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Mr. MacKay: I have a lot of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. Like many hon. Members in the Chamber today--but not all of them--he has long taken a keen interest in Northern Ireland matters, and I know that he visits the Province regularly.
The Patten proposal to drop the RUC's royal title does not have widespread support in the community. It should be reconsidered and, even at this late stage, I urge the Secretary of State to do so. The Bill does not require him to take an immediate decision, but allows him to defer it for some time. It leaves the matter in the right hon. Gentleman's hands. The Opposition, at the Dispatch Box and elsewhere, have advocated adopting a title that incorporates the RUC alongside a new title for the force. We have been supported in what seems to be the entirely correct compromise by many distinguished figures, including Monsignor Denis Faul.
Three weeks ago, the Secretary of State told the House that it should be possible to incorporate the name of the RUC in any new title. We shall obviously give him the opportunity to do just that. However, what he has said today, what the Bill says and what he has been saying in the media recently about the title not including the RUC, but having some legal definition that it is, does not go far enough unless there is much more clarity. I do not think that anyone is convinced of that yet; we do not see it, as he clearly does, as a satisfactory compromise.
We will seek to amend the Bill in Committee so that the proud name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary can stand alongside the working title of Police Service of Northern Ireland. We look forward to the Government joining us in the Lobby in support of that.
Sir Brian Mawhinney (North-West Cambridgeshire): Does my right hon. Friend welcome the fact that the Secretary of State said that, during the passage of the Bill, he would listen carefully to the arguments deployed? Does my right hon. Friend remember the Secretary of State saying earlier that he did not envisage making the name change until the middle of next year? Does my right hon. Friend think that it would be helpful if, in his winding-up speech, the Minister of State indicated the sort of circumstances that might occur over the next 12 months before the proposed name change that might have some influence on the Secretary of State's thinking?
Mr. MacKay: My understanding is that it is a date in September. The Secretary of State is nodding, so we have an even longer time of 15 months. I see the Minister of State smiling. Whether that is a positive sign, I do not know. [Interruption.] His fellow Ministers say that he has a sunny disposition. Well, some of the time.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) has vast practical experience of Northern Ireland affairs in a variety of capacities, not just ministerial. His comments are worth serious consideration by the Minister of State who will, I hope, address them and the related points that I have made when he is winding up the debate.
Mr. Thompson: Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that such a compromise, in which the names of the RUC and the Police Service of Northern Ireland are incorporated as one, is not what the people of Northern Ireland believe that the Tory party was proposing? Surely when the Tory party talks about maintaining the proud name of the RUC, it should mean exactly that, and not this unhappy compromise.
Mr. MacKay: I am disappointed at the hon. Gentleman. He normally attends our debates and will have heard me say on a number of occasions that I think that it a reasonable compromise to incorporate both names. I would be the first to admit that the name of the police force can, at times, be a sensitive issue to both communities. That is why, to acknowledge that sensitivity in both communities, we have suggested the joint name. It is cumbersome, it is boring and it is almost pedantic, but I think that it is the best way in which to bring people together on the issue.
The hon. Gentleman has badly misinterpreted what I said. Again and again, on radio and television in the Province, here on the mainland and from this Dispatch
Box, I have made it clear that we have never said that the name must stand alone and not be changed. We have always said that we want it included in the new title, while not exclusively being the new title. I regret that, unusually on this occasion, the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great regard, is mistaken.We all agree that there must be change in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The RUC, under Sir Ronnie Flanagan's fine leadership, recognises this. It is wrong that the force is so overwhelmingly Protestant. I agree with the Secretary of State about that, and I agree with Patten wholeheartedly. The RUC has for many years sought to recruit more Catholics. However, let us be clear: the biggest single disincentive to Catholic recruitment, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) in his intervention, remains intimidation and the threat of murder. Anybody who doubts that should recall how the number of Catholic applicants to the RUC doubled after the first IRA ceasefire in 1994, only to fall back again when the ceasefire broke down. Nor has the situation been helped by the refusal--
Mr. Seamus Mallon (Newry and Armagh): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. MacKay: I will in a moment. What I am about to say will encourage the hon. Gentleman to make an even longer intervention, so I shall finish my remarks before giving way.
The situation has not been helped by the refusal of nationalist politicians and members of the Catholic clergy to recommend to young Catholic men and women that they should join the police force. I very much hope that that will change. There can be no justification whatever for that refusal. I willingly give way to the Deputy First Minister.
Mr. Mallon: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I put it to him, as gently as I can, that, as a Catholic who has lived all his life in the north of Ireland and who knows exactly what people feel about that issue, it seems to me somewhat patronising at times to be told why we as a people and we as a community do not do this or that. There is much more to the reasons why members of the Catholic community have not joined the police service than the point that has been made today.
Furthermore, unless we start to face realities, we shall not solve the problem. The right hon. Gentleman speaks of the Catholic Church. The Church is important not because it is a church, but because we are talking about Catholics and, last week, it issued a statement, through Father Tim Bartlett. I shall make reference to that statement, if I catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
Mr. MacKay: Obviously, I hope that the Deputy First Minister catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as there was an omission from his remarks. I was hoping that he would say that he and his colleagues would strongly encourage the best young men and women from his community to join the RUC in large numbers, so that we can achieve what he and I want--a more balanced police force that broadly represents the two communities in Northern Ireland. It is a pity that he did not do that,
although it was probably an oversight because he wanted to make other points. When he makes his speech, I am sure that he will put that right.
