Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Deputy Chairperson (Mrs Cameron): I welcome Lian Patterson, director of the justice delivery directorate; Glyn Capper, head of financial services division; Mary Madden, head of personnel and office services division; and Ray Murray, head of information services division in the Department of Justice to the meeting. I advise you that the session is being recorded by Hansard and the transcript will be available as usual on the Committee web page. Lian, I invite you to briefly outline the remit and responsibilities of the justice delivery directorate and the current key issues.

Ms Lian Patterson (Department of Justice): Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to provide an overview of the work of the Department's justice delivery directorate. I am accompanied by my three deputy directors: Mary, who heads our personnel and office services division; Glyn, who heads our financial services division; and Ray, who heads our information services division. Mary and Ray will shortly give you a flavour of the work that is undertaken within their business areas, and Glyn and I will brief the Committee on the Department's finances directly after this session, so Glyn will give financial services division a lighter touch during the session. I will focus comments on the overall role of the directorate and on several business areas that are not represented at the table today.

The work of the justice delivery directorate is primarily to provide a range of corporate service functions to colleagues across the Department and its agencies. We also have responsibility for ensuring that the Department has good governance and financial management structures in place and that our arrangements are efficient, accountable and transparent. The directorate has five business areas: personnel and office services, financial services, information services, compensation services and corporate secretariat, and internal audit. In total, we are a staff of just over 300.

Key achievements for the directorates in the last mandate have been the establishment of corporate shared services across the Department. We now have shared service centres for finance, HR and information services which provide services not only to the core Department but its agencies and are continuing to introduce shared services across other corporate services, such as information management. Access NI's delivery of a new system facilitating online applications for criminal records checks has improved turnaround times and reduced costs. During this mandate, we will be working to deliver a portable disclosure service towards the end of this year. A further important achievement has been the careful financial management of the departmental budget, which is both complex and varied. Further briefing will follow in the next session.

Before handing over to colleagues to talk about their own areas of responsibility, I will take the opportunity to brief the Committee on the work undertaken by compensation services, corporate secretariat and internal audit. Briefly, compensation services was formerly an agency and was brought into the Department in April 2013. The work of compensation services is demand-led. The branch delivers a front-line service to victims of criminal injury and damage, and it administers four statutory compensation schemes. Three relate to criminal injuries and one relates to criminal damage. In 2015-16, almost £11 million was paid in compensation — £2 million relating to criminal damage and £9 million for criminal injuries. In recent years, the volume of new claims for both injury and damage have shown a reducing trend. Since 2010-11, criminal damage claims have reduced by 56%, recognising a downturn in violence and major incidents. Criminal injuries claims have reduced over the same period by around 35%. Compensation services is currently working to introduce a new case-management system as part of modernising justice. This project is also part of the wider NICS digital transformation programme. Its intent is to deliver improvements to victims, along with the facility to apply for and track progress of claims online and to exchange information via a secure portal.

Turning briefly to the review of the schemes, in the previous mandate the Department reviewed the criminal damage and criminal injuries compensation schemes. Following public consultation, proposals to reform were presented to the previous Justice Committee last December. Subject to the approval of the new Justice Minister, compensation services is preparing a draft of a new injuries scheme, which could, again subject to ministerial approval, be brought to the Committee later this year. The new scheme, once fully implemented, could deliver annual savings estimated at £3 million, part of which will be because of the introduction of the new case management system. Our current thinking is that we will revisit the reform proposals relating to the criminal damage scheme when the proposed injury scheme is implemented.

Another business area that is not represented here today is the corporate secretariat. That comprises a small team whose work primarily supports the work of the departmental board. The branch is also responsible for the appointment of independent board members and public appointments, as well as leading on a range of corporate initiatives.

Finally, also within the justice delivery directorate is the Department's internal audit function. There are nine qualified internal auditors within that team, and they provide services to the core Department and the majority of its agencies, NDPBs and arm's-length bodies. The only exceptions are the PSNI, the Policing Board and the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. The head of internal audit reports directly to the permanent secretary or to the agency or NDPB chief executive, and to the audit committees of each organisation.

That is a very quick tour of the wider span. I would now like to invite my deputy directors to give you an overview of their work. I will turn first to Mary.

