Sinn Fein urges British to change their approach to the Patten report

Sinn Fein has urged the British government to reverse its approach on reform of policing in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein has urged the British government to reverse its approach on reform of policing in Northern Ireland.

The North Belfast MLA, Mr Gerry Kelly, made the call in response to comments made by Mr Peter Mandelson in the US that political parties should not concentrate on "dogmatic point-scoring or on narrow sectional interests". The Northern Secretary's comments were seen as implicitly referring to policing.

Mr Kelly said British proposals on policing still had some distance to go in bringing them into line with the recommendations laid out in the Patten report.

Mr Kelly said that while there had been a number of improvements, there remained deepseated problems. First among these was the fact that the proposed name of the force was not in line with Patten.

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"The political manoeuvrings on this issue have seriously damaged nationalist confidence with the British government," he said.

Excessive powers remained in the hands of the Northern Secretary. These rendered the proposed Policing Board and the Chief Constable "subservient to the Secretary of State in a way which runs totally contrary to Patten," he said. Meanwhile, the DUP has attacked Sinn Fein for failing to make any progress on decommissioning and dismissed the inspections of IRA weapons dumps.

Mr Nigel Dodds, the party's North Belfast MLA, described the inspections as being a "fig leaf" put in place in order to permit Sinn Fein to re-enter government . "The reality is that such inspections of a tiny number of redundant arms is not decommissioning as promised", he said.

"Sinn Fein continue to demand movement from everyone else on issues like the destruction of the RUC, the flying of flags, and removal of security whilst refusing to budge one inch on the handover of illegal terrorist weaponry."

Mr Dodds said the "tragedy" of this was that Mr Trimble and the "pro-agreement lobby" were allowing Sinn Fein to get away with this.

In other Assembly business, the Enterprise Trade and Investment Committee heard the 11-plus exam could be to blame for many Northern teenagers leaving school illiterate.

"We have a situation where factories have to train some of their people to read and write," said Mr John Stringer, the director of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.