House of Commons Hansard Debates for 25 Nov 1993

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expenditure of more than £50,000 had to be the subject of a special statement made to the board. However, £2.5 million was spent w worries me greatly. Many public bodies, such as hospitals and schools, have people coming in to them who do not have the disciplines, do not have the "culture", of the civil service.

I believe that those people can give certain advantages, but they did not give them to the Welsh Development Agency. The WDA was culpable, and it made a laughing stock of the rules by which public money ought to be handled. The agency had the disgrace of recruiting into a civil service post a conman who had served three prison sentences in the United States. That man came to Wales and took responsibility for publicity. He was spending money wrongly, with one example being that he interviewed a number of model girls in his hotel room on a Sunday afternoon. All that was paid for by the taxpayer. That is a scandal.

I have expressed concern at a number of other cases that the Committee has looked at recently. People from the private sector can bring valuable skills to public office--there is no doubt about that. However, they do not seem in all cases to have regard to public accountability, of which I am aware every day in my room in the House.

I have a splendidly stern Victorian room, and I always think that Gladstone knew something about the room when he set up the Public Accounts Committee more than 130 years ago. There is a sign at the top of the room which I see every day, which says "assiduity"--a splendid Victorian word. Some of us try to retain the concept of assiduity in our work.

I used to say that the eradication of fraud and corruption was more important than anything else that I did, although it was a minor element of my work ; much the most important element of my work was the securing of value for money. I cannot say that now. One hundred and forty years ago, Northcote Trevelyan highlighted the need for integrity and competence in public service and laid down the foundations on which we have been governed since. The standards in our civil service have not come easily. They have had to be fought and worked for and they have been adhered to. However, a number of dangers now face us.

I see a danger in fixed-term appointments in the civil service. Who will the civil servant be most anxious to please when the time comes for reappointment or when he or she has to seek a job outside the civil service? Those who are perceptive have already seen signs of people being more anxious to impress than to achieve.

Performance-related pay is also a problem. Who is to say what is the value of a civil servant who pleases only his or her political masters?

Twice this week, I have spoken to delegations of visitors from overseas who are worried about the levels of fraud and corruption in their countries. I am used to that and meet such delegations frequently. They come here to see how we have managed to remain relatively fraud-free. How many countries have standards of probity which would satisfy the House? If one starts counting, does one reach a dozen, or 15, of 180 countries? We are rather special in terms of the standards that we have maintained, and we take risks with them at our peril.

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The trouble with corruption in administration is not only a moral issue, which, as I know from our visitors, is serious ; one aspect that should concern us is that corrupt administration is inefficient administration. Today, people who are not accountable take decisions involving public money. There are more than 1,000 public bodies and we are not able to discover what goes on in all of them, but we must retain the ethos that we have created and which we have so maintained successfully.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) mentioned Manchester airport yesterday. I was on the fringes of the argument when it was first actively discussed whether Manchester should have its own airport. The risks were enormous : Manchester would have been the only city to have control of such expenditure and the responsibility for creating its own airport. It was remembered that Manchester had created the Manchester ship canal which, in its own way, was an even greater venture in the early years of this century. Those involved were determined to prove that the imagination, strength and conviction of their predecessors could be matched. Over the years, the airport has turned into a magnificent international airport which arouses the envy of everyone in the country. What are the Government going to do ? They are going to sell it, and those who have taken the responsibility and still bear it so well will be denied that satisfaction. It is a thousand pities that that is to be allowed to happen.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East said that there were no new purposes in the Government. Sadly, it is true. I can predict the way in which the Government will handle the Budget and our economic affairs in the months and years ahead--it will be a sad time for this country if their policies are not changed.

6.23 pm

Rev. Ian Paisley (Antrim, North) : The Gracious Speech from the Throne contained a paragraph on Northern Ireland. It read : "In Northern Ireland My Government will continue their efforts to defeat terrorism through impartial and resolute enforcement of the law, to uphold the democratic wishes of its people and seek political progress by broadly based agreement, to strengthen economic progress and to create equality of opportunity for all sections of the community. They will maintain positive relations with the Republic of Ireland."

