Hain makes police pledge over 'restorative justice'

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain vowed today that community restorative justice schemes in the North would be run through the police and not “outside the rule of law”.

Mr Hain said the idea that former paramilitaries could be allowed to use the system to police the community was “just not on”.

But SDLP leader Mark Durkan, who met the Secretary of State and British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Downing Street, said his five-strong delegation had not been sufficiently reassured by what they were told.

Mr Hain said: “I want to make it clear that the idea of victims engaging with offenders and offenders having to apologise and come to terms with their victims is an admirable principle.

“But there is no way that this will be done outside the rule of law.

“The guidelines will be very, very tight and the idea that paramilitaries can give up their arms but still police the community through community restorative justice is just not on, full stop, end of story and that has been explained to the SDLP and I think they were encouraged by that.

“This whole process will be supervised by the PSNI and will be operated according to the rule of law.”

Mr Durkan said: “We can’t have local warlords being turned into local law lords.

“We can’t have some kind of next steps agency for paramilitaries.”

Both politicians said it had been a “very good” meeting.

“Both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State tried to reassure us that some of what is in the papers really wasn’t what was going on but we registered our fundamental and profound concerns,” Mr Durkan said.

Issues to do with justice and policing should not involve “privy negotiations and privy deals” with any one party but should be transparent and inclusive, he said.

“We were not sufficiently reassured by everything that we were told,” Mr Durkan said.

“We hope to be reassured by what emerges subsequently.”

He added: “We made the point very clearly that now that the big stone has been rolled away in terms of IRA decommissioning that the veto on institutions that went with the IRA’s failure to decommission should be deemed to be gone as well.”

Mr Durkan called on the British government to work together with all parties.

Mr Hain said getting institutions back up and running depended on the International Monitoring Commission report due out tomorrow and the next one due in January.

They needed to “make it clear that the promise the IRA made on July 28 has been delivered on the ground”.

Mr Hain said of the imminent report: “It’s a significant report but its significance is only qualified by the fact that it has only covered around a month of the period since July 28 in which to really determine whether the IRA’s promise of closing down their illegal activity has been delivered.”

The government would tomorrow be announcing “a lot of progress” on North-South Co-operation, he added.

The SDLP is concerned at reports the British Government is considering funding and recognising community restorative justice schemes in republican areas, even though Sinn Féin and those participating in them may not recognise or support the police.