Letter: Ministers – do what is right, practically and morally, and properly finance our police service

Much is interesting, though hardly gripping, since there are so many pictures but so few firm commitments and targets.

One section particularly caught my attention. On page 46 we are told: ‘A central role of government is to protect its citizens. By keeping communities safe we enable them to have the confidence they need to live productively and engage fully in society’. But on the next page we are told that the NI Executive will ‘develop a robust business case that will seek to stabilise, and begin to grow police officer numbers’.

These statements are against the background of the chief constable speaking clearly of a "significant risk" of the PSNI failing victims, local communities and its workforce, and having already told the NI Policing Board in February that the PSNI is no longer sufficiently resourced to keep society safe.

Our executive ministers do not seem to grasp that whilst they have huge economic, social and political issues to face, the decisions they take almost always involve significant moral choices as well.

I suggest that it is indeed a very poor moral choice NOT to properly fund policing every bit as much as it being a significant economic and political one.

Having (correctly) stated that ‘a central role of government is to protect its citizens’, they have openly decided to kick any plans to do just that into the long grass.

They have consciously taken a decision not to fulfil one of their ongoing central roles and responsibilities towards us.

The cost of inaction is huge: more drug dealing; more anti-social behaviour; more violence; more criminality; less respect for law and order; and crucially, engendering less confidence in policing at community level which is at the heart of an effective PSNI and a civilised society.

I say that as a recent member of a local Policing and Community Safety Partnership.

Ministers: Commit to doing what is right both practically and morally, and provide the proper finances for our police service. After all, as you have said yourselves, to do so is a central responsibility, not a peripheral one.

(Very Rev Dr) Norman Hamilton OBE, Ballymena