The gravity of the situation in Northern Ireland dare not be underestimated at this time. Those who would do so are deliberately blinding themselves to the truth. The darkest of facts stare us all in the face.

We are facing a campaign that arrogates to itself the sign of peace in the name of two persons, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) and the leader of the IRA-Sinn Fein movement, Gerry Adams. Those who long and sigh for peace are told that the proposals are a recipe for peace in a week and peace's best chance for 25 years. The cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church has given his blessing and approval ; Mr. Mandela has been given the details of the so-called peace plan ; the Kennedy lobby in the United States has been made privy to it, as have the Dublin Government ; and the army council of the IRA is aware of the details. But the people of Northern Ireland, whose safety, well-being and destiny are at stake, are not to be given the details. Rather, if they do not support wholeheartedly that which they do not know about, they

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will be, and have been, castigated for throwing away the best chance of peace since the IRA commenced its hostilities.

True peace cannot come through concealment, a hidden agenda or the buy-off of the men of blood. If anyone else tried a con trick such as the Hume- Adams proposal on the public, he would be laughed out of court. Those whose destiny is at stake have a right to know what their planned destiny is to be, especially when its authors are both dedicated to the utter destruction of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. IRA-Sinn Fein is dedicated to the genocide of the Protestant population of Northern Ireland.

The proposal is that, as soon as the IRA announces the end of violence, it will immediately have the right to the conference table to help decide the future of our part of the United Kingdom. Such a proposal is anathema to the vast majority of the people in Northern Ireland. Those with blood on their hands and the guilt of years of devilish carnage have no right to be at that negotiating table, no matter what their religion may be or what votes have been cast for them at any ballot box. The conference table is for ever blocked to those murderous murderers.

In his embassy in London at the weekend, Albert Reynold's cry that there could be no settlement without the IRA is in reality a plea to strengthen his hand by having his allies with him in the negotiations. Anything to weaken the Unionist position--even bloodthirsty murderers--is welcomed by Mr. Reynolds in his campaign for the destruction of the Union.

There are two matters of which every hon. Member should be aware, and I draw the House's attention to them. The first is the recent visit to Washington of the Dublin Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr. Dick Spring, and the important speech that he made during that visit. I hear people on all sides saying what a gracious, understanding, conciliatory man he is, fully sympathetic to the Unionist position and most anxious to be helpful. He certainly did not have even a tiny vestige of those characteristics in Washington. He must have jettisoned them in the ocean on the way over there because, in that speech, he appeared in his true colours.

I look in vain through the speech for any condemnation of the Irish Republican Army and its activities. Instead I find an indictment of the Unionist population. "No democracy" is Mr. Spring's thrust when he talks about Northern Ireland. He told his American audience : "an internal approach to Northern Ireland is unlikely to work", and warned the Unionists that their future depended on what he called

"the growing nationalist community".

In other words, "We are breeding faster than you, so you had better cut your losses before we take you over. You had better make a deal now."

Mr. Spring went on to claim that his country was

"a country in transition",

moving towards

"perspectives of a modern, self-confident and pluralist society". However, that self-confident pluralist society is encumbered with notions of political and territorial expansion, because it seeks to annex part of the island which does not belong to it, never has belonged to it and never will. Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution rob all the people of the island of Ireland of any notion of plurality, or even of accommodation.

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Bearing in mind the society that Mr. Spring was addressing, he told his audience that he was dedicated to preserving their "cultural heritage"--that is, of course, the Gaelic Roman Catholic ethos. Mr. Spring went on to claim that the problem of Northern Ireland was about

"the unresolved legacy of Anglo-Irish history".

