Mr. Alan Todd:

If I miss any pieces, the Deputy will bring me back because there is quite a bit in that. I will deal with the partnership aspect first. I am not being humorous in this. When communities say that they never see the police I could quip that if one pops into accident and emergency departments one will generally find them there. That is really indicative of the crossover between healthcare and criminal justice issues, and the number of people coming into the criminal justice system because of missed opportunities, service gaps or whatever the causation is on the health or education side of the equation.

That has been increasing. In 2007 and 2008 when the security situation was improving markedly, a previous visitor to this committee from the PSNI, Sir Hugh Orde, introduced armed response units as a tentative step towards a routinely unarmed service in an improving situation. I was a commander at the time. It was a significant drain on my resources to establish that new resource. I had some reticence and scepticism about the wisdom of that choice. I am now in charge of those units as part of my portfolio. While they are really busy, they are not busy doing the task for which they were configured. Armed response units were introduced to deal with gun crime, knife crime and people who are dangerous committing crime. They still do that and do so very professionally.

However, more than half their business is now generally in interventions with people self-harming and harming others because of mental health issues. They have a high level of training and provide a high level of non-lethal intervention in situations that might otherwise get out of control for police officers. This was something we never did or were never skilled, trained or equipped for. Ten years on those units are flat-out busy every day of every week at every point on the clock. It is more than an anecdote; a lot of data sits behind that. That is just the societal shift with which policing deals.

Custody areas have been a revolving door for us. We see familiar faces in custody - the same people. When we sit down and talk to those providing healthcare we find they fall into two categories. They are either frequent attenders at accident and emergency departments and other medical services or they are not on the health service's radar at all but actually have significant health needs. That is a healthcare and equality issue.

We have just put staff into the custody suite for the proof of concept two weeks ago having spent two years working on this. It is moving from just having the standard forensic medical officer, police doctor, in the custody suite who might confirm that person is fine and is fit for interview, to a nurse-led healthcare arrangement in custody suites. We are trying to identify why this person is consistently coming in to us; what the healthcare gaps are; and how we can signpost them to healthcare interventions so that they are not rocking up to accident and emergency departments when it gets out of control and they are not getting arrested and brought to the custody suite. We are trying to break that vicious cycle through a criminal justice and health partnership. That has been co-funded by the Northern Ireland Departments of Justice and Health. It has been put into action with 17 new nurses recruited as part of that package from 1 October now completing their training under medical supervision.

We are also in conversation with the ambulance service not only in Northern Ireland, but across the UK. There is co-dependency between ambulance attendants and police attendants at calls. Frequently the ambulance service is looking for police support to calls because of the nature of what it is dealing with. Frequently we are getting there and dealing with ambulance calls because the ambulance service is stretched doing other things as well. Some services and forces in the rest of the United Kingdom are looking at embedding paramedics in police control rooms, and police officers in paramedic control rooms. It leads us to the question of why we do not just slice the bread before we put it into the bag, and have joint police and ambulance control rooms. That has been explored in key areas, such is the crossover and co-dependency in this area of work. That goes back to the changing nature of society and the changing nature of policing that I mentioned in my opening remarks.

There are good experiences and good things happening as we explore that way forward in the wider UK. There has been less traction in Northern Ireland. I point to the lack of a statutory compulsion to do that. The work we are doing with our partners at the moment is done on the basis of getting a coalition of the willing to find a solution for these things and that has been useful. In England and Wales - there is a similar but different situation in Scotland - there is the statutory crime and disorder partnership, which compels statutory agencies to work together to deliver key outcomes for communities and society. There are particular problem areas. Scotland uses single-outcome agreements where the parties and the various statutory agencies sign up to deliver their part of the outcome and their contribution to it. That is a statutory requirement. That is the same in England and Wales.

We attempted to get similar legislation introduced in Northern Ireland in 2011 and 2012. It fell for reasons which are not important today. From talking to those in political parties across the spectrum in Northern Ireland I know they recognise we need it. Particularly at a time of austerity where all parties are under pressure, for politicians and Government to get reassurance that we are doing everything we can in partnership will take some statutory compulsion because it does not happen organically in my experience - certainly not in the way that it needs to give the Government reassurance on behalf of communities and society that we are doing the best we can with it.

That looks to the changing nature of partnership dependencies and what we might do differently in future. I have quoted some of the examples in there. I am happy to expand on that. I think that has touched most of what the Deputy has asked.