Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I welcome Hugh Widdis, Deborah Brown and David Lennox. Hugh is the permanent secretary; Deborah is the director of the justice delivery directorate; and David is the deputy director of the corporate engagement and communications division. I will hand over to you, Hugh, to give us a presentation, after which we will ask questions that are based on themes. We will have questions on policing, the crisis in the law profession, priorities, finances and the public sector transformation board. It seems like a lot, but it will not be that bad. That gives you some indication of the direction in which we are headed.

Mr Hugh Widdis (Department of Justice): That is really helpful, Chair; thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to brief the Committee on the draft Programme for Government (PFG). I will keep my initial remarks as brief as I can, and then I will be happy to discuss or answer questions.

The draft Programme for Government has been agreed by all the Ministers in the Executive and seeks to be a bold ambition for Northern Ireland. It reflects the realities that we face across the system, but it is trying to be ambitious for the future. The overarching aim of the draft PFG is to change the lives of people and communities for the better.

It is worth noting that its structure has been developed around the Executive's agreement to focus on three core areas. The first one, fairly obviously, concerns immediate priorities, and the corresponding measures will run from now until the end of the mandate. Some of those will have some obvious and direct relevance to Justice. We can say a bit more about those or discuss the ones that the Committee is interested in. The second area is entitled "Building New Foundations", which, essentially, is about capital spend, infrastructure and the proposals for the investment strategy for Northern Ireland (ISNI). There will be Justice capital spend in there. The third area is entitled, "Shaping a Better Tomorrow", and includes missions with the titles, "People", "Planet" and "Prosperity". There also is a cross-cutting commitment to peace in that area and an outline of where the Executive, after they get through those priorities, want to take their general approach.

A key feature in the programme is the focus on collaborative working between organisations and groups across the public, voluntary and private sectors. Therefore, it is the intention that the Executive Departments will continue to work collectively and collaboratively to deliver the programme and drive work across departmental and, indeed, sectoral boundaries.

That is the general context. In that context, it is worth focusing a bit on the priorities, which make up the immediate plan of action for the Executive. It is worth noting again that they are priorities for the Executive as a whole. They are not specific to one Department, and they are not the priorities of one Department. There are those that, perhaps, more visibly align with the responsibilities of our Department, such as, pretty obviously, the priority entitled "Safer Communities", and maybe the one entitled, "Reform and Transformation of Public Services".

Within each priority, the issue is laid out as the Executive see it, and it is important to note that that is what the Executive see as being a problem or issue in society that they want to look at and deal with. There are also some proposed actions that, I am sure, the Committee will be interested in. I am happy to talk you through any of those that relate directly to us. I am sure that we can signpost you to other Departments for those that do not.

It is worth noting that the DOJ interest and lead will not be limited to the priority on safer communities. There are other things referenced in the draft programme, such as the domestic and sexual abuse strategy, which is jointly led by the Minister of Justice and the Minister of Health, that are linked with the priority entitled "Ending Violence Against Women and Girls", which is, as you know, a TEO priority and strategy. It is important to acknowledge that we will work in partnership with our fellow Departments on that.

The other part that I will draw attention to is the chapter entitled, "Funding the PfG". It sets out our budget just for this year, which is £1·26 billion of resource and just under £100 million of capital. You will know from previous meetings and discussions and from having Deborah in recently with Richard and colleagues, that the position is really challenging for the Department as a whole, the justice sector as a whole and all of the interconnected parts, including policing and, fairly obviously, prisons, courts, probation, access to justice and the legal profession.

In that context, it is worth noting that the draft PFG has said that the Executive's ability to deliver it is dependent on the availability of funds. The Budget process is intended to do some alignment with the priorities as well, so the Budget will help to prioritise commitments made in the final PFG.

The Department is ambitious to deliver better public services to the people of Northern Ireland, but it is worth noting the issue about financial resources. The Committee knows that the Minister and the Department have been pushing hard for greater resources for the justice sector as a whole. That will continue. We regularly engage with DOF to push that point, and the Minister has spoken to the Minister of Finance on several occasions and pushed the position of the Executive.