To Mr. Spring, the territorial question is unresolved. I have heard that idea continually from the hon. Member for Foyle. They both conveniently forget the truth of the matter. In the 1920s, the Irish leaders resolved the territorial question by signing the 1921 treaty and later the 1925 tripartite accord, which accepted the recognised boundaries and had them ratified in the three Parliaments--the Dail Eireann, the Stormont Parliament and the United Kingdom Parliament. The document was then registered at the League of Nations as a record of international boundaries. Nothing could be clearer than that. The South, under the leadership of Mr. De Valera, then plummeted into a bitter civil war. We often hear in the House about the treatment meted out to Irish people by people from this part of the United Kingdom, but we are apt to forget that the bloodiest deeds ever carried out in Ireland took place when Irishman fought Irishman in the civil war, led by De Valera. De Valera was defeated, and the settlement was established and stood.

However, when De Valera won power in the Irish Republic, he tore up the agreement and introduced the 1937 constitution, as a result of which we have the problem of the territorial claim in articles 2 and 3--the claim that Dublin, rather than the United Kingdom, was really the possessor of Northern Ireland, and that even the laws of the Republic had power over that part of the territory, which it neither owned nor controlled.

Mr. Spring forgets all that. He went on to say that the nationalist community had

"little sense of ownership of the structures set over them". That is an amazing statement. Unionists must rightly ask what those structures are. There are no Northern Ireland political institutions over the community in Northern Ireland, whether Protestant, Unionist, Roman Catholic or nationalist. Of course, the structures are joint Anglo-Irish structures, not only owned by the nationalists but controlled by Dublin. Yet Mr. Spring told his American audience that all those evil people in Northern Ireland set over his people institutions that they did not own. He said of the nationalists : "there is no prospect that they will ever redefine themselves as British to conform with the official doctrine of their state." So much for the nationalists. But what about the majority, the Unionists? Are they to be forced into a position with which they will not conform? Mr. Spring's answer to that question is yes. He even indicts the Unionist people as being responsible for the Irish civil war.

That is the man who is supposed to be conciliatory, the man with such a great understanding of the Unionist position. He then declared that our Union flag, our symbol of identity, must be changed--the cross of St. Patrick and all. In all Mr. Spring's speech, there is no indictment of the Irish Republican Army, no catalogue of the dreadful crimes that it has committed. But he did say this :

"violence is not a problem which can be solved by security means".

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Are we to take it from that that he considers concessions to the men of violence to be the only way forward?

So much for Mr. Spring, who, I am told, held out his hand in the Senate of the South today and said that he wanted friendship with the Unionist people. That is not what he said when he was in Washington a few days ago.

The second matter of which the House should be aware concerns the confidential document leaked in the Irish press. There was a furore in Dublin when it was leaked, and great denials. But in the Dail Eireann yesterday, the truth came out in the wash. Mr. Reynolds admitted that the document was absolutely authentic, and had set negotiations back by being leaked in that terrible manner. If he could find out who had leaked it, heads would roll, he said. At first the document was denied but now, on the floor of the Dail, it is admitted to be authentic.

The document is amazing. Anybody who expected any Unionist who believed in Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom--whether that person were a Roman Catholic or a Protestant--to find anything acceptable in the document would be out of his senses. The document tells us that British and Irish officials were instructed at the Anglo-Irish intergovermental conference on 10 September to use their best endeavours to draft the paper, and it says that the liaison group met and had discussions.

Who is in that? I learned from the Secretary of State in Downing street yesterday that the liaison group consists of a number of civil servants from the Foreign Office, from the Dublin Government and from the Northern Ireland Office. The document was born out of those discussions and represents a hidden agenda--which is why the people of Northern Ireland are so angry about it. It states :

"It is accepted on both sides"--

that is, by the British and Irish Governments--

"that this joint paper and the discussions related to it will not be the subject of discussion, still less negotiation, with the Northern Ireland parties unless both governments agree beforehand whether and how this should be done."

