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Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North): Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Good Friday agreement commits all parties to work in good faith for the fulfilment of all parts of the agreement, including decommissioning?
Mr. Mandelson: I can confirm that. As recently as the Mitchell review and its outcome, Sinn Fein again recorded its view that decommissioning is an essential part of the peace process. That is most important, because members of both traditions need to feel that their commitment is reciprocated, but, at present, that confidence has slumped.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mandelson: I will in a moment.
Actual, verifiable decommissioning is vital if we are to retain the faith of all parties in the Good Friday agreement--not just decommissioning by the IRA, but by all the paramilitary organisations. Each of them has
an obligation; we must see decommissioning being undertaken by all of them, if the agreement as a whole is to be properly and effectively implemented.
Mr. Blunt:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bercow:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mandelson:
I give way to the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt).
Mr. Blunt:
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. Was it not implicit throughout all the negotiations for the Good Friday agreement that Adams and McGuinness spoke for the IRA? Indeed, it was reported in The Sunday Times that McGuinness made explicit the fact that he spoke for the IRA. That is why we are in our present pass. Will the Secretary of State confirm that? Will he tell us whether the Irish Government support the legal process that we are about to put in train?
Mr. Mandelson:
The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not get drawn into the intricacies of the relationships between different parts of the republican movement--I am not an expert on that subject. I only note that it was significant that, at the conclusion of the Mitchell review, the IRA issued a statement in which it pointed out, among other things, that it acknowledged the leadership of Sinn Fein in those matters. Implicit in that was an acceptance of the strategy, the policies and, indeed, the expressed positions that had been taken by Sinn Fein. I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's question about the Irish Government in a moment.
Mr. Bercow:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Mandelson:
I am going to save up the hon. Gentleman's interventions. It would be an enormous shame if I were to take them all in a rush at the outset of my remarks, because I should have nothing to look forward to later.
It is important to note what George Mitchell--
Mr. Bercow:
I am not going away.
In December last year, when George Mitchell celebrated the success of his review of the agreement, he said:
Against that background, Ulster Unionists always made it clear that, if there was no progress on decommissioning by the end of January, it would be very difficult for them to remain in the Executive. No commitments or guarantees were made on the other side. I have always made that clear; I have never claimed that anyone guaranteed that anything would happen by any particular date. Indeed, Sinn Fein made it clear that premature public
deadlines made its task--of persuading the IRA to move--all the more difficult. Nor do I think, in that connection, that it helps matters for anyone to accuse anyone else of acting in bad faith. Nobody has a monopoly of good intentions in this situation.
None the less, it was made clear to all those involved in the Mitchell review that substantive, tangible progress in decommissioning would be needed to sustain Unionist commitment to the Executive beyond the end of January.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington):
I recognise that the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning has ruled out the possibility of the purchase of decommissioned equipment. Will that proposal still be on the agenda in the difficult months that now face us?
Mr. Mandelson:
I am not conscious of that proposal ever having been placed prominently on the agenda. However, in so far as it was being considered, it may still be considered in its proper place and by the appropriate people--the international decommissioning body and its three commissioners headed by General John de Chastelain.
Whatever the virtue of that proposal, it is not simply the continued absence of actual decommissioning that is causing the current difficulty. It is the uncertainty about whether decommissioning will ever happen and, if so, when and on what terms it will take place. When I say, "on what terms," I do not mean British terms and I do not mean Unionist terms, either. It is not for the British Government, the Ulster Unionist party or any other group to impose on any other organisation the terms on which it voluntarily carries out actions of arms' decommissioning. It is, however, a matter for those organisations to engage properly with the de Chastelain commission and to agree with it--within the terms of the Northern Ireland Decommissioning Act 1997--how decommissioning will take place and within what acceptable time frame. All that remains, I am afraid, unclear, despite the availability of the de Chastelain commission to take matters forward.
Of course, I applaud the fact that the Provisional IRA's guns are silent. Everyone in Northern Ireland is enormously relieved that those guns are silent. Its ceasefire during the past two and a half years has been an indispensable condition for politics to work in Northern Ireland. I welcome its expressed desire for a permanent peace. The absence of the word "permanent", as some hon. Members and certain right hon. Members are aware, was once an insuperable obstacle to progress. Now it has been said and the obstacle has been surmounted.
If the war is over, we have to ask the Provisional IRA why arms still need to be retained. If violence is a thing of the past, why cannot weapons of violence be put permanently beyond use, as they should be, and as the Good Friday agreement lays down that they should be? I know of absolutely no section of nationalist opinion anywhere that disagrees with that sentiment. Of course--[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Gentleman knows of a section of nationalist opinion that disagrees with that sentiment.
Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby):
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way at last. He has said some extraordinary things. Does he not think that, possibly,
Mr. Mandelson:
As the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge, I was referring not to republican opinion but to nationalist opinion, and the key point stands. Anything that smacks of surrender is unjustified; nobody is seeking to humiliate anyone in these circumstances. I cannot think of anything that would be more destructive.
Any cause or sentiment that unites the Irish Government, the American Government, editorial writers in Dublin, Cork, Boston, Washington and New York, the leadership and rank and file of the SDLP and public opinion in the north and south of Ireland surely cannot be wrong. All that coalition--that breadth and wealth of opinion--has stated unambiguously that the time for decommissioning is now, and that a start must be made by the Provisional IRA. Yet, as matters stand, a way forward continues to elude us.
Mr. Robert McCartney (North Down):
Is the Secretary of State aware that after the atrocities at Enniskillen, Omagh and Canary Wharf, world opinion expressed much the same sentiment as is now being expressed, but inevitably gravitated back towards support for Sinn Fein and their aims?
Mr. Mandelson:
Public opinion was right then and it remains right--decommissioning needs to start. I was disappointed and slightly taken aback that, when my hon. Friend the Member for Foyle the other day supported an early token act of decommissioning, his intervention was dismissed as inappropriate by the chairman of Sinn Fein. That is a lordly and arrogant rebuff to someone who has committed much to the peace process and who has been rewarded with a Nobel peace prize for his efforts.
"I believe that the basis now exists for devolution to occur, for the institutions to be established, and for decommissioning to take place as soon as possible."
He concluded that
"there is no other way forward".
He was absolutely right.
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