It is worth noting that transformation funding is referenced. I am happy to talk about transformation bids, if members are interested in those, and there is some overlap between those and how we fund some of the priorities in the PFG.

We are already seeking to deliver change where possible so, again, it is worth noting that, while the PFG provides a helpful framework for areas to be prioritised within, we are already engaged on some of those things. For example, the speeding up justice programme is under way to a certain degree, and the domestic and sexual abuse strategy, as you will know, has been launched. There may be some issues that are not in the PFG that, people feel, should be. If so, we are happy to reflect those to TEO, or the Committee can do that itself. If there are specific policy areas, issues or other proposed actions, we are happy to take those into account. If there are, that is understandable: it is a big task to devise a big programme for the whole of government, so, if there are things that, the Committee or others feel, are missing, we are happy to take them back to TEO. It is understandable if there are suggestions, given the challenges that everybody faces across the system. That is what the consultation is intended for.

Alongside the PFG, it is worth noting that we have our annual business plans. We are coming back to the Committee in a couple of weeks to talk about business plans. It is worth remembering that we kept our business plan in draft, pending finalisation of the PFG so that we could see its general direction. We are already giving early consideration to our next corporate plan, because the current one runs out at the end of the financial year. David and I have already had a discussion about whether we need to amend our draft business plan for the Department to incorporate some of the priorities in the PFG. That may link into how TEO and the Executive will monitor the delivery of the PFG.

That is really all that I wanted to say. I remind you that the consultation is open until 4 November. In any engagements that you have with people outside the Assembly, encourage people to participate in that and tell us or TEO their views on the draft PFG.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): That is great, Hugh. Thank you very much. I will move, first of all, to questions about policing. Doug has some questions in that area.

Mr Beattie: The Budget came before the PFG and, therefore, was never aligned to the outcomes that you wanted. There was a bit of reverse engineering there in some ways. When you got the Budget and before the PFG came to you, did you speak to the Police Service of Northern Ireland to tell it its likely budget? If you did, what was its response?

Mr Widdis: We speak with the PSNI all the time. It is our largest partner in the justice sector in terms of spending money, so it is not really a surprise that we discuss these things with it all the time. There is an existing process. The Executive know, broadly speaking, from DOF what is available in any given year. DOF puts together a paper, the Minister of Finance brings it to the Executive and the Executive approve it etc. In the formation of that paper, DOF asks us what the Department needs and what it is bidding for. In that process, we talk to the PSNI and the Probation Board, we look at legal services and the demand running across the system and we try to identify the Prison Service's needs. All of that informs the general information, which then goes to DOF, and the Minister brings a paper to the Executive. So the answer is yes. It can never be precise because we cannot tell everybody what they will get. No one knows what they will get until the Executive have decided on the broad split between the Departments — for example, Health and Education — and the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) and other parts of the system that do not have a Minister. That then flows to the Department.

Mr Beattie: The point that I make is that you knew what the broad split would be and then took that to the police. I am really interested in what the police then said to you. Did the police say, "What you are proposing to us is just not workable"? I am trying to get a sense of their view on that. I am not going down the line of what came next, but I am trying to get an understanding of how we got to the current position, where the police say that their budget is completely unsustainable. Did they say that before the Budget was agreed? Were they given the figure beforehand?

Mr Widdis: We go out and ask everybody about their pressures. The PSNI identified what it needed to fund. Therefore, above the baseline, that was a certain amount. Across the Department, there is a certain amount above the baseline that needs to be funded. We report all that to DOF. The original police pressure at the start of the year was around £85 million. Is that correct?

Ms Deborah Brown (Department of Justice): Yes.

Mr Widdis: At that stage, the police told us, "This is what we need". What was available to allocate to the police out of what came to us was £85 million short of what, they said, they needed. That was clear to us and the PSNI at that stage. That was all reported, in a sense, through the Minister, and the Minister told the Executive, "I need you, as the Executive, to agree to fund the justice sector to a certain degree, and this is my ask". The pressures on us, as a block, for the year were something like £220 million in the stabilisation piece and £227 million in the exceptional piece. The £220 million in the stabilisation piece included the PSNI pressure of £80 million. That was all put to the Executive. The Executive then brought the Budget to the House, and the House approved it.