That means that what is being planned for the people that I represent in the House will not be known without the consent and support of Dublin. That alone damns the document for ever in the minds of all right-thinking people in Northern Ireland. What do they take the long-suffering, law-abiding people of our Province for? They have suffered carnage for years, and have given their young men to fight against the terrorists and buried them in their graveyards. To think that those people should be disfranchised because the Dublin Government say so. Every right hon. and hon. Member should read that document and ask how there can be any settlement on such a basis. The intergovernmental conference on the Anglo-Irish Agreement will serve as the embryo of a united Ireland Parliament that could interfere in any other structures that might be established in Northern Ireland. It will have supreme authority to interfere in those matters.

It is common knowledge that my colleagues and I visited Downing street yesterday and had a long discussion with the Prime Minister about those matters, which cause us great concern. When we raised the question of the paper, I noted the Prime Minister's remarks. I asked the right hon. Gentleman's permission to use that record, and he said that I certainly could--so I am not breaking any confidence. He said :

"If this paper had been presented to me, I would have booted it out over the roof tops."

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That statement leaves many questions unanswered. Who were the officials that discussed and agreed to that paper? How often does the liaison committee meet? Who agreed that the paper should state that no one in Northern Ireland should hear anything about it until the Dublin Government or the British Government mutually consented to that? The people of Northern Ireland are asking themselves those questions tonight.

I welcome the Prime Minister's comments, but this is not the last of the papers. Another will soon appear from the same source, and it will have the same thrust--and that will be repeated over and over again. Unless the Government have the guts and the resolution to stand up to the Irish authorities on articles 2 and 3--which they are fighting desperately to save and for which they are making all sorts of apologies--and have them removed, there will be no solid basis for peace.

Meanwhile--as was said by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), who is the leader of the Official Unionists--deep concern is running right into the gut of the whole of the Northern Ireland people. Anyone from Northern Ireland who saw on television last night the array of seized armaments could do nothing but shiver, with every gun a potential murder weapon. One thinks also of the array of armaments already in the hands of the IRA. When no security spokesman can say whether that seized consignment was the first, or put a number to the number of consignments that have got through, the House will understand how people feel at this time.

I say to the Government and to the House that the sooner that situation is dealt with, the better for us all. There is only one way, which is to establish that the Union is not negotiable, that no all-Ireland body can have any say in Northern Ireland's internal arrangements, and that there can be no advance by the Dublin Government towards achieving the objective of articles 2 and 3--which is a constitutional imperative laid on every Irish Minister according to the Supreme Court in Dublin. Until those matters are laid to rest, the troubles, sorrows and bloodshed will continue.

6.46 pm

Mr. Seamus Mallon (Newry and Armagh) : In normal circumstances, I would have preferred at this stage of the debate on the Loyal Address to speak on the effects of value added tax on fuel costs in Northern Ireland, particularly because of the unique situation that exists there. The cost of fuel in Northern Ireland is 32 per cent. higher than in England, Scotland and Wales, so when VAT is imposed, it will cause a substantial increase. That will be added to by the higher overall costs in Northern Ireland imposed by the necessity to import so many consumer items, which will have a particularly harmful effect on elderly people.

I would have liked the opportunity also to speak not just about peace at any price--a phrase that is becoming increasingly cliche d--but the price of no peace, which is worth considerable scrutiny. A recent article in The Economist tried to analyse the net cost of the North of Ireland to the British Exchequer during the past year, and arrived at a figure of £6 billion. That figure is not verifiable, because many factors in the security budget are not made public. I would like the cost of no peace to be carefully analysed.

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I listened with great interest to the version of the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) of history and of current affairs. It depressed me almost as much as the account of current affairs given by the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) when he spoke two nights ago. We heard the selective quotations given by the hon. Member for Antrim, North from a speech given by the Tanaiste in the United States. We heard also a garbled version of what is not an Irish Government document, and the conclusions drawn by the hon. Gentleman, with his usual sense of the dramatic.

