Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I inform members that the witnesses providing evidence today are Jon Boutcher, Chief Constable of the PSNI; and Sir Iain Livingstone, officer in overall command of Operation Kenova.

You are welcome to the Committee, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your attendance and for the time that you are taking with us today. I will let you get settled, but I am sure that you have an opening statement, Chief Constable: is that right?

Chief Constable Jon Boutcher (Police Service of Northern Ireland): I will make a few opening remarks, if I may.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK, fine. That is no problem.

Chief Constable Boutcher: Thank you. First, I thank the Committee for inviting us to speak to you today about the workings and findings of Operation Kenova. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the victims with whom Kenova has engaged and to recognise their fortitude and bravery in coming forward to speak to the inquiry. Every one of those families, across the myriad of investigations that Operation Kenova ultimately amounted to, has an incredibly tragic story. There is no monopoly on grief in Northern Ireland with regard to the Troubles, and their coming forward, their persistence and the real dignity with which they behaved were one of the critical success factors in how Operation Kenova managed to achieve so much.

I acknowledge the independent oversight and governance groups that we introduced to make sure that Kenova operated and performed as well as it could and in accordance with article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and I acknowledge the team that did the work. I also thank very much Sir Iain Livingstone, because Kenova is vocational. It is a commitment that everybody involved in it made to the families. I could not have left Kenova unless Iain Livingstone had agreed to take over, because he had been involved in the entire journey as a member of two of those governance groups. Nobody other than Iain could have picked up the reins for the role. I owe a debt of gratitude to Iain for undertaking that, which, I know, was not a straightforward decision for him.

I will finish on the fact that many of the victims who engaged with us now have information that they otherwise would not have had. Again, I really pay tribute to them for how they assisted the inquiry.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you very much, Jon, for that succinct and brief presentation. It is always welcome when visitors give a brief synopsis and do not lead on for 15 minutes with their statement. It means that we can get straight into questions, so thank you very much.

Sir Iain, do you want to say anything at this stage?

Sir Iain Livingstone (Operation Denton): Chair, thank you for the opportunity to come here today. I reiterate Jon's remarks about the focus on victims and families. I truly believe, from decades of policing service, that what distinguishes Kenova under Jon's leadership and through the many people who worked on it in a complex environment is that it tried to put the interests of victims and families at the forefront. As Kenova ends, as inevitably it must, and we think about whatever comes next, I underline that that principle and that ethos have to be retained. Thank you, Chair, for the invitation to be here today.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you very much. I will go straight out to members.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you both for coming in. In the report and your verbal remarks, you have outlined how critical the engagement with the victims, survivors and families was in the process. We are concerned that information was withheld, which impacted on the report. The information was not released until it was too late to secure prosecutions, which was obstruction by the security forces and MI5, and we know that many of the victims' families have concerns about the Legacy Act 2023 and the current legacy legislation that will repeal the Act and replace it. How can we learn lessons from the implementation of the "neither confirm nor deny" (NCND) policy and the impact that it had on victims, survivors and families during Kenova?

Chief Constable Boutcher: I will go first on that question. There is a lot in the remarks that you have just made that I will try to deal with, because it is not straightforward.

In the interim Kenova report, there is a section — it is on page 144, I think; forgive me if I have got that wrong — in which I reflect on the comments made to me by others who had undertaken legacy inquiries before Operation Kenova. One of the people quoted in that section of the interim report is David Cox, who headed the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) set up by Sir Hugh Orde. The second person whom I reference and quote in that section is Lord Stevens — John Stevens — who did a number of legacy inquiries here; there are three Stevens reports. I also reference a Canadian judge, Renee Pomerance, who worked as the senior legal adviser and, in effect, the deputy to Judge Cory, who did legacy work here. Finally, Mary Laverty, who is a barrister who supported the Smithwick inquiry, is referenced in that part of the report.

I have taken you to that section because each of those people talked about the obstruction, the challenges and the lack of transparency that they encountered, and some of their remarks are incredibly powerful. David Cox said that he was not given all the information that he asked for from the PSNI. Lord Stevens said that he was "criminally obstructed" and not given the intelligence that he should have been given. Renee Pomerance talked about the challenges of the environment in which they were placed and said that the security agencies considered themselves to be "above the law". Mary Laverty, who worked for Judge Smithwick, wondered when the security forces would consider that things were no longer protected by national security.

I spoke to all the people who ran those inquiries. Lord Smithwick has now passed away. Obviously, Iain and I have a lot of dialogue with John Stevens. We spoke to David Cox and Renee Pomerance and to Sir Desmond de Silva, who did the inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane, and they all described those obstructions. In my policing career, which is 43 years long, almost all of which has been as a detective, even though every day is a learning day, I have never experienced anything like that or realised the challenges in getting information about legacy cases.

I will put some context around that challenge. They were incredibly difficult times. Society had completely broken down, and the security forces were doing everything that they could to keep society safe. In many instances, the rule of law had escaped what the security forces could effectively deliver. It was such a unique and difficult time. A number of things occurred — Operation Kenova provides some of the findings — that would never ordinarily happen in any security force. Those things, which were examined by past inquiries, were the cause of a cultural resistance to enabling the inquiries to get to the bottom of what had happened. I hope that, as we get ever further away from the Troubles — the conflict — attitudes are changing, which, I think, they are. Kenova is an example of that. Attitudes have changed such that we are able to get information that has never previously been provided; that was certainly the case in Operation Kenova.

There is a hangover from that period, however, and some resistance remains that I am dealing with when it comes to public interest immunity (PII) issues and how we disclose and deal with sensitive information. You mentioned NCND: as the ex-head of covert or undercover policing in the UK, I have not seen that totemic NCND approach used elsewhere, but it is applied incredibly strongly here because of the legacy of the past. In the recommendations of the Kenova report, we call for NCND, as it has been applied in Northern Ireland, to be reviewed by the Cabinet Office.

The more the lessons learned from the inquiries that I have mentioned and from Kenova are applied, the more confident victims can be, and the better the Legacy Commission will be at delivering the truth for families. However, that will not happen simply through attitude change. The legacy Bill needs to provide legal structures to make sure that the information that families deserve is provided for legally; that things that have happened, such as those referred to in the quotes in the interim report, do not happen again; and that families feel that they are getting the information that legally and morally they deserve.