Mr Beattie: That is clear.

On the data breach, Hugh, what contingency planning is in place or what plans are you working on for the possible cost to the PSNI of £225 million?

Mr Widdis: We have worked really closely with the PSNI on that from the get-go. We have done everything that we can to support it by protecting people and providing safety for those whose names and information were released. There will inevitably be a cost. The PSNI has admitted liability and is in the process of developing the business case. We are doing that cooperatively with the PSNI, and it will, ultimately, have to go to the Department of Finance.

There is a lot of speculation on the total cost that will need to be met. The total amount across the three exceptional costs at the beginning of the year was about £227 million. There is no way that the Department of Justice, even in an ordinary year or a positive, relatively benign financial year, could find £227 million in its budget to support that kind of intervention. With DOF, we have agreed a way to handle it: we will treat it as exceptional and see whether it materialises in-year and crystallises. The preferred approach is to deal with Treasury through the Department of Finance, with an exceptional claim on the reserve if and when that materialises. Forgive me, that obviously means the UK reserve, not a reserve in the Executive's Budget; it is the national reserve in the UK's finances. Again, it is an exceptional matter in that it is an exceptional case for us. From time to time, other Departments or UK Departments face pressures that were not anticipated or could not be coped with, and there is an existing process for going to Treasury about such things. That applies to us, Scotland and Wales, and it applies to any UK Department.

Mr Beattie: Thanks. Can I ask one more question? It is slightly outside the topic of the police, if you do not mind.

Hugh, you mentioned that reducing harm from domestic and sexual abuse is one of your key outcomes, but your bid for transformation funding did not go through.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I will hold you on that one, because I suspect that that is Justin's area and that he will want to come in on that.

Mr Beattie: I will leave it, then. I will wait; I am happy.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): We will come to that issue.

Mr Beattie: No problem.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): It will be helpful if we stick to general areas.

Mr Beattie: That is cool.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you. Does anybody else have anything on policing?

I have a couple of questions, Hugh. The Chief Constable told the Policing Board last week that he was disappointed that policing was not "the subject of greater focus" in the PFG. He said that policing should be more "front and centre" to reflect the level of crisis that the PSNI faces. He said that he was approaching the point where he would be unable to keep people safe. That is a fairly stark comment. Is that view shared by the Department? What action is being taken to address that warning?

Mr Widdis: As I said, we work really closely, and I speak to the Chief Constable regularly, so we are under no illusions about the scale of the problem. The police have a duty to do certain things, such as keep people safe and detect and prevent crime. We set long-term policing objectives, and the police cooperate with the Policing Board to produce a policing plan. Keeping people safe is very much an operational issue for the PSNI, but we absolutely recognise that policing numbers are at an all-time low.

We have just discussed funding for this year, but, thinking about the funding over the past 13 years — I do not need to go over the figures again with the Committee — our budget has gone up by only 13% in cash terms, which is, in essence, a real-terms cut. The whole justice sector has therefore been underfunded. The Minister has said that continued underfunding of the justice system puts all sorts of things at risk and generates the possibility of a — I think that she has used this phrase — catastrophic failure somewhere. That feels fairly consistent with what the Chief Constable says about not being able to keep people safe. The Chief Constable has felt it necessary, for example, during the recent disorder, to look for mutual assistance. That is an indicator to me that, at an operational level, he feels that that service cannot be delivered without bringing officers in from elsewhere. That is of huge concern to us in the Department and, I would hope, to everyone.

