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6.21 pm
Mr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Inverclyde): The gloomy forebodings expressed by the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) sit ill on his shoulders. He is normally a good-humoured, affable man, and I sincerely hope that he is wrong on this occasion.
Mr. Godman: As the hon. Gentleman implies--from a sedentary position--we all want the peace talks to be brought to a successful and satisfactory conclusion: satisfactory, that is, from the point of view of all the ordinary, decent people of Northern Ireland.
I look forward to the day when Northern Ireland has an assembly of its own, based on proportional representation, and with a power-sharing constitution. I am only sorry that some of the secessionists in Northern Ireland who seek to separate Northern Ireland from Great Britain are utterly unpeaceable--unlike those in Scotland who seek a similar separation, but through entirely peaceful and democratic measures.
Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), I--who have long had reservations about the powers in the Act--will support the Bill, because of clause 3. Incidentally, I should point out to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone that the very welcome proposal to abolish internal exile is not in this Bill, but in the prevention of terrorism legislation. Nevertheless, that proposal must be welcome to all who live, as we do, in a mature parliamentary democracy. Internal exile has no place in a society such as ours.
I welcome the proposal relating to the audio recording of interviews with those in detention centres. As I told him in an intervention, however, I hope that the procedure will be introduced long before 2000, because it will protect not only the rights of the person being cross-examined but the criminal legal procedure system itself.
May I ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland--who will wind up the debate--a question about access to legal advice? In the brief that it sent to the usual suspects, the Committee on the Administration of Justice claims that the number of deferrals of access to legal advice has increased recently. I hope that my hon. Friend will respond to that claim. According to the committee, its members
I share the reservations expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Hull, North about scheduled offences, and about Bloody Sunday. I have made my views known to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State: I believe that the matter should be reinvestigated, but not under the aegis of a member of the English legal establishment.
Mr. Seamus Mallon (Newry and Armagh):
Like the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), I am almost tempted to give two and a half cheers for the Bill. I say "tempted", but I shall not succumb to the temptation, for reasons that I hope to be able to clarify.
As one who has been involved in debate about legislation such as this for many years, inside and outside the House--on the Floor of the House, in Committee and elsewhere--I do not want to be churlish. I hold strongly to the view that, once the highest standards of justice are deviated from in a way that makes the process of justice one of trying to solve political problems, the real sufferer will be that process of justice.
Let me emphasise that starting point again. Had I the opportunity--despite the changes that have been made--to vote against the legislation tonight, I would do so: I make no bones about that. I would do so on the ground that, especially now, there is an absolute requirement for us to move in the direction not of restating the need for emergency legislation--not of reinventing a wheel that has not been able to circumvent the problem with which it was designed to deal--but of starting to create, imaginatively and courageously, an arrangement that would be adequate in the context of the new system for which we are aiming.
I note with interest the use of the term "peace process": a term of which I am not terribly fond. We have a thing called "peace", which is a valuable commodity where I come from, and a thing called "the political process",
without which peace will be unstable. I make that point as the representative of the constituency of Newry and Armagh.
Peace is valuable: it does not belong to a Government; it does not belong to an Opposition; it does not belong to a political party; and it does not belong to a paramilitary grouping. Peace belongs to people: it is a basic, God-given human right. It is not to be doled out like lollipops by those who believe in violence, and it is not to be used by anybody.
I believe that every person in the north of Ireland must benefit from peace: not just where it is selected that they should, and not just in the places where there have been fewer problems on the ground. The people who should experience peace and should benefit most are those, like me, who live in my constituency and have suffered most from the implementation of emergency legislation that has deviated from the highest standards.
This thing called the peace process will not all of a sudden arrive on everyone's doorstep. It will have to be worked at carefully, for there is something more that the House, the Government and the Opposition parties have agreed. It will have to be validated not by Governments but by people in referendums in the north and the south. The referendum in the north has been agreed. Who will validate the peace? Whose validation is most important? Is it the people who have not been much affected by the problem these past 27 years, or the people who have got it in the neck from paramilitary groupings, from security forces and from emergency legislation? Their validation will, in my opinion, be much more valuable than that of those whom the troubles have not terribly affected. Let us not forget that.
Unless we make changes that are apparent, dangerous situations will develop. It has been proven that legislation such as this does not stop terrorism: not now, not in the past or in the distant past. One of the measures that I welcome immensely is the removal from the statute book of internment without trial. Many of us are products of a society or an environment that has experienced internment. Let us not forget that we had internment in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s and 1970s: it was not thought up only in the 1970s. Internment failed in each of those decades: it failed to give peace, it failed to solve security problems and above all it failed to have the political effect that it was intended to have.
Mr. Maginnis:
Was internment used more viciously and strenuously in the Irish Republic than in Northern Ireland? Is it not a reality that, when a terrorist organisation goes to war with society, society requires internment to protect itself?
Mr. Mallon:
I make no defence of internment in the Republic of Ireland, now or in the past. It did not deal with IRA violence in any of those past decades, because if it had done so, we would not be debating this legislation now.
There is something much more important at stake: the absolute integrity of the process of law and justice. As individuals and as a community, ultimately our only protection is the system of justice under which we live; otherwise, we would be part of a Kafkaesque society. Many people in the north of Ireland know how Kafkaesque it has been.