Ms Mary Madden (Department of Justice): Good afternoon, Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to present an overview of the work of the personnel and office services division of the justice delivery directorate and the important services that we deliver to the business areas across the Department and its agencies. Although the division consists of four discrete branches, each headed by a grade 7, there is a working synergy between those branches. The four branches are HR operations, which is headed by Jacqui Wallace; HR customer services, which is headed by Gillian Ardis; corporate services, which is headed by Janet Johnston; and estate management, which is headed by Kathie Walker.

The division provides a range of services to the Department and its agencies, such as strategic HR support on all personnel matters, including on performance management, vacancy management, promotions, pay remits and pay, sick absence, grievance and dignity at work matters. It also leads on learning and development, including well-being, and is responsible for change and transformation.

On the corporate services side, we deal with facilities management, health and safety, and sustainability for the core Department, as well as leading on the Department's estate strategy programme. The division is also responsible for security, including national security vetting.

On the HR side, we provide services to the Department and agencies through a shared services model. The HR team has recently restructured to deliver those services along functionality lines, and there are six functional areas. We have a resourcing unit, a management of sick absence unit, an information and support unit, a pay unit, a transformation unit and a learning and development unit. The drivers for that change have been both internal, because we continue to provide a HR service in a changing environment in which staff levels have been reduced, mainly due to the recent voluntary exit scheme but also due to budgetary pressures, and external, which is about preparing the Department for the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) HR centre of excellence that is due to be launched next April. The area remains very much a work in progress and is one of the key priorities for the division going forward.

In the past few years, we have dealt with a number of legacy HR matters, such as the alignment of the Youth Justice Agency's non-general services staff on to NICS terms and conditions, including pay and pensions. There was also the recent agentisation of the Legal Services Commission on 1 April last year, when all staff employed there became Northern Ireland civil servants and we had to align their pay and terms and conditions to the Northern Ireland Civil Service. The Department also participated in the NICS service-wide voluntary exit scheme, which saw 387 staff leave the Department during 2015-16. We are working with colleagues in the various business areas to redeploy staff in the Department to posts that are deemed to be business-critical, and closing other posts that we can no longer fill.

As Lian mentioned, we are also implementing a shared services approach across all the activities in the corporate services side. We have already begun to centralise the national security vetting functions by merging the Prison Service and DOJ functions. We have also commenced a review of procurement and contract management functions to see how we can better deliver those services.

On estate management, our team there was established at the end of 2015 and is responsible for the estate strategy programme and the management of accommodation and leases across the departmental family. The five-year plan is to reduce the size of the estate and to address the high leasing costs by moving as many staff as possible into the Department of Finance freehold buildings, which is in line with the wider NICS estate rationalisation plans.

Looking ahead, the division faces a number of challenges and opportunities. One of the key areas is sickness absence, which continues to be a challenge for the Department. In restructuring, our top priorities will be managing sick absence through a newly established unit in the division that will work much more collaboratively with line managers; embedding the HR shared service model, which we started on 1 May; ensuring that a quality HR service continues to be provided across the Department and to our agencies; preparing both the Department and the division for the move to the centre of excellence in April next year; and considering the future provision of HR services through HR Connect, which will incorporate payroll and rostering for our Prison Service operational staff.

In closing, I hope that this brief overview has provided members with an insight into the services of personnel and office services. I am happy to take questions and provide further clarification at the end of our briefing. For the moment, I will hand over to Ray.

Mr Ray Murray (Department of Justice): Good afternoon. Thank you, Deputy Chair, for the opportunity again to present the work of my division.

Information services division's remit covers a mixture of external and internal services. The division consists of nine branches, each with their own branch head. Five cover information and communication technology support for the Department and its five agencies, as well as Causeway, which is the shared service criminal justice system. Each of the five grade 7 heads of branches are qualified ICT professionals. They are overseen by a chief technology officer for the Department who reports to me. Of the other four heads of branches, one heads the Access NI disclosure service, another heads the Minister's office, and one is the press officer for the DOJ press office. In addition, the chief information officer for records and information management for the Department also reports to me.

Therefore, the main internal support services that we provide are as follows: information and communication technology line-of-business system support across the DOJ and its agencies; technical support for the Causeway criminal justice shared service system — the main system supporting criminal justice in Northern Ireland; information and communication technology security; records and information management policy and support; and provision of the main contact for wider Northern Ireland Civil Service and UK ICT network and connectivity support services, as well as programme and project management support services.

