting the Policing Board under devolution and under suspension.

As noble Lords will be aware, the membership of the Policing Board consists of 19 members and is made up of two elements—political members and independent members. In accordance with the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, restoration of the Assembly automatically means that the membership of the Policing Board has to be reconstituted. With the restoration of the Assembly now imminent, the Secretary of State is required to appoint nine independent members following a recruitment competition. The appointment of the 10 political members follows a specific formula set out in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000—essentially the same d’Hondt formula as is used for allocating Assembly ministerial posts.

The Secretary of State launched the recruitment competition for the nine independent members on Tuesday 13 February. These public appointments, which, for obvious reasons, are some of the most important in Northern Ireland, are fully regulated by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. Noble Lords will be well aware of the political discussions in recent months. It would not have been appropriate to commence the competition until it was certain that it was required.

Given both the importance of the competition and the requirement to comply with the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments guidance, a competition of this nature takes some four months to complete. Therefore, there would not be time to complete the competition before the restoration of the Assembly planned for 26 March. The legislation before the Committee today ensures that the vital work of the Policing Board continues during this competition. Its provisions are needed only for these particular circumstances.

Given the uncertainty about timing, it was not possible to have an extensive consultation on the contents of the draft order. However, since the draft order was laid, officials have undertaken a series of briefings with interested parties. I should now like to take the opportunity to consider the contents of the draft order. As the competition to select independent members will not be completed—because it takes four months—when restoration of the Assembly takes place, this order creates a new transitional Policing Board to carry out all the functions of the existing board until the competition is completed.

The Government are planning for success on 26 March. It is the A-plan; we do not have a B-plan. Everybody knows that it is a case of devolution or dissolution. However, to ensure that the vital work of the Policing Board continues without disruption, the draft order modifies Schedule 1 to the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 to provide that if restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly takes effect on 26 March but is subsequently revoked on 28 March, the current members of the Northern Ireland Policing Board will continue in office, their terms unaffected by restoration or revocation.

Following the restoration of the Assembly and the completion of their nomination process as set out in the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000, political members will be able to take their seats on the transitional board while the Secretary of State appoints nine independent members from the current independent board members. The draft order therefore amends the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 to provide for a temporary transitional arrangement to enable nine of the current independent members of the Northern Ireland Policing Board to be reappointed for a period of up to four months. The political members’ positions will remain unchanged when the Secretary of State appoints the independent board members following the conclusion of the transitional board. The Secretary of State will consult the First Minister and Deputy First Minister on the appointment of independent members of the transitional board.

Being mindful that current independent members’ circumstances may change—I am talking about their individual circumstances; they may change job, for example—the draft order provides that no vacancies are filled during the transitional arrangement, and that there may be fewer than nine independent members during that transitional period.

The final provisions in the draft order relate to the appointment of the chairman and vice-chairman. This will be a matter for the transitional board. A new chairman and vice-chairman will be appointed once the restoration of the Assembly board is complete.

In conclusion, I am sure noble Lords will agree that the Northern Ireland Policing Board is one of the undoubted successes of the Belfast agreement. Its work has very recently and rightly been applauded at an international policing conference held in Belfast a few weeks ago. The draft order ensures that the Northern Ireland Policing Board’s vital work continues, irrespective of what happens on 26 March and the time lines that follow that, by ensuring that temporary transitional arrangements are in place while the independent membership is being recruited under the due process agreed with the office of the appointments commissioner. I beg to move.

Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the draft Northern Ireland Policing Board (Northern Ireland) Order 2007.—(Lord Rooker.)

I thank the Minister again for his clarity in presenting this very detailed order. He is quite right—it does have a mix of dates, times and happenings. I would like also to be associated with his words on the Policing Board, which has done a superb job, sometimes under appalling circumstances. Its members have been very brave and courageous and they have done a good job from day one. I support the order.

I, too, thank the Minister for bringing forward the order and commend the Policing Board for its work over a long period, in some very difficult circumstances. It is to be warmly congratulated and I wish all of its members well for the future, whatever that future may be. We hope for devolved government as soon as possible.

We support the order. It puts in place the practical steps necessary to ensure that the board is properly constituted, once devolved government is restored. I remember many happy hours spent choosing independent members for my police authority—in fact, hours and hours—so I know how difficult it can be to ensure that the right people are appointed to that very important position.

Can the Minister remind me how the chairman and vice-chairman of the board are appointed? I think it is the Secretary of State—no, it is not; so I will be told off. Also, during the appointment of the transitional board, will the Secretary of State take into account the nine independent members’ present constitution or how they were originally constituted or appointed? I think the Minister said that the Secretary of State would look at how they were constituted at the moment and that he would pick nine from those already there. How many will he exclude and how many will he appoint other than those in the original numbers?

I will happily answer that question, because it is important. The nine will be chosen from the existing independents—I understand that currently there are 11. I cannot say how the mechanism for that will work; I shall take some advice on that and perhaps other noble Lords may wish to speak. In other words, the nine will be from the existing members. No new members will be introduced. How those 11 members arrived in their positions is, in a way, history. It may weigh heavily on us, anyway, but the fact of the matter is that the nine members of the transitional board will be chosen from the existing members.