When the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley referred to the talks between the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach, I hope that it was with a supreme sense of irony that he said that the sovereign Government in Dublin were no more than a conduit for the IRA. He said that about a Government who are spending more per capita in the fight against terrorism than the British Government are spending within Northern Ireland--£1 million a day. He said that about a Government who have had to contend with IRA violence and what it has done to the good name of Ireland for so many years. He said that about a Government who have entered into discussions with this Government at the highest possible level and with the Prime Minister to try to ensure that there is a lasting peace.

I was also struck by the concern of the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley at what he termed the state of the "professional and middle classes." He said :

"they are now in such a state of anxiety that they disbelieve any assurance, and suspect betrayal in every sentence they hear or read something must be done to reduce the fever".--[ Official Report , 23 November 1993 ; Vol. 233, c. 362.]

I am aware of the professional and middle classes in the Unionist and nationalist communities in the North of Ireland. I would never accuse them of fever in relation to anything that did not affect their economic and financial positions. However, if the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley knows something that the rest of us do not know, I should like him to explain it to us. He sees betrayal, disbelief and anxiety in everything that is said.

Let us test that against some of what has been said about the present controversies. In a notable speech in the Guildhall on 15 November, the Prime Minister said :

"there may be now a better opportunity for peace in Northern Ireland than for many years. There is a burning desire on each side of the community for peace. This strength of feeling is far more intense than we have ever seen before."

I wonder how the Prime Minister has got it wrong. He sees not the anxiety or the sense of betrayal but an expectancy and deep feeling for peace. Are the Prime Minister's words causing a sense of anxiety and betrayal? Are they being doubted by those to whom the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley refers?

On 2 November the Irish Prime Minister said :

"I want them"--

the Unionists--

"to join us. I want the two communities to join us, in rejecting violence and in the search for peace."

Betrayal? Anxiety? Disbelief? How can that be interpreted as anything but what it is--a genuine and sincere reaching out from the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic to the Unionist community in the North of Ireland?

The hon. Member for Antrim, North quoted Mr. Spring at length. In the six principles that he enunciated, he stated, restated and defined as a principle the words :

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"No agreement can be reached in respect of any change in the present status of Northern Ireland without the freely expressed consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland free from coercion or violence."

Betrayal? Anxiety? Are those the words that are causing the anxiety and fever that has engulfed the professional and middle classes in the North of Ireland?

Let us go further. The hon. Member for Antrim, North was at great pains to labour the position in relation to articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution. The six principles enunciated in the Irish Parliament contain the words :

"If we believe in consent as an integral part of any democratic approach to peace, we must be prepared at the right time and in the right circumstances to express our commitment to that consent in our fundamental law".

The fundamental law is the written constitution of the Republic of Ireland. It is a written commitment given solemnly within the Parliament of the Irish Republic. Is that causing the anxiety and sense of betrayal? Is it something much more potent? Is it the fear or apprehension that there just might be peace? Is that frightening people?

Mr. Ken Maginnis (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Mallon : I will give way later.

I see nothing in the statement or actions of the Prime Minister, the Irish Prime Minister or the Irish Foreign Minister that could in any way be interpreted as creating a sense of anxiety, betrayal and fever that is engulfing the professional and middle classes. What about the other people- -the vast majority of people in the North of Ireland who are not professional or middle class? They have suffered most during the past 25 years. Perhaps they are not worthy of consideration. I shall give them that consideration in my speech.

Mr. Maginnis : The hon. Gentleman asks many questions, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to some of them. If one argues from the wrong premise, it does not matter about the logic of one's argument. Therein lies the feeling of possible betrayal. The whole idea of peace seems to emanate from some fallacious assumption that Mr. Adams, Sinn Fein and the provisional IRA want peace. We have not seen a single shred of evidence that that peace is on offer. Hence we do not want decisions made on the wrong premise.

Mr. Mallon : I thank the hon. Gentleman for his observation. Neither would I. I do not care who delivers peace, as long as it is created, and more power to the people who try to bring it about. I will give them every support and all the help I can. I will do that at all times, because I am not particular about who is the hero. I am concerned about peace for the people in the North of Ireland and the whole of the island.