It is not straightforward, but we are on a line of progression, and I am hopeful. The Bill has to succeed. When it comes to legacy, it feels to a certain extent as though we are in the last chance saloon, given people's ages — during Kenova, we lost so many of the victims because they passed away — so we really have to get this right. If we all give a bit, there will be every opportunity for that to happen.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you for that and for being so forthright about the obstruction that was faced. You have said that consistently, and you have talked about your desire to see the "neither confirm nor deny" policy abandoned and the importance of that being done. You have outlined your belief that the culture existed as a result of the conflict; I contend that the conflict existed because of the culture and that that was then reversed.

I appreciate that you are on record as saying that a public inquiry should be granted to the family of Sean Brown, who was murdered in my constituency when I was a child. The family have been clear in their call for a public inquiry, stating their belief that the current mechanism will not serve them; we see the use of PII there. Given everything that you have said, it is important for there to be a power to compel. You have talked about your desire to see a lack of obstruction, but the legislation has to compel the security forces to provide information, because history has taught us that, without being compelled to do so, they will not provide it.

Chief Constable Boutcher: There are a couple of things. You mentioned NCND: I have applied NCND more than anybody I know. I am an advocate of NCND, but every case has to be assessed individually. NCND should not be applied in a blanket way. It has become a high stone wall to stop information being provided even to investigative bodies, such as those that I mentioned, whether it is the Cory inquiry, the de Silva inquiry, the Stevens inquiry or the work of the HET. We know from Operation Kenova that information that should have been provided to those inquiries was not provided. That has to stop. All available information on anything that happened to anybody in a Troubles-related case should be provided to the Legacy Commission.

An interesting element of the Legacy Act that the previous Government introduced and the Troubles Bill that this Government are introducing is that schedule 4 to the Troubles Bill — the new Bill — mirrors schedule 8 of the Act. It states that all organisations that hold information — the PSNI holds a lot of information — have to go through an exercise to examine that information and provide a classification of its sensitivity. Secondly, organisations have to decide or give an opinion on whether that information is prejudicial. All I have ever really been is a detective, and there is no other area that I can think of in any investigation or any type of crime, whether it be financial crime, offences against people or sexual offences of any kind, where organisations that might hold information are asked to do that. They just have a legal obligation to give unfettered access to any information. It is then for the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), with the proper structures and security mechanisms in place, to have access to all that information so that it can properly investigate the case, and it is then for the commission, which is led by an ex-Lord Chief Justice, to decide, in partnership with the organisation that originally held that information — there should be a relationship there — what information can go into the public domain.

Ms Sheerin: The report outlines clearly that the information that was brought late by MI5 was beyond the scope of the Kenova report because the deadline had passed and that, in other circumstances, that type of admission would potentially lead to criminal repercussions. However, unless I am mistaken, there were no repercussions, regardless of whether it happened by mistake or was done deliberately. The consequence is that we know that there was collusion in the North. We can see that from Operation Denton, and families and lots of people have known that for a long time. That then furthers the belief that collusion is ongoing and that the state is fully [Inaudible.]

Chief Constable Boutcher: I must bring Iain in on this issue, because that was the period when he had taken over the stewardship of Kenova. None of us wanted to have that revelation about material that we could not consider from an investigative perspective in any inquiries that we were undertaking. It had a significant impact on families' trust and confidence in the institutions across the security forces and across government because of the eleventh-hour nature of it. MI5 commissioned an internal inquiry into what had happened. Iain met MI5, and I need to bring him in here, because he managed that issue. We have to avoid that situation in the future with the Legacy Commission.

Before I hand over to Iain, an important point to make is that a lot of the material that the PSNI holds is sensitive. My view is that the two tests that schedule 4 to the Bill asks that we undertake should be taken out: in effect, we should give the keys to all our databases and all that material to the Legacy Commission, with an explanation of which database is sensitive and which is non-sensitive. It will then be for the commission to deal with that information. Otherwise, the optics of it will be bad. Families will ask, "What is happening now with my case?", and the response will be, "We are just waiting for the PSNI to decide what is sensitive information and what is not sensitive information", or, "We are just waiting for the PSNI to decide whether the information that it holds is prejudicial". That is not a good look.

The PSNI is not best placed to make that determination. The material is from many years ago. That information is relevant to the body that will investigate the case. In my view, that element, which has been added to the Bill, I am sure, by government lawyers, is unhelpful and will impact negatively on the trust and confidence of victims across all victim profiles and genres.

I will bring Iain in on the matter of the MI5 material.

Sir Iain Livingstone: Thank you, Jon.

Thank you for your questions. I will make three observations, if I may. For absolute clarity, our position on NCND is not that we should abandon it but that its application, particularly in Northern Ireland and with regard to the agent Stakeknife, requires review. As Jon said, the necessity of NCND to protect sources and for the greater public good is well established: the application of that principle and doctrine is the issue.

Secondly, I hope that, in the final report, I did not understate the late discovery of the material by MI5. That was a significant error and failure on the part of the United Kingdom Security Service. However, the leadership recognised that and, once it came to light, immediately allocated resources, and there was a thorough search to provide that material. Nevertheless, given that Kenova had been running for seven years or so, the non-prosecutorial decisions had already been issued and we were just about to get implementation of the Legacy Act, the timing could not have been worse for the confidence of victims and families. To be candid, it had a big impact on us in Kenova as well. Jon and I had said to victims and families, to public representatives such as you and to other key stakeholders, "We have seen material that other people have not seen. We have gone to places that previous investigations have not. Our judgement is based on that material". Yet, all that new material was coming to light. Inevitably, that has had an impact on trust and confidence in our assertions.

Thirdly, you mentioned Operation Denton and other investigations. The non-disclosure or late discovery of material by MI5 in relation to Stakeknife had an impact on our other work. Legitimately, people would say, "You were not given that material about Stakeknife, so how certain can you be that you have seen everything?". Candidly, that is a legitimate concern, which we share. However, I think that we have seen far more than anyone else has seen. Thereafter, we can make our assessments and judgements only on the basis of the material that we have seen.

In closing, I reiterate the point that the Chief Constable made strongly and eloquently: the people who access the information are crucial to an independent investigation. The people who are best placed to assess the relevance of that information are the people who are carrying out the investigation. That is a core principle. Jon is the Chief Constable of the PSNI, and he has given an undertaking that he would be prepared to do that. If I am investigating, I will decide what I need, but you will not decide what you are prepared to give me if you are being investigated. That is the core principle.

