PSNI value accountability and transparency and will always seek to maximise the provision of information, particularly to our accountability body, the Policing Board.
We respect our legal duties under section 33a of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000 in supplying “such information and documents as the Board may require for the purposes of, or in connection with, the exercise of any of its functions”.
The only instances whereby we would seek to not disclose certain information is also listed in the same statue (section 76a), if the information relates to national security, sensitive personnel information or would prejudice court proceedings.
We fully accept the suggestion in the question, that a confidential line or paragraph in a document should not mean that the whole document is not shared.
An issue appears to have arisen in February’s Performance Committee where PSNI referred to the existence of ‘Official Sensitive’ documents which could not be fully shared with the Policing Board as they contained some confidential information.
The Board should have been provided with a document which contained as much information as possible and marked ‘Official Partners’.
In order to attempt to coordinate this in the future and ensure that information to the Policing Board is maximised and provided in the appropriate format, a member of PSNI Command Secretariat will attend each Committee meeting.