What is the recipe that we have heard from the leaders of the two Unionist parties for the ending of violence and the creation of peace? We have a document from the party represented by the hon. Member for Antrim, North called "Breaking the Logjam." Anyone who bothers to read it will see that it says, in effect, that one sets up a little body in Belfast, gives it some type of name and it will have friendly relationships with the Government of the Republic of Ireland. Where is the solution? How will this solve the problem or end the violence? How will it create permanent peace on the island of Ireland?

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Much more subtly, in his speech two nights ago, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley repeated almost word for word what we had read in "Breaking the Logjam". He seemed to be saying in a more sophisticated way, "Let us set up a county council structure in the North of Ireland and then enjoy a neighbourly relationship with the Republic, and then everything in the garden will be rosy." It will not : peace will not come that way. It will have to be created. Peace will involve all of us making concessions and biting our lips, politically speaking, because it will not be easy.

This is why there is a sense of anxiety--it is where the fever derives from. There are those in our community who cannot accommodate the idea of compromise or of thinking themselves into a new peaceful century. They prefer the stagnation of the status quo with which we have lived for so long. That is the cause of the fervour ; not the Irish Prime Minister or Foreign Affairs Minister, or the leader of the SDLP, who has made honest and valiant attempts to bring about an end to the violence.

There is a fear that, if peace comes, the central basis of Unionism will be weakened. So it will : as will the basis of my party, and the basis of the British and Irish constitutional positions, as Mr. Spring showed in the six principles. The price of peace is the ability to compromise and to be imaginative, instead of sticking in the morass in which we have been stuck for so long.

Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann) : The hon. Gentleman has just referred to modifications in the constitutional positions of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. What is his response to the proposition that future constitutional structures relating to Northern Ireland are a matter for the people of Northern Ireland to decide, and for no one else?

Mr. Mallon : I have already answered that comprehensively. The first article of the Anglo-Irish Agreement answers the hon. Gentleman's point, restated by Mr. Spring in his six principles : "No agreement can be reached in respect of any change in the present status of Northern Ireland without the freely expressed consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland free from coercion or violence."

Mr. Trimble rose

Mr. Mallon : I will not give way. If the hon. Gentleman wants a constitutional debate on this issue, let him visit the people who have invited him to have one--the Irish Government--and hold his academic debate with them. He should be listening to this political message, but he is afraid to listen to anything positive, just as he is afraid of the notion of peace.

Mr. Trimble : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Mallon : I will not, because I have answered the hon. Gentleman's point.

Ever since I entered the Housg the problem of Northern Ireland. It is the duty and business of Governments to do that. I have criticised them in the past for not doing so, but this was a guiding principle on which the Anglo- Irish Agreement was based.

That principle underlies every intergovernmental meeting between the Irish and British. It underlies the joint statement issued by the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach in Brussels. I hold to that principle, because only the two

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Governments have the power and authority to effect the changes that will create peace and build new political structures. If the Governments undertake the task, I will give them my full support. I offer them the full support of our party to try to solve this intractable problem. In the Brussels statement, they said that only the two Governments can produce the necessary initiatives to solve these problems.

I give the two Governments credit, at a time when they are not getting any credit. We have seen the Unionist reaction to the Prime Minister's attempts, even though they have a close relationship with him. We have also seen the reaction of the other form of Unionism, which is even more loyal than the official kind. The Unionists have beaten a path to the Prime Minister's door--it is even rumoured that there is now a Molyneaux room and a Paisley room at No. 10. What are they doing if they are not listening to the Prime Minister? Are they agreeing with him that only the two Governments acting together can solve the problem, or are they talking about fervour and the sort of potted histories that we heard today from the hon. Member for Antrim, North? Are they giving the Prime Minister the version of current affairs that we have heard from both the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley and the hon. Member for Antrim, North? In their attempt to create peace, the two Prime Ministers have the full support both of my party and of the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland, be they professional or middle-class people, or Catholics or Protestants. People are watching closely, believing what the Prime Ministers said in Brussels-- that it was their business to get on with solving the problem.