Ms Sheerin: I have one final question, if I may. You have gone through that process. Were there consequences for those people? You talked about an internal investigation into how that information was missed or was not presented until it was too late.

Sir Iain Livingstone: That is about material from decades ago, as Jon has already outlined. A lot of MI5's internal practices and processes have changed significantly since then. When it comes to consequences for individuals, many of the individuals who were involved in those matters are retired and, in some instances, long retired. MI5 has undoubtedly recognised its failings; I do not think that it has been equivocal on that point. It has taken steps to improve its information-handling.

Ms Sheerin: Recognising failings and feeling the consequences of them are two different things. The perception and my belief is that that was a direction from the top down. The fact of that being acknowledged but going unchallenged will probably further that belief, particularly —.

Sir Iain Livingstone: I have seen nothing that would support your belief that it came from the top down. My judgement is that, in the Security Service, there was definitely a culture of reluctance at times that could border on obstruction. There was a sense of, "Why is this police team" — Kenova — "coming to ask hard questions many years later?". My view is that the leadership of the Security Service did not hold that view, but there was, undoubtedly, an element in the service that made it difficult. Jon articulated those challenges and difficulties in his interim report, and I mention them in the final report. In no way, shape or form are we diminishing those challenges; in fact, we have shone a light on them in a way that has not been done previously. My view, however, is that MI5 has taken the learning and experience of Kenova on board.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you.

Ms Egan: Thank you both very much for coming to the Committee. I was heartened to hear in your opening remarks about the real focus on victims. How did you engage with victims throughout the process? How did you ensure that they were communicated with and had confidence in the work that you were doing? That is such a crucial part of the process. I want to hear about any learnings from that. I also want to hear how, you think, the victims feel about not being able to have Stakeknife named in the report; you have both been quite firm about that. As I understand it, that feels like a bit of a slap in the face to the victims. Chief Constable, I think that you used the word "farce" at the time.

Chief Constable Boutcher: I will respond about the focus on victims. I was asked to do the inquiry by Sir George Hamilton when he was Chief Constable. As anybody might expect, I sought advice from people about whether I should do the inquiry, including John Stevens, whom I knew as an ex-commissioner, having been in the Met for a long time. Interestingly, everybody I spoke to told me not to do the inquiry, except for John Stevens. I found that interesting; in fact, my wife said, "I wish they would tell you to do the inquiry, because then you might be less interested".

There are challenges here that I really did not understand. I thought that I was fairly well read and learned, having been a detective throughout my career and an operational cop. Coming here was to come to an entirely new operating environment. Many of the families whom I referenced in my opening remarks had tried to get information about what had happened to their loved ones, but the institutions that were responsible for giving that information had turned a deaf ear to them and, in fact, obstructed them in getting that information on some occasions.

There was no framework for dealing with legacy then: there had been ad hoc inquiries, with different people doing different things at different times. I realised that, if we were going to make any real progress with an investigation, the main constituency whose confidence I needed was the victims. When I met them for the first time, most of them were extremely angry and upset following many years of frustration. It is important that I say that that includes families from across all the victim sectors, including security force families. We spent a long time listening to what they had to say, which was time valuably spent.

That listening exercise was incredibly valuable for a number of reasons. First, it showed them that we respected them and wanted to know what they had to say. Most of those families have become subject matter experts in their family member's case. They had the files from the inquest, and they had the HET report. If there had been any type of examination through the inquiries that I have just mentioned that touched on different cases, they would have had material from those inquiries. They would have had their lever arch files of information. They are an incredible source of intelligence. Unfortunately, in the absence of a proper framework to deal with legacy, whenever anybody commented on what had happened in their particular case, because they had nowhere to go to test that theory or that claim there was also lots of misinformation among those families.

From that initial listening exercise, the acknowledgement of what they had been through and suffered provided us with a number of things: the trust, the confidence and the beginnings of the relationships that you need to have with victims so that others will come forward and give you information that they know. It also, importantly, gave us information that otherwise we would not have had, because those people had not been spoken to. In several cases, particularly the Stakeknife cases, they had been there. They had had a knock on the door. Their neighbours had witnessed things, so they were able to tell us and point us to where to go. If we had not had that trust and confidence, we would have missed a whole area of critical evidence. As you might expect in any ordinary investigation, we made sure that the process was entirely victim-focused, and we brought in experts who had been part of processes and learnings around dealing with really significant incidents from which there had been learning that investigations should know about.

We put together a victims focus group, and that group would check what we were doing and advise us on how we were undertaking and conducting that investigation. That group, when they asked for it and if the victims agreed, would meet the victims with whom we were dealing to check how the experience was for the victim, including asking whether we were meeting them regularly. There were so many stories from previous inquiries of where victims had met people from the inquiry and then never heard from them again. We put together as much as we could in the structure that we could find, and we took the learnings from the previous legacy inquiries that I talked about. I went to see all the people who had done those inquiries and asked them what worked, what did not work and what I should guard against. I had worked in counterterrorism and in tackling organised crime for many years, and we applied the model and structures of a modern investigative capability. We brought those together, and that was the investigative model that was created, which was Operation Kenova. It was a hybrid.

To assure victims that we were doing that as well as we could, we had the victims focus group, which ensured that we were doing everything that we could around the victims element. We also had other groups. We had an independent steering group, which Iain was on, with incredibly well respected senior investigators from across the world who had dealt with really complex and notorious inquiries to make sure that, when we were undertaking our inquiries, we had a group of people, almost a Star Chamber, asking, "Have you considered this? Have you considered that?". Again, that group met stakeholders and victims to assure them about what we were doing. We put those layers in place because, previously, there had been such low levels of trust in any type of investigation. That was the approach around the victim-focused element. Even now — I do not do this as well as I wish I could — I will speak to victims on anniversaries or key dates. I was with three families this week for dinner. They were bereaved families of police officers from the Kinnego Embankment incident of 1982. We keep that relationship, and we are still answering questions and making sure because, in that case, there is an ongoing criminal prosecution.

So, just doing the right thing for those victims in the way that you would expect us to do anywhere else in the United Kingdom is the approach that we have taken here.

There was a second element to your question beyond the victims. I am sorry; would you remind me?