The main external-facing public services my division provides are as follows: Access NI, the disclosure service that provides criminal record checks to applicants for employment purposes in the support of protection of children and vulnerable adults; freedom of information and Data Protection Act 1998 central policy and responses as part of Department of Justice information disclosure and legislation compliance; a departmental complaints officer role; and central policy handling. In addition, information services division includes support for the Minister's office, including Assembly question support and targets, and the press office for external communication.

Looking forward, the main service challenges facing my division in the next year are as follows: providing existing support to front-line services to acceptable and secure levels in terms of information and communication technology; implementing an update service for portable disclosures for Access NI at the end of this year; preparing the Department for the implementation of new European data protection regulations; and supporting the Department of Justice in meeting legislative, Assembly or NICS requirements and targets such as those mentioned — freedom of information, Data Protection Act, Assembly questions or complaints — as well as providing security of information and communication technology systems and data against emerging threats such as cyberattack. Further use of the Northern Ireland Civil Service-wide shared service or centralised service is a big challenge for us again, as well as innovation and digital transformation services. Nothing stands still in information and communication technology.

That is a quick tour of the table on my service. Again, I am happy to take any questions at the end of our briefing session. I will hand over to Glyn.

Mr Glyn Capper (Department of Justice): Thank you.

Financial services division provides a range of financial, economic and statistical services to the Department. As Lian mentioned, last year we introduced a financial shared services model. My division now provides financial support to the Prison Service, Youth Justice Agency, forensic science agency, legal service agency and Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, as well as to the core Department.

One of our main areas of work is managing the Department's overall budget and supporting directors and agency chief executives in managing their element of the budget. We are due to say more about that in the next session. The division also produces the Department's annual report and accounts. Indeed, we are in the final stages of preparing eight sets of accounts for 2015-16. It also pays our suppliers using Account NI, the NICS financial shared service. The division's analytical services group provides statistical services across the Department and its agencies. That is an increasing focus, as it underpins our Programme for Government indicators. Finally, the economics team supports the Department in appraising and evaluating its spending decisions.

Ms Patterson: That concludes our overview of the work of justice delivery directorate. We are very happy to take any questions.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mrs Cameron): Thank you very much. Straight off, Lian, your directorate provides support services and other central services to the Department, so I presume that you are not classified as front-line services, and therefore face budget reductions. What measures have you taken to improve efficiency and effectiveness, both within the directorate and across the Department and its NDPBs?

Ms Patterson: Certainly. You are right in saying that we are mostly support services. We have a couple of front-line areas, such as compensation services and Access NI, but most of what we do is in support. Towards the second half of the last mandate, our agenda has been shared services. For example, in Glyn's area of finance, where we would have had a departmental finance team and then four agency finance teams, we have brought them all together in financial services division and, through doing so, have been able to produce some efficiencies because we are not replicating work. That journey had been started to some degree in the mandate before last, really, in Ray's division where, again, there is a large shared services centre. All of this is to stop us having pockets of back-office support functions and to make us more efficient by creating economies of scale.

We will see in the next session that the core Department took the largest share of cuts in the last mandate, and rightly so, because the Minister's view was to protect the front line as much as possible. We therefore made most of our cuts in back-office support functions. Corporate services are quite staff-intensive, as you would imagine, because we do not have programmes as such; it tends just to be bodies doing jobs. There is a little bit more to do to make ourselves more lean, but our scope for reducing much more and still carrying out our critical functions is quite limited.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mrs Cameron): Mary mentioned the Northern Ireland Civil Service HR centre of excellence. Can you tell us a bit more about that and what benefit it will be to the Department?

Ms Patterson: Certainly. I will pass that to Mary, because she is closer to that.

Ms Madden: This initiative has been part of the wider NICS reform led by the head of the Civil Service and the permanent secretaries. It is part of the drive to reduce the 12 Departments to nine, and it is a recognition that we should have more centralised services right across the service. Next year, all the HR services in each of the nine Departments will be brought into the centre in one area. We in the Department of Justice are preparing ourselves and our HR provision to go seamlessly towards the establishment of the new centre of excellence, which is scheduled to start operation on 1 April next year. That means that, in line with all of the Departments, there will be one area for HR services, with consistency of approach. There should be, as a result of that initiative, much more streamlined HR services right across the board. Efficiencies will flow from that, but initially it is about ensuring consistency of approach and a broad service for all the HR family.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mrs Cameron): A better way of working.