There are wider things that the police have to do that we will help them with, but we are specifically working with them on police numbers. They have a business case in preparation for a recovery plan. The Chief Constable has said that he would like to get numbers up to circa 7,000. There is a limit to the number that can go through the police college, but we are doing our best to come up with a satisfactory business case with the police, and we will then try to secure funding from the Executive to make sure that that increase can happen. It is really satisfying to see that work reflected in the draft PFG, in which there is a priority to — I cannot remember the exact phrase — see sufficient numbers in line with 'New Decade, New Approach' (NDNA). There is also reference to the other parts of the system that go around that, because the whole system has to work as a unit, rather than us creating one bit that can go off in one direction and leave the others to degenerate.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): It was as if you read my mind when you moved on to police numbers. That is fine. I heard what you said about the Executive's commitment. However, there has been a commitment to a complement of 7,500 officers for a number of years, and the money has not followed. What action is being taken by the Department with the Department of Finance and the rest of your Executive colleagues to make sure that there is a sufficient Budget allocation to get the numbers to at least 7,000 by the end of the mandate?

Mr Widdis: The Minister was in the House recently during the debate on the topic and made clear that she is working with the Minister of Finance and pushing the Executive to rebuild funding in the justice sector. That is the first thing that is happening. We regularly work with DOF colleagues to make sure that they understand the detail of that and the pressures that exist. We draw them in when we are in discussions and negotiations about what can be done.

As I said, we are working with the PSNI on things like making sure that police pay remits can be properly processed and, as I said, on the recovery business case to get numbers back up. The last time I saw it, the number was 6,355. As the Minister has said, that is an all-time low. She wants the capacity of the entire system to be increased and sees the possibility of catastrophic risk if we do not rebuild for police capacity and for the sector as a whole.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): How confident are you that you will acquire the necessary money?

Mr Widdis: I am confident that we are doing everything possible to get it. Ultimately, however, it depends on factors that are outside the Department's control, such as what the Chancellor decides on 30 October; the allocation for the next financial year; how the comprehensive spending review goes; and what additional security funding the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) is willing to put in, which is a relatively small amount of the total PSNI budget that is paid for directly by the UK Government.

Ultimately, once all that is factored into the Barnett formula and the Executive's successful negotiations with the UK Government to get a greater level of funding that is based on need rather than on the pre-existing formula, it will come back to the Executive. The Minister will continue to push the Executive, and I am sure that the Committee will continue to push for a rebuilding of funding in the area of justice so that that can be delivered. Ultimately, my confidence will come at that point. As I said, I am confident that we are doing everything that we can by working on the business case to recover and push for appropriate re-funding in Justice, but, ultimately, some of those things are to do with the UK's general fiscal position and how the Executive and the Assembly decide to split the Budget.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): We are acutely conscious that the Chief Constable gave that warning in the context of his statutory responsibility to keep people safe. As the accounting officer for the PSNI, he has a statutory responsibility to live within his budget. Moreover, if the Northern Ireland Budget was overspent, there could be considerable implications for future spending in Northern Ireland with regard to having to repay Treasury. All of that is in our minds as we seek to ensure that, ultimately, people are kept safe. The warnings from the Chief Constable are extremely alarming. Thank you for that, Hugh.

We will move on to cover some finance issues. Stewart, you have some issues to raise on the finances.

Mr Dickson: You touched on the big picture for finances, but we all know that there are in-year monitoring rounds.

How fit is the Department to deploy the additional funds that fall out of those monitoring rounds to the Department? What plans do you have to spend them? Where are the blockages, whereby money comes but you cannot physically spend it?

Mr Widdis: We are a bit different from some other Departments in relation to that. We have little by way of programmatic spend in the way that, for example, Economy would give money out to Invest NI and so on. We know exactly where our pressures are. We know where they were, in terms of the answer to Mr Beattie, at the start of the year and where they are at the moment. We have made a lot of decisions to reduce spend, and PSNI colleagues have made a lot of decisions to reduce spend in-year in order to do our duty and live within the budget that is set by the Assembly for us.

The Minister will have to decide, if an allocation comes to the Department, where the money will go, but we know exactly where the pressures are. For example, they are to make police pay awards affordable and in Legal Services. Chair, you mentioned the professions and so on. It is in terms of Legal Services getting money out the door in relation to legal aid. There is a bit of uncertainty about legacy inquests. That is probably the only area where there is uncertainty. We have a long list of other things that, if circumstances were benign and there was a really positive October monitoring round, we would relieve some of the pressure on. For example, prisons are operating with nearly 2,000 prisoners. The prison population is up one third, essentially, in three years etc, so we might put some there. We might put some into transformation. Broadly speaking, we know exactly where the pressure is: in the areas where we have reported pressures to DOF.

