Question to the Northern Ireland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the time taken for the Police Ombudsman to respond to correspondence from the hon. Member for East Londonderry on the case of David Caldwell in 2002.

The work of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland is an important part of providing confidence in policing through an independent mechanism for investigating police complaints in Northern Ireland. The Ombudsman rightly operates independently from the Government. It would therefore not be appropriate to comment on a specific case, nor on the conduct of investigations.