Ms Madden: Yes.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mrs Cameron): The Committee heard from the Northern Ireland Prison Service recently. When the recent data breach was mentioned, they said that it was the Department's responsibility. How did the breach occur, and what measures have been put in place to ensure that it does not happen again?

Ms Patterson: First, from a departmental point of view, we take information security very seriously. It was a very unfortunate incident. As for where it came from, we are moving towards a shared service for data handling across the Department. We are moving the function into a team within Mary's division, and are therefore bringing together teams from the agency to the core. We were in the transition period and unfortunately one of the files that had been labelled a certain way was mistaken by a member of staff as being something else and was shared when it should not have been. We took immediate action, and the team reacted very quickly. We believe that the situation was contained and did not immerse itself in the wider public. We are investigating how that happened. We will take the lessons learned from that and put them into place going forward. Absolutely, it is an error that we are sorry happened, and we will be more aware of the need for us, in a shared service, to have all the controls that we need to increase that.

Mr Lunn: I see in our briefing that there is £15 million in additional funds for legal aid this year. What does that bring the estimated total bill to?

Ms Patterson: The bill for legal aid falls between £95 million and £100 million recurrently year on year. So, the final figure each year is not known until the very end of the year, but the pattern over recent years has for it to be between £95 million and £100 million.

Mr Lunn: Is the £15 million going on top of that?

Mr Capper: The £15 million brings the Legal Services Agency's budget this year up to about £94 million.

Mr Lunn: What has been the trend over the past two or three years?

Mr Capper: As Lian said, the trend over the past number of years has been about £100 million or so. Last year, it was slightly under £100 million, mainly because of the withdrawal of services in the Crown Court that Ronnie referred to in the previous session. This makes putting a figure on this year's forecast a bit more difficult, because we need to see how the pieces of work that were due to happen last year flow through into this year. So, the current budget is £94 million.

Mr Lunn: I have not been on this Committee until now. There have been various attempts to try to reign in the legal aid expenditure. Are you satisfied that you have had success in doing that?

Mr Capper: One of the big drivers of the increased costs over the past number of years has been increased volumes, and colleagues from the access to justice directorate who are doing that reform piece of work will be in a much better place to comment on that than me. The reforms that have been introduced have reduced legal aid spend, albeit volumes have worked against that to a degree. Having said that, the Department has managed to provide sufficient funding over the past number of years to meet the total bill, but legal aid reforms continue. As I said, colleagues will no doubt be briefing the Committee on that over the coming weeks and months.

Mr Lunn: I could be asking the wrong people, but are you satisfied with the basics of the system as to how legal aid decisions are made or how the application process —

Mr Capper: The legal aid system is hugely complex. From a financial perspective, I am best able to comment on the budget and how much funding we are providing. My colleagues are in a much better place to answer your question about the complexities of how the system operates. Is that an acceptable answer?

Mr Lunn: That is fine.

Mr Beattie: Thank you for the briefing; it was really informative. With regard to the personnel office and service division, you say that sickness absences are a challenge to the stage where you are going to establish a new unit within the division. Can you give us an idea of the scale of that challenge, and where the pinch points are? What do you perceive are the reasons why we have those pinch points?

Ms Madden: Certainly. Thank you for your question. Our target was set last year at 9·2 days — NISRA works through all these targets. That was the target we had to try to achieve. Our estimated out-turn last year was 15·9 days, so we were well above the target. This is the overall figure for the Department and its agencies. When you drill down into that figure, you find that certain areas in the Department have a much higher overall figure and those tend to be the operational sides. Our highest level of sickness is on the operational side, in prisons mainly, and in the Youth Justice Agency (YJA). I can give you the figures for last year: 20·9 days per staff member were lost in the Northern Ireland Prison Service. If you break that down, then, on the operational side, among the prison officers, you are talking about 23·8 days, compared to the figure for non-prison grades, which was 9·9 days. You can see that it is higher on the operational side. In the YJA, the figure was 17 days. The figure is very high in the Legal Services Agency (LSA), compared to other parts. It was a commission and had different policies, but has now been brought into the Department. It is not, in a sense, an operation; it is, rather, desk work. Its figure is 11·7 days. In Courts Service, the figure is 10·8 days. So, there are different elements. Overall, the figure is 15·9 days lost, but it is much higher in the front-line, operational side of the Department than elsewhere.