Mr Dickson: Thank you.

Mr Widdis: I do not know whether that answers your question.

Mr Dickson: That is helpful. It is just to help me understand. When monitoring rounds produce additional funds, other Departments — I think you are different from other Departments — can perhaps lift off the shelf a project that fits the amount of money that becomes available to them. I think what you say is that, for you, it is more a matter of how you distribute that to the additional pressures that are already there.

Mr Widdis: Yes. I said, "if there was any kind of benign environment and positive outcome", but I suspect that that will not happen for the Executive as a whole, with loads of extra money becoming available that people could spend on new, transformative activities. At the moment, we cannot meet all the bills that we have, so we are trying to reduce spend where we can. There is nothing extra and new that we would spend money on. We have identified existing pressures, as just discussed and with the Committee whenever we come to the Committee.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you, Stewart. Does anybody else have anything —? Sorry.

Mr Widdis: Deborah, do you have anything to add to that?

Ms Brown: No, that is absolutely it. We know that the police pressures are real and are linked to their pay. Some £6 million is linked to legal aid, which is the maximum that we can get out before the end of the year. However, against the pressures, we needed about £15 million, but we cannot get that out, so we have only put the £6 million in. There is about another £2 million of legal aid-associated legacy costs, which are absolutely real bills at the moment, another couple of million still on legal aid and another couple of million on general legacy. There is only a small amount of that that there is a level of uncertainty around: maybe £2 million at most. The rest of it absolutely can and would be spent.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Does anybody have anything else around finances?

I have a question around this. Hugh, I am conscious that, in your projections for the next financial year, which, I appreciate, you are having to do in something of a vacuum at this stage, there are massive pressures around the PSNI. If PSNI numbers increase, that has significant import for your budget and what else you have to spare. In your priorities within the PFG, what can realistically be progressed, if the budget lines are not allocated as you envisage, and how will you re-prioritise?

Mr Widdis: It is a little hard for me to answer that, Chair. The first point is that it is still just a draft Programme for Government. Ultimately, as mentioned, these are the Executive's priorities that appear here, not specifically the Department's, though, clearly, the Minister has had input. Broadly speaking, of the ones that appear on the first couple of pages about safer communities, we have just discussed, for example, police numbers and the funding of that etc. We are doing a lot of things in connection with the speeding up justice programme, including committal reform, the remit of Magistrates' Courts and out-of-court disposal. There is a lot in there that is intended to make justice faster — digital reform is in there as well — but, without funding, there is only so much progress that can be made on that.

We have some certainty with the strategic framework for youth justice and the tackling paramilitarism programme. We have bid in for the Executive programme on paramilitarism and organised crime (EPPOC) for next year. We hope that the UK Government will come up with match funding, as they have every year in the past and so on. The Executive have decided that they want to extend that programme for a couple of years, so it is reasonable to expect that some money will come from them. However, much as the Executive say that those are their priorities, albeit in draft, the scale to which they can be delivered across the whole Executive depends, inevitably, on funding, as just discussed, and then the subsidiary question of how the funding is divided among priorities, albeit that the intention is that budget will be aligned and, at least, informed, in terms of how it is designed, by the priorities that are finally settled on.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Will those priorities be a combination of Executive priorities and departmental priorities?

Mr Widdis: There is a fair proportion in safer communities and things such as domestic and sexual abuse that are departmental priorities as well. The Minister has been promoting them, working on them in the Department and pushing them for years. I suspect that, ultimately, there will be a balance, but you will remember, Chair, that the PFG has a legal function: it is what the Executive have agreed as being their function. They want to see those things progressing. Ministers then have their own scope of action without referring matters to the Executive as well. It is probably worth bearing that in mind in terms of setting priorities.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Understood. Thank you.

Justin, do you want to come in on this issue? You can then take forward your question about the public service transformation board, and, after that, I will bring Doug back in on that subject.

