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Mr. Jeffrey Donaldson (Lagan Valley): I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says but I have to tell him that I have met some of his constituents who do not hold the view that he has described. A Mrs. Irene Cochrane from Downpatrick lost her son who was serving with the Ulster Defence Regiment. She certainly does not hold the view that it is right for the prisoners to be released.

The hon. Gentleman talks about progress on decommissioning. The reality is that the international commission has been in place for many months, as has legislation and as have the modalities. There is no more progress to be made on these issues. Everything is now in place, and it has been for many months. But how many guns and bullets have been handed in? The hon. Gentleman knows that nothing has happened on these issues.

The release of prisoners is a mandatory and not a voluntary process, and one that the victims have no option but to accept. If they are being asked to accept that, society surely is entitled to require the decommissioning of weapons. More than half the prisoners are now out and yet not one bullet has been handed over. Imagine the outcry that there would have been--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The hon. Gentleman is repeating himself in his own intervention.

Mr. McGrady: I take on board what the hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) has said about members of certain families resenting the release of prisoners. I am saying that the vast majority of those whom I have met have said, with great reluctance and great difficulty, "If this sacrifice must be made yet again, for the greater good of our community and for peace for our children, we are prepared to wear this."

Yes, there has been prisoner release and no physical decommissioning of a weapon such as a gun or Semtex. However, why do we relate one with the other when they

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are separate issues? As I understand it, the process of prisoner release was to establish the ceasefire, thereby triggering the process by which decommissioning could take place. We must have the moral and political authority to force those who are still holding weapons, ammunition and Semtex to decommission because of the force of political and moral argument.

The intervention of the hon. Member for Lagan Valley included the word "voluntary". In a sense--I say this at the risk of being misunderstood--at the end of the day decommissioning will be a voluntary decision. No one--neither members of the security forces nor anyone else--can force decommissioning. No one can force the surrender of even one gun. We must establish the conditions in our community where moral and political authority will demand and deliver the decommissioning process. Thirty years of the most intense security surveillance and penetration did nothing to bring about decommissioning or to stem the flow of weapons. Let us take that as another aspect of decommissioning.

Everyone in the House knows that there could be decommissioning of whatever anyone liked tomorrow. That would leave us all standing like the emperor, politically naked. The following day the same people could re-arm and regroup quite easily. That is why we are talking not merely about physical decommissioning but about a decommissioning of the mind that requires us to ensure that the pursuance of any political objective with the use of weapons can no longer be tolerated and is no longer tolerated by any community in Ireland, north or south. The communities have already indicated that through the referendums in both north and south. Without equivocation, the people said that violence is out and weapons must not ever be used again in Ireland in pursuit of a political objective.

Mr. Grieve: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that the obligation--as it was described by the Secretary of State--to decommission would not have been put in the agreement unless it was thought necessary to make the peace process work. Does he also agree that the process was designed to be gradual and spread out over two years? How does he envisage the time frame in which decommissioning should take place within that two-year period?

Mr. McGrady: The Good Friday agreement does not give a timetable, except a finishing date of May 2000, as I have already said. We must create the moral thrust and the political environment that will make decommissioning imperative. We must create the additional trust that will enable--or force--the paramilitaries of either persuasion to give up their weapons as their part in a trust-building exercise with the opposite communities.

Mr. Robert McCartney: If there is no power that will make the paramilitaries give up their weapons now, what security do we have to assure us--no matter what concessions we make--that they will give up their weapons within the two years? What are we to hope for if nothing can compel those thugs and terrorists to disarm?

Mr. McGrady: The hon. and learned Gentleman cannot have been listening to me. I have said time and again that the only way that we can force decommissioning is by moral persuasion and political

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structures that make it impossible for paramilitaries to continue their activities with any support from either community.

The alternative required by the motion is to stop releasing prisoners, cut off the negotiations and bring everything to a halt until some weapons and Semtex are put on the table. If that is the logical consequence of the motion, it is a recipe for total disaster. The motion did not suggest an alternative process and nor did any of the hon. Members who have contributed so far. No doubt, we will receive the benefit of the wisdom of those hon. Members who will contribute later.

We have a difficult and delicate political process in train at the moment and this motion is giving all the wrong signals to those people who wish to destroy the edifice of political negotiation, decommissioning and prisoner release that has been so delicately brought together in one package. That process did not happen in a year or two: it took three decades to put it together. Three months could destroy it. Opposition Members who will presumably push the motion to a vote tonight are saying that we must halt all the processes until a gun or pound of Semtex is put on the table. That is putting a political weapon into the hands of those who say no to the Belfast agreement--Opposition Members are aligning themselves with that political attitude--and giving an additional weapon to the likes of the Provisional IRA and the UVF to use for further bargaining. We are trying to achieve a moral and political authority that will force the paramilitaries to decommission and I therefore hope that the Opposition will not press the motion to a vote.

5.35 pm

Mr. Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire): This is a difficult time in Northern Irish politics and a difficult process is under way. The stakes are enormously high and I hope that we can all agree that the last thing that we need is to use the issue as a party political opportunity instead of an opportunity to secure peace in Northern Ireland.

I shall assume in my speech that the Conservatives' intention is not to try to score party political points, because to do so would be in contravention of the spirit of the bipartisan agreement. In that context, I am surprised that the Conservatives have chosen to debate the issue in this form. It is not clear that this debate will make it easier for those who are trying so hard to negotiate, on decommissioning and in so many other areas, to achieve the results that we all want. Clearly, the right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay) feels differently and he is entitled to do so, but we need to recognise the difference between legitimate concerns and the impact that a debate such as this may have in the longer term on what we are trying to achieve.

I was encouraged when the right hon. Member for Bracknell reaffirmed the Conservatives' commitment in spirit and in word to the Good Friday agreement. That is at the core of this debate. Technically, the Good Friday agreement has not been breached in any way. The hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) made it clear that the agreement contains an objective and unarguable two-year time frame. No staging posts have been written into the agreement, for good and pragmatic reasons. However, I am sure that all hon. Members wish to see

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progress on decommissioning soon, because a pressure is welling up in various bodies in Northern Ireland, political and non-political, and nervousness is growing.

Mr. Donaldson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of a timetable for the release of prisoners in the Belfast agreement, or is the situation the same as for decommissioning--with no specific timetable, only a target date? Does he accept that we have had much progress on prisoner releases and no progress on decommissioning?

Mr. Öpik: The target date in the Good Friday agreement for prisoner releases is June 1999, so prisoner releases need to be completed ahead of decommissioning. To that extent, while we have talked about a parallel time frame, the two matters are likely to proceed at slightly different rates. The process has to contain a degree of good will as well as an element of risk. I did not hear Conservative Members argue when prisoner releases began that they were necessarily bad, although I stand to be corrected. The concern about prisoner releases has evolved as a result of the apparent non-movement on decommissioning.

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