Mr. Mallon: If the right hon. Gentleman believes that I omitted something, I should like to put that right. The matter is as simple as this--I shall repeat the point later because it bears repeating: get this Bill right and we shall do that; get it wrong, and the objectives of Patten cannot be achieved.
Mr. MacKay: I did not quite understand the pause after "get it wrong" and then the heavy hint. I hope that the hon. Gentleman's comments will not be misinterpreted outside this place, because they were not what I would have expected from someone for whom I have great respect. In everybody's interest, he will need to clarify that matter when he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
I hope that we all share the objective that the composition of the police force should more accurately reflect the make-up of the community in Northern Ireland. We all want the RUC routinely to go unarmed, with no need for flak jackets and armoured vehicles, and to patrol all parts of Northern Ireland without the need for support from the Army.
The biggest contribution to that--it would transform the policing environment in Northern Ireland--would be for the paramilitaries, republican and so-called loyalist, to end terrorism for good; to dismantle their organisations and to begin decommissioning their illegally held weapons, as they promised to do under the Belfast agreement. When that happens, it should fall to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, with its proud name and symbols preserved, to rise to the challenge of policing the peace as valiantly as it has policed Northern Ireland throughout the darkest days of terror. The RUC deserves our support; without our amendment, the Bill does not.
5.39 pm
Mr. Seamus Mallon (Newry and Armagh): I again thank the right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay) for allowing me to intervene earlier.
I have put my party's view on the issue for many years--almost 30 years--and I will not bore hon. Members with what they have heard before. I want to make two points and to emphasise that this is not a stand-alone issue; it is interlocked with the political and constitutional dimension that is Northern Ireland, and it takes two parts of the interlocking to deal with the problem. The first is the alienation of a section of the people from a constitutional arrangement about which they were not consulted and of which they are not particularly enamoured. That may not sound good, but it is the reality--however, we can deal with that reality through the terms of the Good Friday agreement. Secondly, policing belongs to the people; it does not belong to a Government, a state or a Secretary of State. As such, it must belong to all the people if we are to have successful policing.
I make those two brief points because we have the institutions in Northern Ireland--between north and south, between east and west and between Britain and
Ireland--but we do not yet have a police service that can belong to all the people. That is what I and my party want to achieve, and we have striven to achieve that not in the comfort of debate or theory, but in places such as Derry, the Bogside, south Armagh, south Down and west Belfast. That was not easy, and it will not be easy in the future. Let us put all the theories aside--my colleagues and I do not have time for such luxuries--because if we get the Bill right, I will go into the hardest parts of Northern Ireland and I will ask people to join the police service and to support it. That is what I and my colleagues will do. However, we must get the Bill right.The name "Patten" has been cited repeatedly in the debate, and rightly so. However, it is perhaps time that I reminded the House of who he is. He is no rabid nationalist or someone from south Armagh, like myself, and he is not an erstwhile supporter of any paramilitary group. He was a former chairman of the Conservative party, he was a Minister in the Northern Ireland office where he represented the Conservative party, he was an Education Minister in a previous Government, he was the former Governor of Hong Kong and he is currently a Commissioner in the European Union. Let us not doubt his credentials, and I say that as someone who is not a Conservative. Let us not doubt his ability, and I say that as someone who has admired him for a long time. Let us not disown him, but I have seen traces of that from members of the Conservative party. He still belongs to the same party as the right hon. Member for Bracknell.
How do we deal with Patten? I have considered the ways in which people have tried to deal with him. One can abuse him verbally, and that has happened--although, thankfully, he is not the type of man who lies down in the face of such abuse. One can scorn his report, and I have witnessed that. One can question his motives and those of the other commissioners, and I have seen that. However, I did not see the clever way of dealing with Patten until the Bill was produced. One takes the report, espouses it and then emasculates, diminishes and reduces it from what it was intended to do. That is the clever way to deal with Patten.
I remind the House of what Patten said and what he was charged to do. He was charged to create
- a new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland with a police service capable of attracting and sustaining support from the community as a whole.
We went further than that--much further. We indicated that we would put people on the policing board and encourage people to join the police, on the basis of the implementation--full and faithful--of the Patten report. We also indicated that we would ask young people to stand against the forces in their own community to do the same. We indicated that we would do that not in a theoretical way, but up front, on the streets, where it counted. Having expressed a willingness to accept our responsibilities, I must express disappointment that others did not accept their responsibilities in the same way.
Our concerns relate to points right through the Bill. It leaves the Secretary of State to decide whether to implement key Patten recommendations on symbolic
matters. I shall not get into the hang-ups about symbols; I have much too much respect for Unionism and the problems of Unionism to do that. However, I remind everybody of what Patten said. He stated that the Royal Ulster Constabulary
- should henceforth be named the Northern Ireland Police Service.
- The Northern Ireland Police Service should adopt a new badge and symbols which are entirely free from any association with either the British or Irish states.
- the Union flag should no longer be flown from police buildings.
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