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Mr. Michael Mates (East Hampshire): If the ultimate aim of all these changes is to produce a balanced police force, acceptable to all, that is an aim that I would certainly share with the Secretary of State. However, is he aware that, at the end of the day, this is not about names, symbols and emblems, offensive as the decisions on those have been to the majority community in Northern Ireland? It is actually about getting the IRA to stop intimidating members of the nationalist community to prevent them from joining a police service in which they can be identified.

If the Secretary of State has not had assurances from the likes of Mr. Adams and Mr. McGuinness that they will acknowledge that this is a new start, and that, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) markedly did not say, the nationalist community must now be encouraged to join the new police service, all that he has done is to take another step down the road to appeasement of the terrorists.

Mr. Mandelson: There is no question of appeasing anyone. During my political career, I have not been known to be very willing to appease, or pander to, anyone. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about intimidation, but I think that the best way to ensure that that intimidation is isolated, rejected and overcome is to ensure that those who wish to join the police can do so in the knowledge that they have the consent and backing of their wider community. That is what is so important.

I have only just this afternoon announced the Government's conclusions and decisions on the implementation of the Patten report. People have hardly

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had very long to reflect on what I have said. I hope that, when they do, their commitment will be great, and that we can successfully overcome whatever residual intimidation might linger in and around the nationalist community, so that we achieve the balanced and acceptable police service that the hon. Gentleman says that he supports.

Mr. Tony McWalter (Hemel Hempstead): Will my right hon. Friend find a way of expressing the fact that the normalisation of the police service is of immense benefit to the whole community of Northern Ireland, including the constituents of many Opposition Members who are fiercely antagonistic to these proposals? Will my right hon. Friend, in seeking to persuade people of the benefits of the proposals, emphasise that those members of the nationalist community of a strong disposition to peace nevertheless hardly ever regard it as natural for their offspring to enter the police service?

I speak as someone with relatives in the Province, in the nationalist community, and as someone who comes from a line of people, many of whose uncles made the police force in New York, Chicago and elsewhere. That family tradition never emerges in Northern Ireland, because we need a discontinuity. We have had an unnatural--

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord): Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman heard Madam Speaker's comments. I should be grateful, and so would the whole House, if he would now put his question very briefly.

Mr. McWalter: Will my right hon. Friend ensure that that message about normalisation, about the importance of the name change, is taken on board? That is the real barrier to peace-loving nationalist people who refuse to countenance joining the police force.

Mr. Mandelson: A normal society in Northern Ireland is precisely what all hon. Members, of whatever party, are seeking to achieve--a normal society, in which people can go about their everyday lives without fear of bombs and barricades; a properly locally run, democratic society, in which there is not the high-profile security presence that many people find intimidating but that, for the time being, it is necessary and important to maintain, and a society in which there is a normal police service. Those are all different definitions and descriptions of the same thing--a normal society. It is into that state that Northern Ireland is now finally emerging. The decisions on the police that the Government have taken will assist, and not hinder, that further progress.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will the Secretary of State accept that, to some of us, he has appeared to sign the death warrant of the most efficient, effective, professional and courageous police force in the world and has sold out lock, stock and barrel to the republican element and terrorism in Northern Ireland? To whom do many of those to whom the right hon. Gentleman has pandered with his bland words owe their loyalty? I am proud to be a member of the United Kingdom. Are those to whom he has pandered of the same view? Do they owe the same loyalty as I do?

Mr. Mandelson: The whole point of the peaceful environment that we are creating in Northern Ireland and

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the political dispensation that is emerging there is that people are able to live as Unionists--proud of their Britishness and continuing as part of the United Kingdom--alongside others who have a different nationalist aspiration. It is to find coexistence and harmony between the two traditions that the Good Friday agreement was created in the first place. I am afraid that I do not accept in one respect what the hon. Gentleman said about the police service in Northern Ireland. Yes, the RUC is efficient and it has won successfully a war against terrorism in Northern Ireland. However, if it is to remain as effective in the future as it has been in the past, it must also become representative of the society that it seeks to police. To achieve that representativeness and to enable the police to continue to be effective, we are implementing the decisions that I have announced.

Mr. John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made an announcement that maintains the momentum for the reform of the institutions of Northern Ireland. However, in the light of the photographs that were published this week of members of the Royal Irish Regiment parading with Orange Order banners, what proposals does he have for a review of the Royal Irish Regiment?

Mr. Mandelson: I have absolutely no proposals for a review of the Royal Irish Regiment. I look forward to home regiments continuing to be garrisoned in Northern Ireland in perpetuity. As for the photographs to which my hon. Friend referred, I am sure that they are a matter that relevant commanding officers and the General Officer Commanding will be willing to look into if my hon. Friend were to raise it with them.

Mr. John D. Taylor (Strangford): As a Minister in 1970 at the time of the previous review of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and as someone who owes his life to the RUC, I naturally feel emotional today. However, I accept that there have to be changes to policing in Northern Ireland. After 30 years, there must be changes.

Does the Secretary of State recognise that the Ulster Unionist party agrees with 70 or 80 per cent. of the Patten report? However, there is no doubt that the report landed the Secretary of State in a difficult situation and on a topic that will cause on-going debate for several months. Does he understand that Ulster Unionists agree that we must have more of the Roman Catholic community serving as police officers in Northern Ireland?

We agree that there must be training in human rights, not just for policemen but for members of police boards. We agree with the proposals for a police college and, of course, with the information technology proposals, but does the Secretary of State understand that all that could be achieved without changing the name of the RUC, a force that has served Northern Ireland and the whole of the United Kingdom well. Will he also tell us for how many years the oversight commissioner will be in office? Will the 50:50 proposal for enrolment of new officers into the police system in Northern Ireland contravene fair employment legislation? Will the 50:50 proportions apply to part-time members as well?

Mr. Mandelson: The right hon. Gentleman makes a special contribution to this debate because he was a casualty of the terrorist war that the RUC fought and

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finally won. His contribution therefore has considerable weight. I am grateful to him for saying that the overwhelming bulk of the changes proposed by Patten, which we are agreeing to today, commands the support of all sections of society from both traditions in Northern Ireland.

I say to the right hon. Gentleman, with all genuine respect, that I do not agree, and cannot accept, that, if we failed to change the RUC's name, it would simply be possible to wait indefinitely for people from the nationalist community to join the police. I do not believe that it would happen. If I thought that there was any way that we could have made those changes and transformed the composition of the police in Northern Ireland without changing the name, I would have done it.

On the basis of all my contacts, my conversations, my research and my exposure to opinion in the nationalist community, I do not accept that nationalists or Catholics in Northern Ireland would join a police service that continued to be called the RUC. Frankly, they associate that name with Unionism and the British state. They accept that the principle of consent is enshrined in the Good Friday agreement, but they also have a nationalist identity and aspiration, and those must be made compatible with their desire to join the police service. I am afraid that a change in the name is a necessary condition for that.

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