There are a couple of other things that I would say on sick absence. In common with all other Departments, we have a much older workforce than hitherto, and that has really been brought about because there is less recruitment and fewer young people coming into the Department. The age profile of our workforce is much older, and we are noticing that we have much more serious illnesses coming through in the staff. In my division, for example, I have four members of staff who have never been absent for sickness, but I have one person who is out with a stroke, two who have had heart attacks and a lady with breast cancer. So, much more serious illnesses are coming forward and there is now a much greater level of stress. People are out with various stress-related conditions. When you look at whether that stress is work-related or home-related, you find it is 50:50. Some people are presenting with stress as a reason for their absence, but it is not work-related, it is home- or personal circumstances-related. There is quite a mixture. We are conscious that we have to try to do something to minimise sickness absence, but yet deal sympathetically with those people who are genuinely sick. We treat everyone who is out as a genuine case and we do our best to get those people back to work.

We have now set up a specialised unit so that we can work much more closely with our line managers. Also, because of well-being issues, we try to identify people who might be under stress in the workplace and deal with it before we lose them and they go out sick. We are making some interventions around well-being and alerting line managers to what signs to look for. If personal or home circumstances are causing stress, it may not manifest itself in the same way because people might not want to have that conversation. So, there are some difficult conversations to be had, and we are trying to give our line managers the skills with which to have those conversations with staff. That is part of it.

We are dealing with sick absence by keeping in touch with the people involved and trying to find them ways of getting back into work. We will make any reasonable adjustments that we can to encourage them back into work. While people are in the workplace, we try to identify those who might be on the cusp and some intervention in work could retain them rather than see them go out sick.

Mr Beattie: Thank you. That is a very full answer. If your target is 9·2 days, then 15·2 is high, and we can see how that would have an effect on budgets and on your operational output. It would be of concern. This is a difficult question to ask, but have you set a target for reducing the figure? Will you reduce it in two years, will it be four years or is a sliding scale the best you can do?

Ms Madden: We are set targets at the beginning of the year, as are all Departments. This year, because of the transition towards the centre of excellence, the decision has been taken not to set specific targets but to try and look more at performance management as a way of trying to address it. We are trying to prepare the Department so that, when the HR centre of excellence takes over responsibility on 1 April next year, we are best placed. As I have said, we have restructured in my division in the Department, having our eye to what is happening in the centre of excellence so that we are aligning ourselves to the functionality approach that it will be adopting. We hope that, in this year, we will give ourselves an internal target to try and get it down more towards the 9·2 against a very difficult background where we have all these more serious issues to deal with so that we are best placed when we move to the centre of excellence.

Mr Beattie: I have just one more question, Chair, if I may, and it is slightly off topic, but do you have a whistle-blowing policy?

Ms Madden: We do.

Mr Beattie: Who heads up the whistle-blowing policy? Who has oversight? Confidentiality is particularly important to whistle-blowers? What is the policy for breach of confidentiality of a whistle-blower?

Ms Madden: We have a whistle-blowing policy. It is on our internal website, and it is in line with the Northern Ireland Civil Service DOF central policy, so we are in alignment with that. Four people are named on the whistle-blowing policy that people can contact. I am one of them, and there are three others that people can phone and have a confidential conversation with. When somebody raises a whistle-blowing issue, they are invited for interview immediately. Some people want anonymity. That is not always easy to achieve. We try our best to respect anonymity, if that is what they wish. However, if they raise something and you obviously have to investigate it, it may not be easy to keep anonymity, but we try to do so if that is their preference, and there is a full investigation. They are given protection around their issues so if that if they discern that there is any reaction in their area of business, they can report it immediately to us, and we will take steps to intervene. It is not just the individual who is protected; sometimes, they also have a family member in work or something like that, so it is wider than just the person. We follow the full rigours of the whistle-blowing policy and do a full investigation, keeping that person informed of the outcome and providing anything that we need to do in the course of that investigation to support them.

Mr Kearney: Glyn, if I understood you correctly, you indicated that budgeting and forecasting do not fall within your remit as regards legal aid. Did I pick you up correctly?

Mr Capper: I was answering Mr Lunn's question about the size of the legal services budget this year. I do not think that I touched on forecasting, but I am happy to take that question.