The Minister said that there was no evidence that Diplock courts had produced perverse judgments or had lowered standards. We should remember that Lord Diplock said that any court that did not comply with the minimum requirements of the European convention on human rights was not worthy of the name of court of law, should not form part of the ordinary criminal justice system, and should not be staffed by ordinary judges who sit in other criminal courts. That is not my view, but the opinion of Lord Justice Diplock, after whom those courts are named.
Have they complied with European standards? There have been derogations, and they must be rectified. It has been rightly said that those courts come under different legislation, but the implementation of the part of the prevention of terrorism Act that deals with arrests applies to and interlocks with the emergency provisions Act.
I welcome the fact that internment has gone. I am quite sure that it will never be used again, because its failure as a method has been proven by successive Governments in this country and in the Republic of Ireland. The jury of public opinion and experience has accepted that verdict.
I welcome the prospect of a review of the panoply of--dare I say it, because I am beginning to wonder what term I should use--legislation that is not normal as it applies here and in the north of Ireland. I welcome the fact that internal exile in the form of exclusion orders has been suspended, and that none is in operation at this moment. I hope that those measures disappear. While that is being done, what people who come from the north and the south of Ireland are required to do at some ports must be examined, because it is not compatible with standards of justice. That is on the record in the House and outside. If we are to deal with this problem, we should consider that aspect. I ask the Minister to ensure that that matter is included in the review.
I very much welcome clause 5, which provides for the audio recording of the interrogation of people detained under the prevention of terrorism Act. It is a measure for which some of us have been pressing for many years. It has been dealt with in Committee and elsewhere in a way that has proved that the argument for it is irrefutable. Of course, there is one difficulty, which is when it will be implemented.
The Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1996 has been in existence for 15 months, but the codes of conduct for video recording, as provided for in that Act, are still not in operation. The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Mr. Godman) asked the valid question when audio recording would become a reality. Is that the urgency that should underpin emergency legislation? If there is an emergency, there should be urgency, and that urgency should work both ways. I urge the Minister to deal with that matter quickly and explain why the 1996 EPA codes of conduct have not yet been implemented.
I refer in passing to the question of certifying in and certifying out. Like the Minister, I am not a lawyer, so I will not involve myself with the legalities. I think that I have also proved that I am not a mathematician but, in view of the figures that we have, it seems that certifying out is much more cumbersome than certifying in. If we start with that clean slate, it may not have any material effect on the cases that will be certified in as opposed to certified out, but it will be an indication, in the Bill, that there is in effect an intention to move towards jury courts.
The significance of certifying in will be that it is a declaration of intent to move not towards something radical, enormous or new but simply to the principle that people in court will be tried by a jury. Of course, in the context of Northern Ireland, that is new in many ways.
Cases in my constituency have been referred to the Attorney-General's office and to the Lord Chancellor's office. Applications have been made to have cases tried outside of the Newry courthouse, for them to be held elsewhere and a jury from another place to be sworn in to try them. There is the confidence in the court system and the jury nobbling, not by paramilitary groupings but by the legal process itself. It is a matter of record, but when it comes to jury nobbling, there are those in the north of Ireland justice system who can do as well as or better than those one would expect to be involved in jury nobbling. Abnormalities have developed in the operation of an abnormal system, and we have to take account of them.
I must express my disappointment that the question of emergency legislation is not dealt with in the Bill. Perhaps it could not be dealt with, but the signals being sent out at the moment should carry hope that we are moving to something new. I do not believe that there are any circumstances in the modern world in which there will be no legislation to deal with terrorism, be it national, regional or international, but that is a different matter. Here, we have a legal system that is abnormal; we have a system of implementation of that legal system that is wholly abnormal; and we have legislation that is abnormal. In that abnormality, those of us in the political process are charged with creating a normal political situation. That is the crux of the matter--that is the difficulty we face.
I must refer to the situation in west Belfast and south Armagh and the fact that they are saturated with security. This is not Sinn Fein propaganda, although Sinn Fein uses it as such; nor is it a stick with which to beat the legislation--it is simply my experience. I look out of my window when I am having breakfast and I see lookout posts on the hills. They are doing nothing, and never have done anything. They are there for the optics, yet the land was taken from the people. It was not asked for or bought, but taken.
What about the holding centres? I suggest that the Minister considers what was said about them by the independent commissioner for the holding centres, who pointed out that they were not suitable for the holding of people for the length of time possible under emergency legislation. Do those centres have to remain? Does Castlereagh have to remain as a monument to the failure of emergency legislation through the years? Does the Gough barracks have to remain in that shape or form, or is there the courage to take another little step into the future as another declaration of intent to ensure a new beginning in every sense of the word?
"have viewed with considerable concern the government's inaction in this regard especially in light of recent figures, which indicate an increase in deferrals of access to legal advice. The whole of 1996 saw some 13 deferrals. However, the statistics for the first half of 1997 show an increase, with 19 individuals being refused immediate access to a lawyer."
If that allegation is true, there is a serious issue to be sorted out by my hon. Friend and his officials.
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