Mr. Mark Kelly:

I agree with that final comment. The value and the role of visiting committees are indisputable. They are listeners, among other things, and they hear the voices of prisoners directly. That has a huge value in and of itself. They are a community contact for prisoners and we should not lose that.

If it would be of help to the committee, specifically on part 2 of the general scheme or on head 13, we address this on page 19 of our submission. We neither have an aspiration as an inspectorate to be involved in establishing a visiting committee for each prison, nor do we think that it is appropriate that the visiting committee should effectively report to the inspectorate. Head 13(12) could be read as implying that the visiting committees would somehow be accountable to the inspectorate of places of detention. That is not something on which we were ever consulted and we do not think it is appropriate. We think it would impinge upon their independence.

Finally, under head 13(13), the idea that our inspectorate would take all of these disparate elements from different visiting committee reports and somehow edit them into one composite report is illusory. The resources that we would have to put into that in terms of liaison with the visiting committee's fact checking, editing etc. would be disproportionate to the quality of the outcome. As far as our inspectorate is concerned, Part 2 of the general scheme of the Bill requires extensive revision to capture the essence of the listening, the community contact and empathy rapport of the visiting committees, without subjecting them to an accountability mechanism that is not sought by the inspectorate.