Government. It was also asked whether the use of strip cells to house suicidal prisoners was considered the best way of preventing suicide and whether the Mental Health Act Commission was responsible for monitoring the mental health of prisoners as well as that of detained patients. 106. Concerning articles 12 and 13 of the Convention, members of the Committee requested clarification of the statement in the report that the provisions and practices relating to the investigation of allegiations of torture in Scotland and Northern Ireland were broadly comparable with those elsewhere in the United Kingdom. They also wished to know whether complaints against the police were dealt with by the police or by another authority; how offences committed by members of the armed forces were dealt with; whether statistics on the number of complaints of alleged offences were available; and whether such data were published in the annual Home Office Report. 107. In respect of article 14 of the Convention, members of the Committee complimented the United Kingdom on the compensation system it had established for victims of crime and asked whether the State was directly responsible for compensating a victim of torture if the torturer was insolvent. 108. With regard to article 15 of the Convention, members of the Committee noted the statement in the report that confessions made by an accused person could not be given in evidence against him if they had been obtained by oppression and asked for clarification of the term "oppression" in this context. They also wished to know whether the prohibition of the use of such confessions was part of common or statutory law and whether, in line with the scope of the Convention, that prohibition covered not only confessions but also statements in general. 109, With respect to article 16 of the Convention, it was asked whether corporal punishment in schools was prohibited throughout the United Kingdom. 110. Finally, members of the Committee asked whether the United Kingdom authorities would pUblish the report by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture following its visit to the United Kingdom in spring 1990, which until now had remained confidential. Ill. In his reply, the representative referred to the situation in Northern Ireland and noted that the principal power of arrest lay with the police, the powers of arrest of the armed forces in Northern Ireland being very limited. The latter could detain a suspect only for a maximum of four hours and in all cases had to transfer the suspect to a police station. Concerning the regime existing in Northern Ireland for the interrogation of terrorist suspects, he said that the need for detention for more than 48 hours had to be reviewed every 12 hours by a uniformed officer of at least inspector rank. Moreover, the interrogation of terrorist suspects was monitored by a closed-circuit television system. Written interview records had to be made, timed and signed. Detailed custody records had to be opened as soon as practicable for each person in detention and had to be reviewed periodically by a police officer. If there was a complaint of ill-treatment, a report had to be made to an officer who was not connected with the investigation. In the event of suspected use of force, a medical officer had to be called immediately and, in addition, access to a medical officer had to be provided at a set time every day. The right of access to a solicitor during police detention could only be -23 Digitized by Dag Hammarskjöld Library