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7.58 pm
Rev. Martin Smyth: I hesitate to follow the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott), as in one sense he looked back to the past, in which he had some involvement.
I began by being very conscious of what the inability to bury the dead means to people. I was a young lad during the war and we got word after Calais that that was the last place that my uncle was seen. My aunt, who had five children, lived through the war hoping that he would return, but my uncle's name is on the Dunkirk memorial. So I have no difficulty in understanding the concerns of the bereaved, nor their desire to bury their loved ones.
From my experience in Northern Ireland, I also know what it means to bury a lovely young woman, who could be identified only by her wedding ring. She was one of the victims of the atrocity at the Le Mon hotel. I could continue, but tonight we are seeking to achieve something.
The Government have been pushed into doing something that the terrorists, if they had been treading the path of peace, would have done long since. We should make it abundantly plain that the culprits at the bar of justice are the perpetrators of crimes. It is time that the whole community put more pressure on them to reveal the places where bodies have been buried.
As an Ulster Scot--what our American cousins call Scotch-Irish--I was interested to hear the Minister dismiss the amount of money being spent on vain searches, because I thought that he looked after the bawbees and that the House was responsible for financial expenditure. We have had both terrorist war and economic war, and I am convinced that further attempts will be made to isolate and disturb the economy by giving false information. I hope that I am wrong, but, if false information is given, we must indict those who offer it.
I have every sympathy with those who believe that they are entitled to compensation. In my experience, genuine victims--innocent people not involved in any way--have suffered most. I think of a family in my congregation who were put out of their home. The Housing Executive rehoused them, but the compensation that they received for the home that they had owned was just £10.
I can think of other cases, and I hope that the Minister will bear in mind not only compensation to help tobury people, as requested by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik), but compensation to people who live in houses that were built over where some bodies lie, if the information that we have received is correct. They should receive compensation for the new houses that they will need. We dare not add to the burdens of people who have genuinely sought to make some sort of life through these tragic years.
Dr. Godman:
I compliment the Minister on bringing the Bill before the House. The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) talked of the High Court of
I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have sincere reservations, but I hope that they do not transform into outright opposition to the Bill's passage.
Rev. Martin Smyth:
The hon. Gentleman has been in the House throughout the debate and will therefore have heard at least one criticism by a Minister of people who did not vote against the Bill on an earlier occasion. We must be held accountable by the people whom we represent.
Dr. Godman:
I know that the hon. Gentleman's reservations are sincere and profound. However, I hope, equally sincerely, that he and his hon. Friends will not vote against the Bill. I understand his reservations, and I have voiced some of my own. I have indeed been in the Chamber for almost every minute of the Bill's proceedings, but, following my meeting with two families in the House, all my reservations and doubts were dispelled by their pleas and their profound need to put to rest their loved ones with a Christian funeral service and burial.
Finding the remains and performing the ritual of burying loved ones will not stop the grieving. Grief continues throughout life, as the hon. Member for Belfast, South and all of us know. However, as I know from the cases of people who have been lost at sea and whose bodies have been recovered months after they were drowned, the return of the loved one's body for Christian burial and internment in sanctified ground brings some peace of mind. The two ladies whom I met made that plea to me and to the hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss), who was also at the meeting. In responding positively to that plea, we will bring a touch of comfort and consolation to the families of victims.
I have absolutely no trust in the terrorists or their spokespersons. I have always said that it is obscene that they call themselves freedom fighters. There cannot be freedom fighters in the mature parliamentary democracy in which we have the luck to live. I trust them not one iota, but if only two or three families are given the supreme consolation of being able to have a funeral service or requiem mass for their loved ones, the Bill will have achieved all that the Government set out to achieve.
That is why I stand four-square with the Ministers on the passing of the Bill and am only too pleased to compliment the ministerial team on bringing forward a Bill that the Opposition have described as obnoxious, obscene, distasteful and disgusting. I do not see it in that way. I have reservations, but the object is to bring peace of mind to a small number of ordinary people. We cannot aim any higher than bringing such peace of mind to the people whom I have met.
Mr. Öpik:
We have had a forensic and legalistic Committee stage debate. Now, as I step back for the Third Reading debate, I can appreciate the human approach that we have taken tonight.
If the House were a person, it is a person whom I would like to meet because we have had the same debate that people have when they have been terribly wronged by someone else and we have decided to take the compassionate route forward. We have heard about bitterness and doubts about whether the other side will respond in kind, just as we feel those things when we argue with another person. However, at the end of the day, we have said that we are going to have faith in seeing the best in people and take a risk. We might get ripped off, but it is worth the risk. The human compassionate benefit of taking it is so great that it is worth being disappointed if we are wrong.
We might be wrong. It may be naive to think that the Bill will work. I feel optimistic. I surprise myself by saying this, but I assume that, if we go this far in extending the gesture of good faith, it may evoke some spark of humanity or decency in people whom we have conventionally written off as barbarians. It is a living experiment. Either they will respond in kind and we will find the remains of the people who were killed and taken from their families--in which case we were right to take the risk--or we will not--in which case we must learn from it and behave differently next time.
Mr. Thompson:
I and my Unionist colleagues will, of course, oppose the Bill. I understand the feelings of those who have lost loved ones and whose relatives were brutally murdered by the IRA and buried in unknown graves. Over the years, there has been pressure on the organisations concerned to say where those peoplewere buried. As a result of that pressure, the IRA claims to have set up an investigation team that has identified the whereabouts of nine bodies. It seems to me that public pressure has forced the IRA to go that far. We must remember that many of the victims belonged to the nationalist community and that the pressure comes from that community. If that pressure continues, the IRA will eventually have to say where the bodies are. This Bill again lets the IRA off the hook.
The IRA will not announce where the bodies are because it wants to be told that, if any evidence is got from the bodies, its members will not be charged or have
that evidence used against them in a court of law. They should not be allowed to get away with that because it is not right in a democratic country to amend the criminal law to let such people off the hook. The IRA has only to issue a statement giving the location of the bodies. The security forces and other authorities could then deal with the situation as they normally would. There is no necessity for a Bill.
The Bill is ill-considered and not fully thought out. The relatives of those who have been murdered will be given less information in the event of the bodies being discovered than they would have got if the normal course of events took place. The Bill is therefore unnecessary.
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