The Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, said yesterday that the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill was all about balance and negotiation. The balance trick was that its provisions should satisfy nationalists and unionists.
That is unlikely to happen in the short term. Best to provide parity of comfort as well as discomfort, seems to be the strategy for the moment. The final complexion of the Bill is still unclear. That will come about through further months of negotiation.
But, as Mr Mandelson signalled yesterday, he is willing to accept significant amendments to the Bill that are both palatable and unpalatable to unionists and nationalists.
In an interview with The Irish Times yesterday he was quite forthcoming. His elucidation went beyond what he said in the House of Commons yesterday. The emphasis was on balance, but on policing there was no pleasing everybody in what the Northern Secretary had to say.
Mr Mandelson stressed that he did not want to be "prescriptive", but on the emotive issue of flags, discussed at length in the Assembly yesterday, he raised the possibility of the British Union flag flying over police headquarters during royal visits.
He was, of course, also very sympathetic to the RUC name somehow being incorporated in the "title deeds" of the new force, but not in its working title.
He could see convicted IRA or UVF members in the local District Policing Partnerships, in defiance of the current wording of his Bill. The new police badge will be free of association with the British and Irish states, as the Patten report recommended, but that is not to say that the badge cannot include association with the "British and Irish traditions".
Mr Mandelson does not say but he knows that there are some potential powderkeg ideas here, some moving back towards Patten, others drifting away. "In something as complex as this our first stab at getting it right is bound to be unsuccessful. But I think it is broadly in the right places on all the main issues. There are difficult judgment calls, difficult balances to strike," he said.
"If we don't succeed in reform, the Good Friday agreement will be a pale imitation of its original form. This is the last big opportunity to create, from one era to another, the conditions to enable the police to move from being effectively a counter-terrorist organisation, in which it had a lot of success and made a lot of sacrifices, to becoming a civic community-based service, appropriate to the conditions that are emerging. That is the police service I want to see," he said.
Mr Mandelson added that he wanted to be faithful to the principles, vision and objectives set out in the Belfast Agreement and the Patten report.
Symbolism, as usual, is the area of most contention. The RUC name loss is a big wrench for unionists, and Mr Mandelson wants to ease the pain. He would not be specific on how the RUC title would be maintained in the "title deeds" of the Bill. But, he added, "it is right that there should be contained in the Bill a description that makes clear that the body of constables known as the RUC is not being disbanded and is being carried forward and evolving into the new police service. I believe it will be possible to do that."
Patten said that the new force should adopt a flag free from association with the British and Irish states and that the British Union flag "should no longer be flown from police buildings". But here, too, Mr Mandelson and Patten appear to differ.
"Is anyone telling me that if a member of the royal family visits police headquarters the Union flag should not fly? We have to have some flexibility and some reasonableness in this matter. I am no more in favour of in-your-face flag-flying than I am in favour of its complete banishment," the Northern Secretary said.
He stressed that he was not stating categorically that this was the policy he would follow, but this appeared the tenor of his remarks. "I will encourage consensus and only if that fails will I take the necessary decisions myself."
Patten says the police badge should be free from association with the British and Irish states. But Mr Mandelson indicated that he was disposed to the idea of an emblem associated with the "British and Irish traditions".
So are we to have a badge with the harp and crown side by side? "Neither the words harp or crown crossed my lips," he said. It is obvious, however, that he is searching for acceptable alternatives.
But this is a longer-term goal, for a year or more down the line. There is no rush in resolving the badge issue, he feels. "Like so many things in Northern Ireland, time heals, it changes perceptions. There is a time for doing everything in Northern Ireland, not necessarily here and now."
Any assurances here for unionists may be undermined by his willingness to involve former convicted republican and loyalist paramilitaries on the District Policing Partnerships, which themselves are a dilution of the District Policing Partnership Boards proposed by Patten.
This proposal provides for liaison at local level between the police and locally elected and independent members of the District Policing Partnerships (DDPs). The Bill currently bans former republican or loyalist prisoners from serving as independent members on the DPPs, and also allows the local council or the Policing Board to remove political members "who have been convicted of a criminal offence".
Mr Mandelson said he regarded these strictures as "too sweeping". He added: "For those directly elected members I regard their democratic mandate as overriding, whatever about any misgivings about their criminal past. For independent members of the DPPs I believe in time the issue of those with criminal pasts will recede. But this will be a hotly contested issue in parliament," he said.
He would understand any uproar aroused by such an amendment but referred to "the background of the conflict and the way in which many people wittingly or unwittingly were drawn into criminality for political reasons".
The Patten report charged the Policing Board, comprising 10 Assembly members and nine independent members, with responsibility for holding the new police service accountable to the public.
Patten also proposed that the board, which is replacing the Police Authority, have the power to request reports from the police or to order inquiries. Patten saw only very limited areas where the chief constable could refuse these requests, but the Bill widens the scope for the chief constable to reject such requests.
Mr Mandelson was keen to stress that the Policing Board provided for a degree of openness and accountability "that you will find nowhere else in the United Kingdom or in the Republic of Ireland".
But without specifying what amendments he would accept he did concede: "I accept that I have been over-cautious and that the appropriate safeguards I was seeking were too limiting. So they can be fine-tuned. There are other areas where this can be fine-tuned similarly during the committee stages of the Bill. I have an open mind on all these issues."
Again, in terms of balance, he said he would not countenance restrictions that undermined the force's operational effectiveness. "It would not be tolerated in the South, and there is no reason why it should be tolerated in the North. The difficulty is the balance of judgment. There is no point in getting the most democratically accountable police service in the world if it is unable to do its job."
He was open to ideas and suggestions that would sharpen the teeth of the Policing Board but that would not blunt the police's operational effectiveness.
Mr Mandelson said he disagreed with the view of the Police Ombudsman, Mrs Nuala O'Loan, that she should not simply deal with individual complaints but have a responsibility for policies and practices of the police service. The latter responsibility was for the Policing Board, he said.
The Ombudsman, except in special circumstances, is only permitted access to documents going back 24 months. Mr Mandelson indicated some minor room for manoeuvre here. "If there is new evidence of serious wrongdoing in the past that, of course, would need to be taken very seriously," he said.
He added: "I want to make a wider point. Some who have complained about the Bill seem more concerned about digging up divisions and disputes of the past and raking over the coals than drawing a line and preparing a new police service for the future, and want to use the Patten report as a bludgeon against the police. I can't accept that attitude. This is about looking forward, not backward."
Patten proposed 50-50 Catholic-Protestant recruitment for at least 10 years whereas the Bill refers to this system being reviewed on a three-year basis over a maximum period of 10 years.
Mr Mandelson pledged that if there was not a balanced Catholic-Protestant representation in the new force in 10 years the British government would persist with its attempts to get the balance right.
Contrary to Patten only new police recruits must swear a human rights oath. Nationalists complained that all members should subscribe to the oath but, Mr Mandelson indicated, this demand would now be academic because all officers must be party to the proposed new code of ethics that essentially would make the same human rights demand.
Moreover, and this meets another nationalist complaint of the Bill deviating from Patten, he was prepared to accept an amendment where the chief constable and the Policing Board would jointly devise the code of ethics. In the Bill it was for the chief constable in consultation with the board to write the code of ethics.