Draft new legislation on policing in the North will impose "a significant new restriction" on the ability of the Police Ombudsman to root out human rights abusers within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the president of Sinn Féin, Mr Gerry Adams, said last night.
Mr Adams said the British government had "missed an opportunity to put policing back on the Patten track" when it published the new legislation on Monday.
Under the legislation, more power would be given to the Policing Board, which runs the PSNI, and to Police Ombudsman Mrs Nuala O'Loan. In addition, it provides for former prisoners serving on District Policing Partnerships if paramilitaries end their activities.
Mr Adams claimed, however, that the draft legislation extended a restriction, already applying to the Policing Board in relation to inquiries, to the Police Ombudsman which, he said, undermined the second leg of the accountability mechanism recommended by Patten.
He said the Police Act had prevented the Policing Board from being the accountable mechanism envisaged by Patten by giving the Chief Constable Mr Hugh Orde the power to refuse the board information relevant to an inquiry into wrongdoing by the police force or its agents.
"Now both the Policing Board and the Ombudsman are restricted in their ability to inquire into human rights abuses by members of the PSNI and their agents," he said. "In particular, this helps ring fence the special branch as a 'force within a force' and bolsters it against the required changes. It makes a mockery of democratic and institutional accountability".
Mr Adams was speaking at a public meeting in the Royal Dublin Hotel where he went on to accuse the British Government of minimising and delaying many of the changes envisaged under the Good Friday Agreement. "And where stands the Irish Government in all of this? The Good Friday Agreement is an international treaty between the Irish and British governments. They have a joint and co-equal responsibility for its implementation. The British government has no right to act unilaterally on these matters and it needs to be told this again and again. Irish citizens, victimised and targeted by sectarian violence, have a right to expect effective political protection from our government in Dublin," he said.