Terror watchdog silent on whether flag law will target republican emblems in Northern Ireland

Speaking on BBC Good Morning Ulster yesterday the UK Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall, said he was shocked last year when he visited the PSNI training centre in east Belfast and found it surrounded by UDA flags.

He then began moves to create legislative changes to the UK Crime Bill to allow the PSNI to remove them.

Presently the PSNI can only seize flags for evidence if they intend to prosecute someone, but his proposals will remove this requirement.

"I'm trying to help the authorities use their powers and not feel they can't use their powers when these flags are hanging up and they've got no idea who did it," he said.

He said the law could be extended to include terrorist wall murals and that he was consulting with the PSNI.

A vote to reduce the number of days the Union flag was flown at Belfast City Hall led to widespread loyalist protests across NI in 2012.

The Commission on Flags, Identity, Culture, and Tradition (FICT) was later set up to study the issues and make recommendations.

However critics claimed that it focused overwhelmingly on loyalist flags and bonfires and was Belfast-centric, with much less focus on the preferred republican emblems of roadside memorials and lamppost signs in rural areas.

The report mentioned Belfast some 24 times but Armagh, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Down and Londonderry were not mentioned at all in the body of the report.

It mentioned flags 262 times and bonfires 135 times however memorials were only mentioned 82 times while lamppost signs were mentioned just six times.

The News Letter asked Mr Hall and the PSNI if the new legislation would likely lead to enforcement against loyalist flags in politically easier cases - or if it would equally focus on more politically sensitive permanent memorials under the authority of the IRA Army Council?

Neither Mr Hall nor the PSNI had responded at the time of going to press.

But QUB Prof Dominic Bryans, who co-chaired the Flags Commission, defended the plans, noting that Mr Hall is legislating as part of the UK Crime Bill, which has a clause dedicated to banners and flags.

"At a very basic level there are thousands more flags up in areas defined by people as loyalist than in areas defined as republican," Prof Bryans said, adding that it would also impact republican flags.

He also rejected criticism of the commission's report based on "crude calculations" and said it had chapters on memorials, bonfires, flags (two), public spaces and symbols. His final report, he said, had been approved by the DUP and UUP.

But Kenny Donaldson, director of victims group SEFF, called on those framing the law to empathise with "the lived experience of border victims even if it differs from the prevailing narrative".

He added: "There has been a failure to fully diagnose the issues of 'territory claiming' beyond the obvious display of legal and illegal flags.

"Those framing this new legislation need to come and engage with borderland communities and understand the psychological torture people go through on a daily basis when they are met with memorials that glorify the murderers of their loved ones."

• The PSNI later offered the following statement, but declined to discuss its recommendations to Mr Hall about his new legislation.

Instead it summarised current PSNI policy on terrorist flags and emblems, which it said is enforced on a case by case basis.

A PSNI spokeswoman said: "The operational guidance in relation to the removal of materials includes relevant legislation, points for consideration and that each incident will be judged independently to assess the most appropriate way forward in the circumstances, which may include removal of the item and the commencement of an investigation.

"Police will use all powers available, alongside our operational discretion to deal with material on a case by case basis. This includes those powers directed at offences relating to all proscribed organisations.

"The action we can take includes appropriately alerting or advising land and property owners of the presence of offending material and requesting its removal by them. This is particularly relevant where there is no necessity, and in some cases, no express statutory power, to seize material as evidence. "Other government agencies have their own role to play in the removal of flags on their infrastructure and property. Any amendments to legislation to provide additional police powers is a matter for the legislature."