Mr McNulty: Yes, Chair. Hi, Hugh, Deborah and David.

What are the implications of the interim public sector transformation board's not progressing the transformation bid for reducing harm from domestic and sexual abuse and violence against women and girls for the delivery of the PFG priority of ending violence against women and girls?

Mr Widdis: That is really helpful, Mr McNulty. Thank you very much. As a little precursor to that, we put in five bids across the Department. One was in connection with the tackling paramilitarism programme, so, technically, that is cross-Executive rather than departmental. We got three of them through. We are at the stage at which the board has provisionally said, "Yes, we like those three. They're going forward for the time being. We need you to do some further work on them". Ultimately, on the assumption that funding is then allocated out of the fund, it will be for the board, in the first instance, to decide on each one of them. It will then make a recommendation to the Finance Minister, who will then bring that to the Executive, because it is their money; it is not the board's money in that sense. That is where that will ultimately be decided.

If there is no funding from that process to any of the individual interventions in the bids, we will not necessarily drop them. If the Minister decided that she still wanted to go ahead with them in the Department, we would add them to our pressures. To answer Mr Beattie's question earlier, we would bring that back to DOF for next year and say, "This one didn't get through. It has a price tag of 10, but we still think it's worth doing", and the Minister would push at the Executive level to get the funding for it in the general allocation back to Justice.

Forgive me, Mr McNulty: you asked about a particular bid. Which one was it?

Dr David Lennox (Department of Justice): Ending violence.

Mr Widdis: Forgive me, Deborah: what is the total cost of that?

Ms Brown: That bid was for £9 million, but we have baseline funding for the domestic and sexual abuse (DSA) area. At the moment, there is £2·5 million in our baseline, so we are doing things around that agenda. The transformation bid was to take that a step further. As I said when we were here a couple of weeks ago, it is mentioned in the Programme for Government under "Ending violence against women and girls", so, hopefully, budgets will be aligned with the Programme for Government and there might be an opportunity for that bid to be met in another way. There is funding in the baseline, small as it is. It is being used to fund the advocacy service to support victims of domestic and sexual abuse crime; the violence against the person baseline funding of £600,000, which is led by the Probation Board, for men alleged to be abusive towards their partners; and the DSA helpline. There is about £300,000 focused on the Gillen project.

You will have seen some of the pressures that we are reporting in the three-year exercise. Our initial assessment is that costs around the domestic abuse protection orders and notices will probably be around £12 million for a full year and may rise to about £17 million by the third year. There are large costs associated with that as well. Those bids have been put forward as part of that three-year exercise. That does not cover the £9 million for the transformation bids. We have resubmitted the transformation bids as part of that three-year exercise, because we are not clear whether they will be met, so they are all in our return to DOF. I think that you were provided with that information earlier in the week.

Mr McNulty: It is not very reassuring that the Programme for Government means that "hopefully" funding will be allocated above the baseline, but I understand that that is where things stand.

I want to flip back slightly to policing and one of the priorities of the draft Programme for Government, which is safer communities. A central role of government is to protect its citizens by keeping communities safe. How concerned are you about what the Chief Constable said in his letter to the Justice Committee about his worries that the draft Programme for Government is a good start but does not reflect the crisis facing the police and that we are now approaching the position where we are unable to keep people safe? How concerned are you, and to what extent are you changing tack on the draft Programme for Government

towards that?

Mr Widdis: I suppose that I am hamstrung. Deciding whether it is correct to say that any priority, action or policy is properly or adequately represented in the PFG is an Executive decision. I am a civil servant who works for a Department: it is not for me to decide which policies should be in the Executive's general portfolio.

In terms of your wider point about rebuilding policing from the unsatisfactory level of 6,355 officers back up to circa 7,000, the Minister wants to see proper funding for the entire justice system, and that includes policing. As I said, we are working hard with the police to come up with a business case to rebuild. It is their business case, but we are helping them and cooperating with them in rebuilding the service along the lines of what, the Chief Constable has said, will get the PSNI back up to a level that, he thinks, will be more satisfactory. Beyond the period of that rebuilding, there is something else to be considered.