Ms Egan: It was about the impact that, you felt, not being able to name Stakeknife had on victims and how that made them feel.

Chief Constable Boutcher: That issue is still unresolved; I want to make that point. For the information of the Committee and others, I wrote a detailed letter to the Secretary of State recently, setting out why he should set NCND aside in that case and identify the agent Stakeknife. I believe that the decision is still being taken around that. I had expected and hoped that we would be able to name the agent Stakeknife in the final report. The impact on the trust and confidence of those communities and victims was significant.

When you consider the backdrop of the earlier question about the obstruction of inquiries and when I talk about schedule 4 to the Troubles Bill about us being asked to do two things with regard to passing information that are not done in any other investigations, people start to think that this is just a continuation of being treated differently. When it comes to the naming of Stakeknife element of the Kenova investigation, the evidence is so overwhelming that, in effect, the public interest is now to name him. There is no doubt in my mind about that. It is against the measures of accountability and justice that, I think, we all stand for, that that individual, who did those deeds, has not been named by the state.

If, today, anybody, on a moral and legal basis, working for the state committed serious harm or murder and was protected from criminal prosecution, that would be absolutely unimaginable and would not be allowed. It should not have been allowed then. By not naming him, it feels to me that some of the additional accountability measures that should follow when, I believe, he will be named — ultimately, he will be named, whether that is in the immediate future through this Secretary of State or not — need to come. It feels to many families that he is not being named so that the Government can hide behind the shield of NCND.

With all of the things that we are trying to do on legacy at the moment and all of the warm words about giving information that has never been given before, the Government have to demonstrate that they mean that. Naming the agent Stakeknife, because of the context and the unique circumstances of the case, which, I think, make it compelling, will go a long way towards providing people with some trust and confidence in this Government and legacy.

Ms Egan: OK, thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I will keep you on Connie's point about naming agent Stakeknife. I hear everything that you say about confidence and the transparency of the state, and I agree with that. Is there an issue, then, that you diminish the confidence of people who are currently serving as informants?

Chief Constable Boutcher: Yes, that is a good question. Most of my career has been spent in the covert policing space, so there are a couple of things that I would say about that. The interim report and the final report set it out clearly that the agent Stakeknife was involved in the murders of a number of other agents. It is reasonable that those agents and their families — those agents took huge risks — would have expected to be protected by the state. The behaviours of that individual, which are set out clearly in the interim report and the final report, make it clear to me, on a moral and legal test basis, that he should be named.

When we named agents before — Brian Nelson is an obvious one, an agent for the Force Research Unit (FRU) — the sky never fell in. Nothing happened with regard to the recruitment and retention of agents. I would point to Gary Haggerty and Declan Casey. There are cases that, on the face of it, seem less serious, where we have either named agents or formally declared that somebody was not an agent. From my experience, I have seen no evidence of the chill effect, if I can call it that, that people would not then become agents. For me, as head of covert policing, the Chief Constable of the PSNI, there is no evidence of that when we did a gist in the Sean Brown case. If we name him, the accountability would show that we look after agents and demonstrate that we are learning from the times when we got things terribly wrong. From all the ways you can look at that, I find it hard to understand that there is a justification for it to continue.

I will mention Iain's report. At section 9, he carefully sets out items with regard to the agent Stakeknife — I am being careful how I describe this — and information about Freddie Scappaticci. The narrative sets out when the agent Stakeknife was first revealed as an agent, which was by a journalist, Liam Clarke. It sets out when Freddie Scappaticci was first connected with the named entity of the agent Stakeknife by Ian Hurst. The report then carefully sets out how one of the previous general officers in command here, John Wilsey, was duped by somebody purporting to be a journalist, and it was Ian Hurst. It said — it is publicly available — that the agent Stakeknife was Freddie Scappaticci.

The Kenova investigation also has an element where Freddie Scappaticci told his wife and a female associate that he was the agent Stakeknife. A journalist, Sylvia Jones, who was responsible for a documentary in which Freddie Scappaticci appeared, was told by a senior RUC officer that he was a senior agent. All of those things culminated in a solicitor, Kevin Winters, saying that all the dogs in the street knew that the agent Stakeknife was Freddie Scappaticci — forgive me, I do not have the exact quote. None of that is a formal acknowledgement, nor does what I say now give, in any way, any indication as to the identity of the agent Stakeknife; I am simply saying what is in the report.

When people in society see all that and we are still not confirming or denying the position about the agent Stakeknife, it creates a lack of trust and confidence in those of us who are charged by the public to deal with legacy and keep society safe. It becomes, frankly, quite ridiculous.

I am happy to speak to anybody who has an alternative view. Ultimately, it is the Government's decision. Iain and I are aware of the identities of other agents, but that was done on an understanding of confidentiality that we would never breach. We have always followed due process, and that is why I have formally asked and written to the Secretary of State to address the issue of the agent Stakeknife's identity.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you.

Mr Bradley: Thank you for the presentation, and it is good to see you again, Chief Constable.

It is widely known that the Kenova report covers the activities of one informer from within the higher echelons of the IRA, and much attention has been drawn to the report’s conclusion that Stakeknife's operations probably resulted in more deaths than lives saved.

Do you agree that there is a risk that taking Kenova in isolation could undervalue and misrepresent the overall contribution of the informants and agents who infiltrated the IRA at all levels in providing intelligence and saving lives at the same time?

Chief Constable Boutcher: It is important that, as I did in the report, I say this: we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the security forces across the piece that performed heroically during the Troubles. We owe a debt of gratitude to agents who took unimaginably high risks to keep society safe and who operated properly. The security forces that managed those agents operated properly; I make that clear.

In this case, we know, because of the investigations of Operation Kenova, that that did not happen. Ordinarily, the courts adhere to the application of "neither confirm nor deny", because there is, quite properly, an assumption that the security force and any agents have operated with propriety, within the rule of law. In this case, that did not happen.

I am clear that, without the brave men and women who worked as covert human intelligence sources (CHISs), routinely helping the security forces to keep people safe and make society safer, we would not be, so many years after the Good Friday Agreement, in a much different and safer society. However, in the case of that agent, we have information about the serious criminality that was involved, and that is why Sir Iain and I — Sir Iain may want to make some remarks on this — have set out the findings that we have about that case.

Sir Iain Livingstone: I will add one point. Again, I agree with Jon on his observation: the value of that contribution is unarguable, and that is because of the remarkable bravery of the people who tried to present information in order to allow lives to be saved and communities to be kept safe.

