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12.58 am
Mr. Moss: Like the Minister, I wish the Parades Commission every success in the difficult task that lies before it this year.
I welcome what the Minister said about the constructive contributions made in Committee, both here and in the other place. I am glad that the Government have looked carefully at Opposition Members' suggestions and gone quite a long way towards taking them on board, with the aim of ending up with a Bill that seeks to heal the wounds and bring the two sides of the conflict closer together. The main thrust of our amendments and comments in Committee was directed at doing that. We wanted to ensure even-handedness and that the perception on both sides in Northern Ireland was that the Bill is balanced. We sought to bring the two sides together, either by mediation or by sensible measures that people felt took the views of both sides into account.
Some fears have been expressed, mainly by Unionist Members, about the way in which the Government are proceeding. I ask the Minister to pay careful attention to those comments before advising the Parades Commission on how the Bill will be implemented. A small point arose today on a Northern Ireland radio programme in which I took part. It was said that, already, so-called facilitators are contacting people who organised parades last year under the current legislation and filled in notice forms. Those forms have been given to facilitators operating under the commission's jurisdiction and the facilitators have been telephoning people out of the blue to talk about this year's parades.
That is an example of the commission not getting to grips with the essential problem. It would have been more sensible for parade organisers to receive letters stating the commission's aims and telling them about the role of the facilitators and mediators. They could have been asked whether they minded being contacted by telephone. It was obvious from the comments of a representative of the Orange Order on that programme that that telephone exercise has not gone down well. It has probably delayed progress on implementation of the Bill.
I welcome new clause 3, which was debated on Report and provides that groups who wish to arrange protests should give notice to the commission and the police, but the House is still anxious about the difference in treatment between those who organise parades and those who organise protests. The commission will determine whether a parade should be allowed and the RUC and, in the final analysis the Secretary of State, will determine whether a protest should be allowed to go ahead. That issue was raised by the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) and by some Opposition Members.
The role of the commission in dealing even-handedly with parades and protest groups was properly addressed in new clause 2, which I presented in Committee. The Government did not see fit to accept that new clause and they did not see fit to table similar amendments on Report. The new clause related to the commission's powers to impose conditions on counter-demonstrations or protests. Perhaps the Government will re-examine the issue before the Bill goes to the other place, which I presume will be within the next few days.
There may be a loophole in the measures that deal with protest meetings. When we tabled amendments in Committee, we used the term counter-demonstrations.
I accept that the Minister has gone a long way towards meeting our requests by redefining that term and coming up with the term protest meetings. That is cleverly linked with open-air public meetings so that the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987 can apply, but the use of the word meeting might suit people who are out to cause mischief. They could call a number of meetings along the route of a march rather than organise a counter- demonstration against a parade.
As the Minister knows, some marches cover quite a long distance. Several notices may be issued by groups holding protest meetings that they would seek to endorse on the basis of the fact that perhaps a different housing estate was being passed or the parade was going through a different locality. It is worth considering that point to ensure that when the commission comes to implement its policies, is not in any way, shape or form presented with difficulties by people who wish to cause mischief.
I have listened carefully to the debate on the Government amendment to remove mediation from the commission. Powerful arguments were advanced by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. Again, the Government may need to think carefully about whether they wish the commission to have a hands-on role in mediation, or whether we should have facilitators who, as we have heard already, have not necessarily gone about their work in the right and sensible way.
Mr. McGrady:
I unequivocally endorse the Minister's condemnation of the recent spate of murders immediately before and after Christmas. They were possibly the most horrendous and callous murders that the community has experienced for a long time. There are those who argue that there were two series of killings: so-called tit-for-tat killings following the assassination of Billy Wright in the Maze prison, with the Irish Republican Socialist party involved; and a second campaign to instil sheer terror by killing totally innocent Catholics who were unconnected with any organisation and had no public stance, but were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am glad that those killings, at least for the time being, seem to have been brought to a halt, but we are still under daily threat from the Loyalist Volunteer Force, which says that it will reintroduce a reign of terror if its demands are not met.
Against that background, the Bill attempts to resolve the problems of Northern Ireland's communities. I have said before that the necessity for the Bill is a bad reflection on those communities, in that we appear to be unable to compromise when that should obviously be the order of the day. Perhaps a bit of give and take, a bit of understanding and a bit of acceptance of a different view would have done away with the deep divisions that have been created by marches and counter-protests and the enormous economic and social damage that was done as a result of some of those confrontations.
The commission will have to face such difficulties in its first term of office. It has to do the almost impossible: to square the circle and try to bring together those strongly held opinions--opposing rights or, if you like, opposing civil rights. I wish the commission well in that endeavour. My party tabled amendments in an attempt to facilitate the commission's work, to make it easier to accomplish and more acceptable to both communities. That was the spirit in which we approached the Bill.
I know that members of the Unionist community have often regarded the Bill as an anti-parade Bill. I do not see it that way. I would hope that the vast majority of parades, of whatever denomination or persuasion, are allowed to take place but, unfortunately, there are points of conflict and conflagration that have to be dealt with--they will not go away. I hope and pray that the commission, armed with the necessary powers, will bring the various differences to a happier conclusion. I hope that that will be the reward for all of us for passing the Bill.
I thank Ministers and the members of the Committee for our very tolerant and wide-ranging debates and for their expressions of concern. Those debates provided a flavour of the tremendous difficulties that the commission will face, and I hope that members of the commission will read the reports of the seven Committee sittings to get that flavour and that they will use it in their decision making. I thank Ministers for being ready to listen, accept and amend. Unfortunately, the Government sometimes rejected our best advice, but that is their prerogative. However, there was a fair bit of give and take. Not only Ministers were up front; various Officers of the House gave me and others assistance and helped make the whole process more intelligible.
Rev. Ian Paisley:
I am sure that everyone will join the Minister in condemning the violence and the tragedies that have taken place. As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) said at his party conference some years ago, the IRA has killed more Roman Catholics than the police, the UDR or any other forces in Northern Ireland. We should put events into the right perspective. We should also put into perspective the fact that we have suffered a series of killings of Protestant people--a genocide of Protestant people. One has only to go to the graveyards on the border, to Castlederg, for example, to see that. One can see how family after family has been slaughtered by the IRA. Those killings were far more intense and extensive than any of the killings in recent days.
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