Forgive me: I do not think that I can answer your basic question on whether I think adequate attention is given in the draft PFG to a particular policy. It is ultimately the Executive's decision about how they want to do it. I am happy to bring that question to the Minister or to see whether it can be represented in any other way in the consultation, but, ultimately, the Executive set the priorities.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): I think some of that was covered in answer to my question, anyway.

Doug, are you sure you do not want to pursue anything?

Mr Beattie: I do not want in on that, but, as we have moved on a bit, I have a question for Hugh.

I guess you can understand the Chief Constable's frustrations at the moment about the lack of police officers and what he is trying to do. Do you regret the letter you sent to the Chief Constable about the budget and the manner in which it was sent, in that it went quite wide? I understand the reasons for it, but do you regret the way you went about it?

Mr Widdis: The straight answer to that is that I do not regret it. Broadly speaking, in answer to the first bit of the question, I absolutely agree that policing, like every other part of the justice system, has been underfunded. I admire the Chief Constable, and he is doing a great job in pushing for more funding, but the Minister and I have to think about the system as a whole, and the Executive have to think about their system as whole.

In relation to your specific question about the letter, as well as being perm sec in the Department and trying to make sure that we run a tight ship in the Department etc, I am an accounting officer. I am personally obliged and accountable to the Assembly for the performance of the duties that I accepted when I became an accounting officer. Sometimes, principal accounting officers have to write to other accounting officers in relation to those duties. It is essentially business. The Minister said that it was regrettable that the letter went into the public domain and so on, and I agree with that entirely, but I do not regret acting in order to fulfil my duty to the Assembly and to protect the principles of 'Managing Public Money NI' and the role of the Assembly. Again, that is part of my duty in the way that the Budget is set across all of Northern Ireland.

On top of that, though, the relationship between the Department and the PSNI is excellent. You have heard me talking about all of the things that we are working on with the PSNI. I speak to the Chief Constable regularly, and personal relations between him and me and the Minister — the whole thing — are absolutely as you would expect and hope them to be with people who are collaborating to get solutions. The fact that I have duties as an accounting officer do not get in the way of that at all.

Mr Beattie: Do you accept that the distribution of that letter was possibly a bit wider than it should have been? Perhaps it should have been narrower or should have gone to the Chief Constable himself in that instance.

Mr Widdis: I can say only that I am doing my duty as accounting officer to the Assembly. The Chief Constable's letter had gone to a certain distribution list, and I responded.

Mr Beattie: OK.

Mr Widdis: It is totally OK that we might have different views on it. I regard it as my duty to the Assembly to act, but it is not affecting relations between the PSNI and the Department in any negative way.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): In circumstances where there is correspondence in which a number of people are sighted, it is difficult for the response not to be too. The distribution list was quite a wide one.

Do you have something else, Justin?

Mr McNulty: Just quickly on that point, can you confirm that you were green-lighted by the Minister to send a letter to the Chief Constable?

Mr Widdis: I did not quite catch that, Mr McNulty.

Mr McNulty: Can you confirm that you were green-lighted by the Minister to send that letter to the Chief Constable? [Interruption.]

Mr Widdis: Forgive me. It was a letter from me as accounting officer. I sent it in fulfilment of my duty as accounting officer, not as permanent secretary in the Department. It was not sent by the Minister or anything like that: it was from me to the Chief Constable, as principal accounting officer to another accounting officer.

Mr McNulty: I am sorry: I did not quite get that. Were you green-lighted by the Minister to send that letter to the Chief Constable?

Dr Lennox: Were you green-lighted?

Mr Widdis: Forgive me, Mr McNulty: was I green-lighted?

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): He did not hear the answer.

Mr Widdis: No. It was my decision to send the letter.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): OK, Justin?

