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Dr. Godman: Sit down.

I am not being encouraged by active Parliamentary Private Secretaries, or even tough--

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman was not addressing that remark to the Chair.

Dr. Godman: I would not dare, Sir. I was just asking someone across the way--certainly not you--to sit down.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman must know that matters of order are for the Chair and not for him.

Dr. Godman: I take that stricture, and apologise to you, Sir.

The Secretary of State's position is absolutely right on the issue. We should vote against the motion, and support the Government.

6.26 pm

Mr. Andrew Hunter (Basingstoke): I shall be as brief as possible.

I have a facsimile of the letter that the Prime Minister wrote in his hand on 20 May. It is headed:

"My pledge to the people of Northern Ireland."

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There are five pledges. The last two are worthy of consideration:


"Those who use or threaten violence excluded from the Government of Northern Ireland",

and

"Prisoners kept in unless violence is given up for good"--

some pledges.

The fact that this debate is taking place is testimony to the fact that promises have been broken and trust betrayed. If the Prime Minister had kept his word--the word that he spoke at Balmoral on 14 May and repeated in the hand-written letter of 20 May, in the letter that was published in the News Letter and Irish Independent on referendum day and referred to on many occasions in the House, in particular on 6 May--there would be no need for this debate, but the Prime Minister and the Government have not kept their word. They have not honoured their pledge. The Government have betrayed the trust of the people of Northern Ireland and broken promises that were made to them.

Few people, if any, deny that many Unionists voted yes on referendum day and for pro-agreement candidates in the Assembly elections because the Government had promised--so those Unionists understood--that there would be a direct link between decommissioning and early release, and between decommissioning and places on the Executive.

Mr. Wilshire: Like me, my hon. Friend was in Northern Ireland recently--we were at the same place. Did he hear what I heard on that occasion--a significant number of Unionists saying that they had voted yes in the referendum to give the process a chance, but felt utterly betrayed and that they were now being sold out through appeasement, which was going to get them nowhere?

Mr. Hunter: I do recall that powerful occasion and endorse what my hon. Friend has said. One reason why those people said that was because they perhaps remembered the exchange in the House on 6 May 1998, when my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister if he agreed that

"prisoners should not be released early until the organisations to which they belong have substantially decommissioned their weapons".--[Official Report, 6 May; Vol. 311, c. 711.]

Audio recordings of our proceedings confirm that the Prime Minister replied:

"The answer to your question is, yes, of course".

He went on further and applied it. He said:

"both in respect of taking seats in the government of Northern Ireland and the early release of prisoners"--

no ifs, no buts, unequivocal, unambiguous. The Prime Minister in this Chamber said, "No early release, no places on the Executive without decommissioning."

The second episode worth remembering is the letter that the Prime Minister wrote to two Northern Ireland newspapers, which was printed on 22 May. It said:

"There can be no accelerated prisoner release unless organisations and individuals concerned have clearly given up violence for good."

That has not happened. The violence continues. There has been no let-up since the agreement, but the prisoners are coming out.

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The Prime Minister continued:

"Representatives of parties intimately linked to paramilitary groups can only be in a future Northern Ireland Government if it is clear that there will be no more violence and the threat of violence has gone. That does not just mean decommissioning, but all bombings, killings, beatings, an end to targeting, recruiting and all the structures of terrorism."

Thankfully, the terrorists have pressed the pause button on the bombings, but they retain the capability to resume them whenever they want. Meanwhile, the killings, beatings, targeting and recruiting continue and the structures of terrorism remain intact.

Mr. Peter Robinson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, in particular because the majority of Unionists on the Opposition Benches voted against the Belfast agreement, but it looks as though none of us will be called to speak in the debate. May I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, which relates decommissioning to the release of prisoners? It was a Government proposal, which was enacted by the House. Under that measure, the Secretary of State has powers to stop prisoners being released because decommissioning has not taken place.

Mr. Hunter: The hon. Gentleman is correct.

Finally, since 1 November--a mere five weeks--there have been 29 exiles, 11 shootings and 15 beatings in Northern Ireland and 138 people have been the victims of intimidation of a different nature. The Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the IRA have all been involved in that grisly catalogue of mental and physical torture. Meanwhile, the obscene process of early release continues. The Prime Minister said:

"There can be no accelerated prisoner releases unless organisations and individuals concerned have clearly given up violence for good."

What was intended to be a peace process, long ago turned into a shameful process of appeasement. Labour Members say that there would have been no agreement without early release. So be it. A civilised society has core values, which include the rule of law and a judicial system that is independent of political interference. Neither exists in Northern Ireland--they died with the agreement.

6.32 pm

Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East Cambridgeshire): The wording of the motion was carefully drafted, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay) pointed out. The first part includes three comments that were made by the Prime Minister: the first at Balmoral on 14 May 1998; the second from Hansard on 20 April 1998; in response to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition; and the third in a response at Prime Minister's Question Time on 6 May. I shall read the last of the three quotations:

"The only organisations that can qualify to take seats in the government of Northern Ireland and can expect the early release of prisoners are those that have given up violence for good".

In another answer, he said

"Decommissioning is part of that".--[Official Report, 6 May 1998; Vol. 311, c. 711.]

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Listening to the views of the Government this evening, I find it extremely difficult to understand how they can oppose their own Prime Minister's words. We are asking that those pledges--given not only on those three occasions, but consistently throughout the past seven months--should be honoured.

We have been consistent in our approach to the issues. In May, the Leader of the Opposition put the salient points to the Prime Minister. We are returning to the theme this evening because we are unhappy at developments, as is obvious from comments made in the debate by Conservative Members in particular, by those who favoured the Belfast agreement and were a party to it, and by those with a vested interest in the future of Northern Ireland.

There is no break in the bipartisan approach. Nor do we seek to oppose or rewrite the agreement, as many Labour Members reading the Whip's notes are told to ask. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. King) said in his most telling contribution, hon. Members have a right to debate and to express opinions in the House, and not merely the opinions of Members, who have their own worries and considerations on the matter, but those of many people in Northern Ireland. I would go further. We also have a duty to express the fears, worries and concerns of the electorate we represent. This matter does not pertain merely to Northern Ireland. The entire United Kingdom electorate has a definite view of the situation. My right hon. Friend said that, to date, Government statements from the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have been entirely admirable and I agree, but he went on, tellingly, to say that he believed that, so far, the giving had been one-sided.

On the views of our electorate on the mainland of Britain, I refer the House to a Gallup poll that was printed in The Daily Telegraph a few weeks ago on Friday 6 November. The article, which was written by Anthony King, who is Professor of Government at Essex University and a well-known authority on these matters, stated:

"There is overwhelming hostility to the early release of convicted terrorist prisoners. In the view of three quarters of Britons, prisoner releases should be halted until all terrorist weapons have been decommissioned.


Gallup's data shows large numbers of voters are uneasy about some of the Blair Government's actions in connection with peace negotiations . . . Only 21 per cent. of people in Britain believe that the IRA 'has permanently renounced terrorism' and all but a tiny minority believe that terrorist organisations should be required to decommission all their weapons at once.


The majority view is that weapons decommissioning should be complete before any further concessions are made to Sinn Fein and the IRA. Seventy per cent. are hostile to Sinn Fein joining any new devolved government in Northern Ireland pending the surrender of weapons and even more, 74 per cent., opposed further prisoner releases until the same condition is met."

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