My point comes back to one of the Chair's questions. It is my strong view that naming the agent Stakeknife would support the principle of NCND, because any agent or source has to know that there are limits to the protection of anonymity that NCND provides and rightly so, for the reasons that you outline. That protection cannot be unlimited. There cannot be such patently unlawful, grotesque abuse of humanity through violence and criminality with the individual being allowed to continue their behaviour because they know, which they will if we do not name Stakeknife, that their anonymity will always be protected. There must be limits on how an individual operates, and the individual who acts as an agent or a source must know that there are limits. If those limits were not breached in the case of agent Stakeknife, I do not know how they could be breached in any other instance.

My view is not only that naming Stakeknife is the right ethical position, which Jon has strongly outlined, but that doing so would make a clear statement that NCND is not an unlimited guarantee of anonymity. If you cross a line, as was done in that instance, the public interest will rightly take precedence over the protection of anonymity.

Mr Bradley: We have to keep it in mind that it is the victims and their families who are at stake. I lost one friend in a car booby-trapped with a bomb, one to a roadside bomb and another who was shot in the back of the head in a seaside town. The Troubles have impacted in one way or another on each of us sitting around the table.

To get to the bottom of legacy, could your Operation Kenova be rolled out as a precedent for an investigation by the authorities of the Irish state of the alleged role of members of its security forces and government agencies in acts of terrorism perpetrated during the Troubles? Could that help the Irish Government to come to a conclusion on their role in the Troubles?

Chief Constable Boutcher: The Irish Government have spoken publicly and incredibly positively about Operation Kenova, as have the British Government, victims' groups and victims. Operation Kenova is the collection of learning from the legacy investigations that I mentioned earlier, although there are also elements of Kenova that I would do differently if I were to do it again now. Kenova has put in place sound pillars for the Legacy Commission and any future legacy investigations in Ireland.

We engaged with the British Government on the first Legacy Bill. I do not recognise a lot of Operation Kenova in the structures of the ICRIR. I say that because I have been asked the question, and I am just being honest about it. I think that there is a determination in the ICRIR to get it right, however, and there are some excellent people on that commission. I think that the current Secretary of State has an appetite to listen to the views and concerns about that initial legacy legislation to make sure that the new Troubles legislation addresses a number of the concerns that have been raised.

The British and Irish Governments are together as we speak, as I understand it. There is a need for those Governments to come up with a shared approach to legacy. Iain will come in on that. He has done a huge amount of work on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. The help of the Irish authorities is needed on a number of issues with information and activity relating to crimes along the border. There has to be a way of finding a joint venture to make sure that there is a mechanism in place by which people, whether they are north or south of the border, can get information about what happened during those cases. I genuinely believe that there is determination to achieve that position, and I hope that that is what will happen.

Iain may wish to talk about the South.

Sir Iain Livingstone: I do not think that we avoid criticising agencies in the South. A number of the victims and families to whom we spoke — certainly those whom we spoke to around the Dublin and Monaghan bombings — had significant reservations about the British state and some of its agencies but were also incredibly critical of the state agencies in the South: the response of an Garda Síochána and the wider state infrastructure around welfare support and other matters.

What I take from that is that there is absolutely no doubt that victims and families were significantly let down by state agencies, whether in the North or the South. It sounds almost simplistic to say this, but the first step towards progress is to recognise and accept that fact. Operation Kenova has shown that to be the case. The victims and families told us that we are the first people who have listened to them, shown empathy and been realistic about what can be achieved. We have said that we will not necessarily be able to get a criminal justice outcome, because some material is lost, and that there are some answers that we will not be able to give to them, but it is about treating victims and families with dignity and respect. Doing that will take the effort of everybody in the North and in the South. There are lessons to be learned by the agencies in the South, as well as Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, from what has come out of Kenova.

Chief Constable Boutcher: Can I just add something? Sorry. It is only because the security forces is the element mentioned there.

It is easy to criticise, looking back at how those matters were investigated all those years ago. I joined policing in 1983. Policing in London was completely different in 1983. Here, because of the threat and because of the volume of murders that were occurring, one half of society did not have the confidence to speak to the security forces, and, if they did, there could be consequences for them. The security forces were under such threat that they could not conduct inquiries that they wanted to conduct because of the risk to them from paramilitaries on both sides. That is why legacy is so important now to try to put in place an investigation. Some people have said to me, "This was investigated at the time, Jon, or there was an inquest at the time". Those investigations and those inquests never got the information that the families deserved, for all sorts of reasons.

It is easy to look back and criticise. The RUC was the most dangerous police force in the world to be a member of in the 1980s; there is a report about that. This is wickedly difficult on all sides. It is important, as we say in the Kenova report, to put the context of the time around some of the investigations.

Mr Bradley: Thank you very much. It is important to seek closure for victims' families. They deserve, at the very least, that.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you, Maurice.

Jon, you said in answer to Maurice that you would do things differently if you were to commence Kenova today. What would you do differently?

Chief Constable Boutcher: It is a good question, and I provided some evidence to the Government about that when they were looking at the Legacy Commission. There are some elements with regard to the information from the South. We ended up getting a legislative instrument to get information for the Glenanne gang offences, but that took some time. We were far too slow, and there were significant frustrations from the families around making sure that we got that engagement with those stakeholders.

With other stakeholders, we concentrated very much on the families. Some of that was about capacity. Before we started Kenova, we should have done more work with some of those stakeholders' support groups to make sure that we heard from them about their experiences and their advice about how we should undertake the inquiries. Even the terms of reference of Operation Kenova were agreed between me and the Chief Constable of the PSNI, George Hamilton. We did not speak any more widely to community groups or victims' groups. Again, in the way that the Government were criticised for not consulting over the Legacy Bill — I said that you need to consult widely, broadly and richly to get everybody's perspectives on legacy — we just went into the investigation. We did a lot to try to recover some of those shortcomings, but, as brief examples, those are things that we should have taken more time to do before we started the investigations.

Mr Kingston: Thank you both for your answers so far and for your work on these important matters. The recommendations in the interim Kenova report include that the republican leadership should issue a full apology for PIRA abductions, torture and murder of those whom it accused or suspected of being agents during the Troubles. There was a subsequent statement from Sinn Féin's Michelle O'Neill, but public figures, including Judith Thompson, the former Commissioner for Victims and Survivors, have indicated that the statement by Michelle O'Neill does not equate to an apology under international law. The final Kenova report says that, ultimately, it is up to families to decide on the sincerity of any apology.

