Interview

1. GS: Can you give me an overview of what your job was and what it involved you doing?

2. JP: From 1997 to 2005 I was the permanent secretary, and I used to describe myself then as the person who tried to make sure that the Department of the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) was fit for purpose to serve the secretary of state and the other ministers. I had a responsibility for the broad direction of policy and for involving myself in any matters that were going wrong, and from time to time in public affairs things do go wrong. That cannot be avoided. At such times I tried to support colleagues who were taking the lead in different policy areas, which involved having a pretty good idea of what they were up to.

3. GS: Was the role of the NIO to totally complement British Government policy or was it autonomous in what it was doing?

4. JP: The formulation of policy and tactics comes about through a dialogue between government departments responsible for different areas and the government who have been elected to run the country and the detailed manifesto that they wish to implement. In the case of Northern Ireland, it is quite hard to find a period between 1972 and the present day when any British Government has had a policy significantly different from any other British Government. That is to say, the objective was always to try to stop the killing and hand responsibility for running Northern Ireland over to local politicians and, from a pretty early stage in that forty-year period, it was clear to all British governments that that had to mean handing power over to people from both communities and not just to people from one community. So power-sharing, in a phrase, was the policy on the political front and on the security front it was peace. The policy really never needed to be debated much. The question was always how to try to achieve those two key aims.