This is an urgent matter. If we needed proof of that urgency, we had only to look at the television footage from yesterday showing the interception of the arms haul. There is more proof of the urgency when we recall how quickly peace initiatives and momentum towards change can turn sour. There will be people in both communities who do not want peace, and who try everything they know to ensure that violence continues.

I ask the Government to respond to this urgency. If they do, history will judge them as people of courage and imagination who took us into the next century without the stain of blood on everything to do with Northern Ireland. If they run away from the problem--to use the vernacular, if they funk it--history will judge them harshly, as will the long-suffering people of the North of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic.

Will there be a way back if a mistake is made now? Another such chance may not come for 25 years. Those are the stakes that we are playing for ; that is why it is so important to move forward.

Mr. Roy Beggs (Antrim, East) : I have met no one, in Northern Ireland or elsewhere, who is not totally committed to peace, but I wonder whether the hon. Member will tell the House what price of peace--his price, the price for the SDLP--is to be exacted before there is full commitment to the security forces, to the RUC, to bring an end to terror?

Mr. Mallon : That is a valid question, and I will answer it honestly. We have paid part of our price. We take no satisfaction in entering into discussions with those who publicly support violence. We will talk to anyone in our

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community if we believe that we can stop violence. We recommend to representatives within the Unionist community as well that they talk to loyalist paramilitary groupings.

When we get that type of peaceful basis, we can all start to negotiate in the proper way of negotiating--not through this type of intervention. We do not know what the outcome will be, any more than the hon. Gentleman does, but the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) has a certitude at bottom which is so frightening in terms of that absoluteness which blinkers him on many occasions. That is the type of thing that should be broken down.

We have heard of the Unionist position--the Prime Minister must be sick of hearing about the Unionist position. The Unionist position is discussed almost daily in the Irish Parliament, and discussed at great length. May I remind people that there are two communities living there? I have the honour to represent the other part of the Northern Ireland community.

I represent a nationalist position. That is a legitimate position, and the aspirations of the nationalist community are legitimate. Let not the way in which the IRA have devalued and debased nationalism be reflected in Government thinking or thinking in the House. Let it be said--and be seen-- that the aspiration to create a united Ireland, to create unity of the Irish people, is a legitimate aspiration, pursued by peaceful, democratic means without violence and without coercion, and is a crucial factor in what is happening now.

Do the Government believe that? Or are the Government now so frightened of some of the ancillary factors in what has been happening during the past months that they will not recognise that basic point? I repeat it : will they state that the desire to create, and the aspiration to create, Irish unity through peaceful means is a legitimate political process? I believe that it is. I believe that the Government believe that it is. I believe that that is part of long-term Government thinking. Let me tell hon. Members why. I refer hon. Members to a statement that was made by the Foreign Secretary in the House :

"I do not agree that partition can be the basis for a settlement. My hon. Friend's underlying thought is perfectly right--there are two communities on the island and they must be given rights as two communities--but if there is to be a lasting settlement, it must be within the sovereignty of one Cypriot Government."--[ Official Report, 28 October 1992 ; Vol. 212, c. 1006.]

May I refer that statement of the Foreign Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the entire Government. I ask him to apply the principle that is involved in that statement of that senior member of the Government when dealing with the problems that we are dealing with at present, conditioned only by that one single factor which I have already quoted twice--that there can be no change in the status of Northern Ireland without the agreement of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland without coercion and force.

Is that not something that the Government must honestly answer for themselves? Is not that the type of thinking that will ultimately solve the problem? Or will the Government, like so many other Governments down through the decades and the centuries, be caused to deviate from making the fundamental decisions for peace and development by the type of bluster that we have heard from the Conservative Benches and the type of attitudes that we have heard from the Opposition Benches? Time will tell whether the Government and the Prime Minister are up to it.

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