Ms Alyson Kilpatrick:

I will address the matter of the Human Rights Act versus the Bill of Rights Bill. The Bill of Rights Bill was essentially to replace the Human Rights Act and rebalance, as was said, human rights. The statement has been made that it is not being proceeded with. However, as Dr. Farry rightly said, that was in the context of it being taken forward through other legislation. It was being split up and shared across all the legislation. I am sorry that I cannot think of a less vulgar expression off the top of my head but, in many ways, "to skin a cat" is what it struck me as. It is just a different approach.

Following both the House of Lords' rejection of the Illegal Migration Bill and the Court of Appeal decision yesterday, I suspect a pull-away from the convention will be exactly the response. It is almost inconceivable that the UK will actually try to leave the convention, but I thought detention without judicial oversight was inconceivable until recently so one does not know. It seems there will be a motivation; let us put it that way. CTA and ETA issues play into that.

On the management of borders, without going into the details and ins and outs of it, including what British and Irish citizens will be asked for, the basic fact of the matter is they may be asked to show that they do not need any of these documents. How will they do that? How will they show that they do not need a document but have some other document to show that the more official document is not needed? That is bound to have an impact. Even if it does not have an impact on crossing the Border, even if we knew where that Border actually lies when we drive up the road, it will have an impact on both sides of the Border, potentially. It will certainly make people think that it will. That is also one of the chilling effects. People will be inclined to carry identity documents, at least, with them.

All of that is also relevant to what Dr. Farry was leading to regarding our upcoming accreditation or reaccreditation with the UN committee, which is what essentially gives us our status on the international stage and within these islands. Currently the NIHRC is an A-status organisation, which means we have speaking rights and are assessed as being a trusted interlocuter, etc. The IHREC has A status, which it has just renewed. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, EHRC, and the Scottish Human Rights Commission also have A status, which they have renewed. We have been under-resourced to such an extent that I had to give evidence to the UN committee on our last consideration that I could no longer guarantee my independence and that I was running an independent organisation. The point I made to that committee, and it remains the same today, is that unless and until we can determine how we spend our money or, in other words, which investigations and cases to bring, we cannot be truly independent. We may be structurally independent but if we are stripped of all our capacity and resources, we cannot do very much with our independence. That is the situation we are in.

Some on the accreditation committee believed we were not potentially fit for our A status. We will go back in October. We have been deferred for the final time because I asked the committee to give us another six months to work with government. I got a commitment that the Secretary of State would ask for financial security for us along the terms I suggested, namely, that we have a baseline review of the commission, but that has not materialised as yet. We are in no better a position today then we were a few months ago. If we lose our status in October, that has very serious implications. It is not just a vanity exercise or about me travelling abroad. It means Northern Ireland will be the only part of these islands that will not have speaking rights. It is those speaking rights at international events that enable us to hold government to account beyond our local courts. It is very important.

We have had an independent review, which is yet to be published. We would like to see it published. I do not own it so I cannot say very much more about it, but we think the independent review should be published. Does that cover all the bits of Dr. Farry's questions?