I am very grateful for that explanation. Clearly, two will have not to be considered or considered and rejected. That may still be a difficult job to do. However, we support the order and I am grateful for the explanation that the Minister has given.

I thank the Minister for his careful and precise explanation of the order. I note that the order is predicated on, or at least makes arrangements for, devolution on 26 March and not on any other date. If devolution does not occur on 26 March, alternative arrangements go ahead and presumably will remain undisturbed if, due to some presently unforeseen events, devolution occurs later than that. That is purely and solely operating on the assumption that devolution takes place on 26 March. That was implicit in what the Minister said, but I see several heads nodding as clear confirmation of that.

I will put it on the record if the noble Lord likes. I have a good one here: what happens if the Secretary of State fails to get the Assembly up and running? The answer is that in that case the current members of the board continue in office without their term of office being interrupted. It could not be clearer than that.

I thank the Minister for putting that beyond peradventure.

The Minister referred to the Policing Board as being one success story. That is right. But before the Policing Board was formed, there was a long and very delicate negotiation between the then Secretary of State and a wide variety of political parties in Northern Ireland. In the course of that, there were very clear understandings worked out between the Secretary of State and those political parties, one of which I shall mention. It was absolutely clear at the time, in the understanding that we—by which I mean, not just me but another political leader as well—had with the Secretary of State, that in the construction of the board, in fulfilment of the statutory obligation of ensuring that, taken as a whole, it would be representative of the community in Northern Ireland, it would have to have a unionist majority; not just among the political members, but a unionist majority overall.

I mention that as just one of the understandings that were arrived at, at that time. I hope that when the Secretary of State comes to make appointments, as he will have to do in whatever eventuality, he will take care to stick clearly to the understandings that were arrived at by his predecessor and does not just proceed with the cavalier attitude that is associated with so much that the present Secretary of State does. Obviously, those remarks are not addressed to the Minister. They are not matters within his purview. I am making them in order that they be reflected and heard elsewhere. Just in case the present Secretary of State thinks that he has a free hand, I must point out to him that there are very clear understandings underlying this operation that were part of the reason why the Policing Board has been a success.

That is like the reason why, although I did not mention it with regard to the earlier orders, cross-border matters, which were once so sensitive, have not been so since 1998 because we took care then to get the architecture right. That has turned things which were once controversial into things that are no longer controversial. The same is true with regard to policing which, in many ways, was even more sensitive. Part of the reason for the success of the Policing Board was that its formation was preceded by careful negotiation and a series of understandings which have enabled it to work successfully. I very much hope that that continues in future.

The Northern Ireland Policing Board is probably more successful than could have been anticipated. However, I have listened to what the Minister has said about the present structure and make-up and I wonder if he has taken into account the fact that one of the existing Policing Board members, one of the appointed members, is now a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly and the leader of a political party. Furthermore, in relation to the independent members, I was interested to hear the noble Baroness say that she had spent many hours making appointments to her particular district policing body, and some of us here today have also spent long hours making appointments not so much to the Policing Board, but rather to the district policing partnerships, which are the sons or daughters of the Policing Board.

But I think the position is slightly more complicated than has been suggested here today. We have a position where Sinn Fein has declared publicly at an Ard Fheis that it supports police, yet one of its members, the Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, declared at the count recently that they would not be giving information to the police on anything and would not encourage anyone to go to the police with information. This further complicates the whole situation in relation to policing. It has to be said here today that there are many who have been appointed independent members, particularly from the nationalist community, who did put their heads above the parapet and go into extremely difficult situations in which they were intimidated in their homes, their cars burned, and they were put through all sorts of hoops by republicans who were absolutely adamant that policing was not going to work in Northern Ireland. I pay tribute to those people today. They had the courage to stand up and be counted, and they did so at great personal risks, both to their lives and their property. Should the day come when a new board is contemplated, those facts ought also to be taken into consideration. It was their courage and bravery that stood up against militant republicanism, at great cost. I want to put that on the record today.

I am most grateful. My experience is minimal, but what I do know is that English, Welsh and Scottish politicians have had a really cushy time compared with those who represent and have carried out the representative function in Northern Ireland over the past 30 years. There is no comparison between the sacrifices made and the courage shown by those representatives, elected or otherwise, in trying to maintain law and order and the semblance of a civic society. I want to make that absolutely clear. It would be wrong and improper for me to go down the road of discussing individuals, but the independent Member referred to earlier, who I believe has been elected, will not be eligible for appointment to the reconstituted board. I want also to repeat, for the avoidance of any doubt, that the chairman and vice-chairman are appointed by the board.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, does not expect me to respond to his remarks, but I will make sure that his precise and specific remarks are put before the Secretary of State at the earliest possible time. I understand where they are coming from and it is a very important issue. In my last few seconds I want to thank all noble Lords for their attendance at Grand Committee and for supporting these orders. I think we have one more session in Grand Committee on two orders next week. One of those is the modification order which I have already highlighted to noble Lords. It has to be brought before the House for carrying on direct rule. There are good reasons for that and the dates will be apparent. The other order will probably raise the hackles of more than one Peer, although I do not want to start another debate now, in discussing the renewal of recruitment to the policing arrangements. But those are matters for next Tuesday. Again, I am grateful for the support shown for these orders.

On Question, Motion agreed to.