Do you think that Sinn Féin leaders — Mary Lou McDonald or Michelle O'Neill — should categorically apologise for what the IRA brutally perpetrated on families across Northern Ireland, including in its own communities? For years, people in its community were accused of working with the security forces when, in fact, it was someone and, indeed, some people at the very top of the Provisional IRA leadership.

Chief Constable Boutcher: First, I acknowledge that Michelle O'Neill came out on the afternoon the interim report was released and spoke publicly about the report. She acknowledged the report and the victims.

There are 10 recommendations in the report. None of the recommendations has been supported in the way that I, members of the steering group, the governance board, the victims group and the victims of the investigations had hoped for by the political leadership in Westminster or here. There was a request for an acknowledgement by the British Government about what had happened, but that has not occurred in the way that David Cameron did for the victims of Bloody Sunday. The then Secretary of State said that the reason for that was ongoing legal issues: in Northern Ireland, there are ongoing legal issues all the time. Iain has done a lot of work to encourage all those with influence to address the 10 recommendations, which were carefully written, and they are incredibly achievable to bring people together. Even now, there is a call for the Executive and the Government to look at those recommendations and, with the dawn of the new legacy arrangements before us, use them as a platform to provide the families and those who want to go to a legacy construct with confidence with something to suggest that we have learned the lessons from Kenova. The silence has been deafening.

Judith made comments about the Sinn Féin remarks after the interim report came out. Apologies need to be done really well; ideally, they should be done once, and they have to be absolutely sincere. It is right that they should be done in consultation with the families, and I learned that during the process from the victims' support group that we have in place. Judith was part of the Kenova victims' support group as well as being the Victims' Commissioner. There are a lot of people in power and places of influence who have got to do a lot more about the Kenova recommendations, and there was a call to arms to do that when Iain released his final report in December.

Sir Iain Livingstone: Can I add a point about the recommendations? In my brief opening remarks, I mentioned that Operation Kenova will come to a conclusion. The number of people still working on Operation Kenova is in the single figures — there is myself and a number of colleagues — and rightly so. The work on the final report has concluded, and there are still a number of issues, not least, as Jon has said, getting clarity from the Secretary of State on naming the agent Stakeknife. He has written to Jon and me. Jon mentioned writing to the Secretary of State in his capacity as the Chief Constable, and I wrote to him in my capacity as the officer in overall command. The Secretary of State has also given an undertaking to update the House of Commons because, at the launch of the final report on 9 December, he made a statement in the House of Commons that he would come back and address that matter there. We cannot remove ourselves until those issues are properly addressed.

I am concerned that the 10 recommendations, from the UK Government issuing an apology to the leadership of the Provisional IRA and the republican movement issuing an apology — clear and unequivocal apologies in both cases — need continual monitoring and ownership.

It is people with the legitimacy of this Committee and this group who would continue to do that. I want to make a respectful request that, when Kenova finishes, as it will, we keep a focus on those 10 recommendations. That would be important in the public interest.

Mr Kingston: Thank you. I have one another question, if I may.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Go ahead, Brian.

Mr Kingston: Thank you, Jon, for making reference to the Kinnego Embankment bombing and your work on Operation Turma. Earlier, I declared an interest, in that I was related to Paul Hamilton, who was one of the officers killed in that bombing. In that case, a fresh look at the evidence and the re-interviewing of people, which led to a large number of evidential leads and the retesting of retained items using modern techniques, resulted in the extradition and charging of Martin McCauley, who has appeared in court and is currently on bail. He evaded justice in Colombia — he was one of the Colombia Three — by skipping that country, where he was passing on IRA terrorism techniques to FARC. That is an example of where justice can potentially be served. Do you want to say something more about the importance of the avenues of justice being kept open? The passage of time is always a factor, but, where there are evidential items, they can be of assistance.

Chief Constable Boutcher: To be realistic, it is important to say that it is ever more difficult, as time passes, to achieve a criminal justice outcome for legacy cases. The approach to Kenova was to get information to the families about what happened, so that we could answer their questions.

There have been incredible improvements in what we can do forensically now. It is amazing what we can now achieve in obtaining DNA and recovering it from exhibits. A fresh analysis of exhibits provided us with evidence that we were able to identify. The case that you mentioned is an ongoing prosecution, so I do not want to say anything about that particular case. I will say, however, that it demonstrates that there will be occasions for the Legacy Commission and those will be almost entirely where there is forensic evidence and there will be an opportunity for the odd prosecution. However, it is important that everybody understands that that will be vanishingly rare. Then, even to achieve a successful criminal justice outcome is incredibly challenging. The focus of legacy for those families should be on getting the information on what happened to their loved ones.

Mr Kingston: Thank you.

Mr Beattie: Thank you, Chief Constable and Sir Iain, for coming here today and for all that you have done on this report. It is incredibly important, if we are going to reconcile ourselves going forward.

I have to say that not naming Freddie Scappaticci as Stakeknife is farcical and embarrassing. It is akin to a Monty Python sketch. You are absolutely right: it impinges on trust and confidence. However, so does the fact that, having carried out this complex investigation and produced 29 files for the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) covering 38 individuals, none of those cases went forward for prosecution. That also creates issues of trust and confidence, because I am in no doubt that the due diligence was done.

Is the issue in this case the fact that intelligence information was inadmissible and could not be used in the courts? In which case, was there not another way round that, so that we could have had closed court sessions to be able to see that intelligence, if it was not necessarily publicly admissible?

Chief Constable Boutcher: I will bring Iain in on this in a moment. There are a number of complex reasons. I set out some observations in the interim report, and one of the 10 recommendations referenced during this Committee hearing was that the Public Prosecution Service review how it undertakes the examination of legacy cases. I identify in the report concerns that I had around how that process had been undertaken.

As ever in Northern Ireland, the resourcing and funding that the Public Prosecution Service receives — the Director of Public Prosecutions will want me to say this — means that he was incredibly challenged in being able to look at those cases as quickly as we wanted him to and in the manner that we wanted him to. Ordinarily, there is a close relationship between the investigating body, the reviewing lawyer and the reviewing independent counsel, particularly with serious cases. If Stephen Herron, the Director of Public Prosecutions, were here now, he would say that, because of his demands on contemporary cases and risk-to-life cases, where people could come to harm today, he had to make choices around priorities. Therefore, even the decisions on the Kenova cases took a long time. That is another thing that impacts on the confidence of victims in the entirety of the end-to-end system.