Mr McNulty: Thank you, Hugh.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): There is just one other issue that I want to raise with you, then, unless anybody has anything pressing. In the course of your financial forecasting, you are essentially looking at ways to speed up justice. You talk about the Justice family. More police officers, therefore, requires additional prison resources, probation resources, resources for the Public Prosecution Service and so on. When the representatives of the PPS were here to highlight their concerns about resources, they raised the issue of balance. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. All of those things may work to speed up justice, except for the defence side. Through evidence that we have had from the Law Society and the Bar Council and in correspondence with the Institute of Professional Legal Studies we have sought to understand the scale of the problem. The evidence that we hear is that there is an access to justice issue. Criminal legal aid work is a difficult area where, at present, they struggle to get people to go into that field. Firms that have engaged in that area of work have had to shut down and so on. Therefore, they cannot afford to offer apprenticeships, which affects people's ability to enter the institute. They are stuck in a cycle, and the end result, if that is not addressed, will be that people in Northern Ireland will find it difficult to access criminal legal aid in future and to find a solicitor who is willing to engage in that work. As you move to speed up justice and invest in those areas, what consideration is being given to addressing what is, essentially, a crisis of access to criminal legal aid, advice and representation?

Mr Widdis: I totally agree. On the question of speeding up justice, it is intended to make considerable gains. We accept that the duration of criminal cases at all levels of court is too long. We think that that needs to be improved, and the Minister has said that on several occasions. The Criminal Justice Board oversees a programme of work that is intended to achieve that, and we will be happy to brief you further on that.

Coming to your point about legal aid and there being a crisis in the profession, representatives of the profession have written to us as well, and I imagine that it is a similar message that they have given us. We have a five-pillar reform programme for legal aid. I am sure that Steven Allison and other colleagues have explained that to you. On the criminal side, which needs to be taken in the round with the rest of the reforms, the most recent work is the report from Tom Burgess. We are going through that report in some detail to analyse it and to help the Minister to take decisions on what she wants to do on that.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Do you intend to publish that report?

Mr Widdis: We do. We are doing our analysis and taking some steers from the Minister, and then we will bring her a package of recommendations. Once that is settled, the Minister intends to have the Burgess report published along with her action plan or whatever is devised from that process.

I totally accept that, to some degree, criminal legal practitioners in Northern Ireland rely on legal aid to keep their businesses viable. Ultimately, the purpose of legal aid is access to justice. It is not specifically about the profession, but we do everything that we can to liaise. Colleagues in the Department meet colleagues in the Bar and the Law Society monthly, I think, to make sure that all their considerations are being taken into account. We will make sure that that is taken into consideration when we finally bring recommendations to the Minister. Ultimately, if there are changes to the legal aid scheme or to legal aid legislation, that may need to come back to the Committee or to the House.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Legal aid is part of it, but we are concerned that people are dropping out of that aspect of the profession and that others are not coming through to fill the gaps. Firms are closing down in rural areas in particular, although it is not just a rural problem. In the long run, that will have a massive impact on people's ability to access justice. That is what we hear, and it is important that we put that on your radar. If nobody comes through to do that work, people in Northern Ireland will face a serious problem a number of years down the line.

Mr Widdis: I absolutely accept that logic. We do what we can in relation to the profession, and, from talking to colleagues in the agency recently, my grasp of it is that nobody in Northern Ireland is more than a few miles from a legal aid practitioner; there is an average distance to a legal aid practitioner. I accept that people may drop out of that work unless a critical mass of work comes through that is financially viable for firms to take on. It is probably worth saying that addressing the structure of legal aid is probably not the entire answer. There is the way that the professions structure themselves, train people and bring them through. There are a lot of very small firms and some very big firms in the marketplace, so there are probably some structural issues that are outside the Department's control. Insofar as legal aid has a part to play in that, however, we will continue in our dialogue with the profession. I will take your point and make sure that we consider it when we put recommendations to the Minister.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you. Does anybody have anything further to add? No.

I thank you all very much for your time; you have been very helpful.

Mr Widdis: Not at all, Chair.

The Chairperson (Ms Bunting): Thank you for bearing with us as we were running slightly behind, although I am sure you are used to that at this stage.

Mr Widdis: Having been a practitioner for some time, I know that waiting outside for things to happen is part of the system. If we can help with anything else, let us know.