Mr Kearney: The management of the quantum does not fall within your particular sphere of responsibility.

Mr Capper: Given that we are now in a shared services environment where my division provides financial support to the Legal Services Agency, some of my team provide support to agency staff in helping to pull together their forecast, if that is the answer to your question.

Mr Kearney: OK. Audit falls within your remit, so could you and Lian perhaps comment on your management assessment of the overall competence and structure of your auditing competence?

Mr Capper: Do you mean the competence of the Department's internal audit function?

Mr Kearney: The audit management structure. Talk to us a little bit about the structure and the competence of that.

Ms Patterson: I can talk about my internal audit team. There are auditors in the agency who do not come under my remit, but I will very happily talk about the remit of the internal audit team for the Department. I have nine qualified internal auditors. They are headed up at grade 7 level. They are a mix of professionally qualified auditors and professionally qualified accountants. The team works up a three-year rolling programme of audits to cover the departmental family, which includes the Legal Services Agency, the other agencies and the core Department. They agree those audit programmes with the individual organisations. Throughout the year, they will report back to the audit committee on progress against their programme. There are two sets of auditors in legal services. There is my internal audit team, as I have described, and then the Northern Ireland Audit Office, which comes in and audits. In addition to that, there is an internal team. I am not sure whether they call them auditors, but there is some kind of validation team within the agency at the different checking stages. I can come back to you with more detail if —

Mr Kearney: To whom do they report?

Ms Patterson: I presume that they report up to the chief executive, but I would not want to mislead you in any way. I am just talking generally about what I think. I would probably need to check the detail for you.

Mr Kearney: The chief executive of?

Ms Patterson: The agency.

Mr Kearney: That is fine for now. Thank you.

Ms Patterson: I can certainly come back if there is any more detail.

Mr Kearney: I am sure that we will talk about it further,

Mr Attwood: I have two requests for information and one other question. First, would you provide a profile of the age, gender etc of those who appointed by the Department under the public appointments process and the usual criteria and what that looks like? That would be useful. Secondly, I would like a breakdown of the costs to date in respect of Desertcreat; so, not just the top line but what the individual costs have been. My third question is on vetting. I do not know what you can tell the Committee about the processes or whether they are deemed to be confidential, but where does executive authority reside when it comes to making a call on whether somebody gets vetted at the various levels, including advanced vetting or whatever the highest level is?

Ms Patterson: I would probably need to come back to you on that. I do not have information on the levels with me. Mary, do you have anything?

Ms Madden: We, as a business area, designate posts that require higher security level clearance than others. There is an entrance security level that all civil servants have to acquire. We, in the Department of Justice, have a higher level again. In certain areas, people occupying posts that are deemed to have access to even higher security level material have to go through what is termed a developed vetting process, which is a higher level of security clearance, to occupy that post and have access to the information for the function to be delivered. All the people who make applications have to fill out a security questionnaire. We look to the Police Service to provide the security clearance or background. They give us advice on whether the person has a criminal record or on what the security on that person is. It is ultimately for the Department to make the decision. The police do not say whether you can or cannot employ. They give you the information on which you take the decision on whether to employ that individual.

Mr Attwood: Where in the Department does the executive authority reside? I know that you are all subject to the control of the Minister, but who makes the call on any individual, especially on developed vetting?

Ms Madden: Initially, the business area decides whether to accept a person with a security issue, if there is an issue. Who makes the final decision depends on where the post is. If there were an issue of some complexity and seriousness, the matter would probably go, depending on the post, straight to the head of Department. However, I will double-check all that.

Ms Patterson: I think that the question you are asking is who takes the decision on what is the required level of security.

Mr Attwood: No, it is who makes the decision on whether somebody is develop vetted, ultimately. Does it go to the head of department? I presume that it does, when it needs to. My final question is this: besides taking advice from the PSNI, which I understand, in cases of developed vetting, who else is consulted in respect of somebody who is seeking developed vetting? For example, would the security service be consulted?

Ms Patterson: I would prefer to come back to you on those issues. As I say, Mary and I are the deliverers of the service, if I may put it like that. We are instructed to do the vetting, and we do it; but the decision-making on those issues is not my area, so I would feel that I was stepping out of line. We can certainly write to you on that.

The Deputy Chairperson (Mrs Cameron): Thank you all very much.