With regard to the evidential issues, there are many things that I would like to say, but it would not be helpful to get into those today. There is a challenge with regard to how we address hearsay evidence, because the cases are from so long ago and, often, witnesses are no longer alive. In those particular legacy cases, we could have taken a different approach to hearsay, and it is an approach that I have taken in courts in London that has been supported by the courts. There is a nervousness about legacy cases here. They take a lot of time. They get huge scrutiny, and that leads to a certain amount of nervousness. The threshold is the threshold for a criminal prosecution — I accept that — but, in life, sometimes, you need to have a bit of courage around some of the cases where that threshold is there, and, in my view, prosecution decisions could and should have been made.

There is one case that I ask you to look at. It is set out in the interim report and is mentioned in the final report. It was the file with regard to the perjury. At the launch of the Kenova final report, when Iain published it, I said that the person whose file that related to was Freddie Scappaticci. By the way, that is not breaching any NCND issues; again, it is just setting out the facts. Such cases are difficult to prosecute, but I point you to what the Director of Public Prosecutions said in his public commentary about that decision.

Legacy cases are challenging to prosecute, and the overall position from the prosecutor is that they have to be even more confident than beyond all reasonable doubt to take those cases forward because there are such legal challenges here in ways that I have not seen in criminal justice cases in England and Wales. Indeed, as you know, the time that those cases take is much longer than in England and Wales, even though they are now having challenges around some of their criminal justice times.

There is a plethora of issues with legacy cases. A lot of it comes down to investment, and some of it comes down to mindset. I still advocate that the process for legacy cases that go to the Public Prosecution Service should be subject to a review to provide families, victims and witnesses with confidence that they are being considered in the best way and that the prosecutor has the resources that he needs to deal with those cases.

Sir Iain Livingstone: The observations that you make about the frustrations that the investigative team, victims and families feel about non-prosecution decisions are valid. I mention it in the final report, and there is a part in which we talk about evidential challenges. A point that I will add to what Jon said is that there is a principle of best evidence: can you get the principal source? That source is the best place. When I say a "source", I do not mean an informant; it could be a document, the original transcript or the original recording. If that does not exist, you move to secondary and tertiary pieces of evidence. By definition, they are weaker than primary pieces.

In this instance, the contact forms between the agent Stakeknife and his handlers would have been powerful evidence. Unfortunately, we found that a lot of the contact forms that, for example, Lord John Stevens had had when he carried out his work had been destroyed by the time that Kenova came to the work. We make no comment on that, and it might have been entirely legitimate through the retention of material and whatnot, but it meant that, thereafter, to convert some of that material into an evidential format, we had to go to secondary pieces, which are reports produced from the contact forms. By definition, a prosecutor sees secondary evidence as weaker than the original primary document. That was undoubtedly a factor in the PPSNI's decision-making. A frustration about a lack of prosecutions is one that we, on Kenova, also had.

Mr Beattie: I will follow up on that in two points. First, Chief Constable, you mentioned that hearsay was not allowed, yet hearsay has been allowed in other legacy cases, so it seems odd not to allow it for the Kenova files. There is no continuity if the PPS allows hearsay for some legacy cases but not for others. Secondly, the 29 files remain open: if more evidence is found, can they be resubmitted? Are those files closed off now? What is the status of the files?

Chief Constable Boutcher: Sorry to interrupt you. It is important that the Director of Public Prosecutions is able to answer some of those questions because the individual matters. I was not part of that decision-making process, and there may be very valid reasons for making those decisions that I cannot give you today. He is an incredibly capable director. That is an important point to make.

Sorry, what was the second element of your question?

Mr Beattie: What is the status of the 29 files? What happens with them?

Chief Constable Boutcher: Iain may want to come in because he has spoken to the director more recently than I have.

First, you can consider files only if somebody is alive to be prosecuted. You will be aware that a number of those files are against offending by Freddie Scappaticci, so those files can no longer be considered. With the onset of the new legacy arrangements, some of the families that I have met through the Kenova journey will probably go to the commission. It is entirely possible that they could find new information and, if that is the case, provide it to the Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration of a criminal justice outcome. The decisions have been taken on the files of the people who are alive, and we have had those results.

Iain may correct me on this, but, because of the death of Freddie Scappaticci, there are a number of files on which decisions have not been made. The decisions that they made on the files when he was alive were for non-prosecution.

Sir Iain Livingstone: To be candid, I do not know the full answer to your question, but I will explain partly why. Under the Legacy Act, there was a cut-off point for a decision about prosecutions. One of the last things that the PPSNI did was to take the prosecution decision on the Kinnego Embankment case, and that was two weeks before the cut-off date. That was a very important milestone. I genuinely do not know how the new Troubles Bill, which is still going through Westminster, addresses cases that were previously submitted to the DPP in Northern Ireland and what can then be done with them. That will be another issue as the Troubles Bill goes through Westminster. There is still an awful lot of formulating to be done around that in order to allow ICRIR to become the Legacy Commission. As somebody who has studied it — I am not part of ICRIR or the Legacy Commission — I still believe that there is a fair bit of uncertainty around some of those issues. I cannot add to that, I am afraid.

Mr Beattie: I do not disagree.

I want to move briefly to Operation Denton, which is important in the Glenanne series of crimes. It was clear that, while there was collusion by individuals, there was no higher state collusion, which is fine. When you answered questions earlier, Sir Iain, you seemed to intimate that you had good access to victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. You were able to speak to them and to get information about that, which was positive.

Chief Constable, you said that eventually, having done the statutory instrument, you managed to get information from the Irish security services: was the information that came from the Irish security services redacted before it came to you? Did you get clear and full information and redact it after the investigation, or was it redacted before the investigation? There is a definitive difference there.

Sir Iain Livingstone: In the South, the information comes through an Garda Síochána, from the police service and the security agency. When we got the information — it took the intervention of the secondary legislation to allow us to get it — it was what they had. They did not hold an awful lot of information. Some of the material had come from the North, if you like. It was material that the RUC had been provided with. Jon made the point about 1974 and what was happening at the time, with the pressures and demands that existed. The information was not in the archived, structured or auditable condition that one might have imagined it would be. Again, that was partly to do with the past and the historical challenges round about that. The information that we got, however, was undoubtedly what they held.

You mentioned the Dublin and Monaghan families. Our ultimate findings, which were that the attacks were carried out by the Belfast brigade of the UVF, were based on our professional assessment and on intelligence information that we have seen. That was a review; it was not an investigation as such. We did not use coercive powers of arrest or other things that you would do in an investigation. It was a deep review that pointed to that fact. Many of the families had held a contrary view for many years. Their view, which was supported by third-sector support groups and other agencies, was that the bombings were not the responsibility of the UVF but that the British state had to sit behind it because of the nature of the attack and the assessment of capability. Our work around that, however, pointed directly towards the Belfast UVF. The Belfast UVF claimed responsibility for it in the early 1990s, so that was not wholly contrary to what had been expected by some people. I make that point, because that was not what the families clung to, if you like; it was not their view.

In the final report, I mention that, during our review, we went where the evidence and the facts took us. At times, that has meant delivering messages to victims and families that are different from those that they expected or had wished for. Our duty and responsibility is to tell it as it is. I think that, because of the approach that Jon established, the relationships that we had and the fact that we were being frank and honest with the victims and families, there was a level of respect for that. That allowed people to say, "Kenova has looked at it through Operation Denton, and those are its conclusions". People may still have concerns — I have read articles about observations around that — but our strong view was that, while it was a horrendous and terrible attack by the Belfast brigade of the UVF, we saw no involvement of British state agencies. If those are our findings, we have to express them clearly.

Mr Beattie: Yes, that is clear, Sir Iain. It is difficult for families to hear that, when, for so long, they have been told something slightly different.

One of the reasons why I asked about engagement with the Irish security services and the information that you got from them is that we are about to go into another legacy mechanism to look at getting information from the Irish security services. As you said, Sir Iain, you got what they had, but there is no mechanism to check that that was all that they had or that you got everything that was available. That will be a concern as we go forward. While you cannot give me an answer now — that is clear, and I would not necessarily expect you to — you have given me something to think about as we look to the new legacy mechanisms that are coming in and at where the fault lines may be in them, if that makes sense.

Sir Iain Livingstone: I recognise that. That goes back to one of the earlier points about how we know that we have everything. Do we ever know? That is why Jon and I have stressed this afternoon that information retrieval and recovery is crucial to the trust and confidence of any future legacy process.

One of the earliest statements from the Irish Government was to provide additional funding to assist an Garda Síochána to set up a legacy unit to maybe address some of the shortcomings in information retrieval and archiving identified through Kenova. That commitment is in train, so I hope that there are grounds for optimism.

Mr Beattie: This is my one criticism: why did you decide to use the term "agent"? An agent is formally recruited and trained. We are really talking about a covert human intelligence source when we talk about Stakeknife. Is there a reason why it was decided to use the term "agent" as opposed to "humint source"?

Chief Constable Boutcher: I think —.

Ms Sheerin: CHIS.

Chief Constable Boutcher: Sorry.

Ms Sheerin: Sorry, it is just that CHIS was used as well.

Chief Constable Boutcher: I would need to check this, Doug, but I think that it was inherited when the terms of reference were set and that it came originally from the Director of Public Prosecutions. Under the Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 2002, through what were called 35(5) referrals, the Director of Public Prosecutions could direct the Chief Constable to conduct an investigation where the director believed that there had been an offence in the jurisdiction of Northern Ireland. The terminology in those 35(5) referrals was "agent". I think, therefore, that it is a legacy of that. That is how I recall it, but I can check that.

Mr Beattie: That is fine. It is not important. I was just trying to get an idea of that.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you, Sir Iain and Jon, for the way in which you led the presentation. You kept the focus on the victims, and I echo Connie's sentiments in thanking you for that.

I have one more question. Jon, you wear two caps: you were the lead investigator, and now you are the Chief Constable. I am sure that there is an overlap of your experience and knowledge from those roles, having experienced Kenova. Informants, agents or covert human intelligence sources — call them what you will — were vital throughout the Troubles, and, because of the intimidation and coercion used by terrorist outfits, they were really the only way in, at times, for the PSNI or the RUC to investigate and bring people to justice. The security services strangled, if you like, the activities of terrorist organisations and brought them to their knees in order to end the terrorist campaigns. Given your experience and your desire to see disclosure for families and victims, has there been any change to the operational sense of how the PSNI uses informants and agents now and in the future?

Chief Constable Boutcher: That is a really insightful question. I will add to a comment that you made there. The internal security unit of the Provisional IRA deployed the worst possible violence, even in an era of unimaginable violence. It has all been denied, but I have spoken to the victims, and it deployed that violence against family members, children, the elderly and people with learning difficulties. What it did was unimaginably awful. In my view, more often than not, it was not interested in whether somebody was an agent or not; it was about deterrence and what it would do to subjugate and intimidate the community to stop any kind of interaction or liaison with the security forces. It is important that I say that.

During the Troubles, the security forces operated without any legislation or formal framework giving them the necessary guidance, parameters, direction and training for such a wickedly difficult environment. They operated under Home Office guidelines that were written in 1969, which provided what there was around any direction or instruction about how to deal with agents, CHIS, call them what you will. It is in the report, so I can say categorically that they asked the Government to give them a framework to help, and that did not happen. That was referred to by other people investigating legacy, including Lord Stevens, and de Silva mentioned it to me. That is an important point to make.

It is reasonable for me to say that, at that time, agents were recruited who, today, would not be recruited because of who they are, their characteristics and their criminality. There are now pieces of legislation and oversight mechanisms that provide checks and balances that would prevent somebody such as Stakeknife from being an agent. There is a definite difference with regard to the recruitment and management of agents or CHIS today from what existed through quite a protracted period. There will have been changes in that period.

To answer your question in short, I say that somebody with that type of behaviour would not be recruited as an agent now. It would be simply unimaginable. It would not happen.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): OK.

No other member has indicated that they wish to ask a question, so I thank you for your time. It has been a long session. Your answers have been insightful. Thank you very much, Sir Iain and Jon.

Chief Constable Boutcher: Thank you very much.

Sir Iain Livingstone: Thank you very much.