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9.23 pm
Mr. John M. Taylor (Solihull): Second Reading debates with 10-minute limits on Back-Bench speeches seem to pose minor problems in the management of the business of the House. I rather thought that I would rise to my feet at about half past the hour and that I should preface my remarks by mentioning the limited time available to me. In fact, I am under no such handicap. There is a fair open space of time ahead of me.
Mr. McNamara: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Taylor: That was a disappointment.
I am one of those Englishmen who is particularly fond of the Province of Northern Ireland--after all, it is part of my country. I agree that it seems a desperate shame that such nice people can find a gruesome divide to quarrel across. I used to wonder whether I could be part of the generation that helped to solve it. I thought to myself as a young man that I might never find the answer, but that I owed it to myself at least to try to understand the question.
I have spent a lot of my adult life trying to understand the question. Northern Ireland is such a beautiful and promising country that does so many things so extraordinarily well and is, in its own way, eminently capable of enjoying itself. It has so much to offer to tourists. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Mr. MacKay), the shadow Secretary of State, will attest to the fact that some of the finest golf courses in the world are in Northern Ireland. It would be nice if people were not made nervous about playing on those beautiful golf courses and fishing in the beautiful streams of Northern Ireland.
Mr. Mallon: The names of at least two of those golf courses begin with the word "Royal". I invite anyone to visit them and play.
Will the hon. Gentleman help us all out? For some time I have been on a chase that has become a personal odyssey. I have tried everybody else and failed, so can
the hon. Gentleman tell us, from his great depth of experience of parliamentary legislation, what the title deeds of a Bill are?
Mr. Taylor: As a lawyer, that expression is technically known to me as gobbledegook. I studied the law as a young man and practised it for 22 years. I know what a Bill is, I know what an Act of Parliament is and I know what title deeds to real property are, but I have no idea what the title deeds to a Bill are.
Incidentally, of the two golf courses in the constituency of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon)--Royal County Down and Royal Portrush--
Mr. Mallon: They are not in my constituency.
Mr. Taylor: This may be a minor diversion and the House may not wish to know it, but I am playing Portrush in October.
The hon. Gentleman may be trying to explore another area that is worthy of exploration. I have seldom known a Bill with so many collaterals to it--so many codes of practice that are not in the Bill and so many reserve powers for the Secretary of State. It will be difficult to handle the Bill in Committee, because we will be asked to accept in good faith a lot of closed and inaccessible items. That can sometimes be asking a lot on such important issues.
I shall start my remarks proper by endorsing the Conservative reasoned amendment, which defines our dissatisfaction with the Bill because it fails to sustain the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross in the way that we would like, and leaves the way open for representatives of paramilitaries and even persons convicted of terrorist offences to serve on the policing board and district policing partnerships, and because all that will happen without even a start having been made on decommissioning.
I do not embrace all of the Patten report, but it is irrelevant to dispute whether the Bill lives up to that report, because Patten set out to address the question of policing on the far side of the full implementation of the Belfast agreement. We are not in that position, because one aspect of the Belfast agreement has not been implemented--many would say not even in the slightest degree.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury): The terms of reference for the Patten report were to provide a framework for the policing of a peaceful Northern Ireland on the completion of all aspects of the Belfast agreement. As we do not yet have that, is not the Bill in many respects premature?
Mr. Taylor: My hon. Friend makes that point fairly, and I concur; in short, he is right.
Mr. McNamara: I have the terms of reference of the Independent Commission on Policing for Northern Ireland before me, and they contain none of the caveats mentioned by the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien).
Mr. Taylor: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend can resolve that dispute. As far as I am concerned, my hon. Friend is correct. The ethos of Patten is that it is a formulation for policing in Northern Ireland on the far
side of the fulfilment of the Belfast agreement. That is why I say that my hon. Friend is correct. Patten predicated peace as a premise to new policing, and we are not there.
Mr. McWalter: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that a solution to the policing difficulties should be a causal factor in the development of peace rather than something that comes only after peace is firmly established?
Mr. Taylor: All the elements are interdependent, and we are entitled to see progress with all of them.
On a separate and lighter note--there are not many lighter notes in Northern Ireland politics--as an Englishman who attends his own local police consultative committee whenever he can, I was surprised by the number of layers of monitoring and consultation provided in the Bill. There are the policing board, district policing partnerships, community committees and police liaison committees, to name but four.
I was reminded of my friend Barry Field--the former Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight--who said that given the number of parish and district councils on the island as well as the county council, he sometimes felt that almost everybody on the island was a councillor of one kind or another. Here it may be that anyone in Northern Ireland who is not a police consultee might feel a sense of exclusion.
That may be a virtuous tendency, and of course, it is far better than too little consultation. However, as Patten predicts a reduction in police numbers in Northern Ireland, one feels entitled to ask whether a serious and realistic assessment has been made of the amount of resources and police time that will be absorbed in those processes over and above crime fighting and enforcement of the law.
As for the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a survey of how Ulster people see themselves was conducted by the Belfast Telegraph in April this year. It found not merely that 93 per cent. of Protestants had no objection to the RUC identity and name, but that 61 per cent. of Catholics had no such objection either. Such police satisfaction figures are almost unknown elsewhere in the civilised world.
I have been struck tonight by the extent to which the Bill is friendless in those parts of the House where support might have been thought to be most significant. A near-friendless Bill is setting out to make a nearly gratuitous change of name.
Dr. Godman: It has been suggested that the proposed title--the Northern Ireland Police Service--is, to put it mildly, somewhat inane. How does the hon. Gentleman feel about the suggestion that the new title should be the Northern Ireland Constabulary?
Mr. Taylor: I find more attractive the suggestion made earlier in the debate by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell, who felt that the names Northern Ireland Police Service and Royal Ulster Constabulary should both find their way into the name of the service. If they were combined, the name might be clumsy, but at least it might avoid offending either of the parties.
Mr. Robert McCartney: The hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) suggests the
name the Northern Ireland Constabulary, but would the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor) object to the Royal Northern Ireland Police Service?
Mr. Taylor: I have reached the point of asking for answers on a postcard, please. I am not sure that I can handle all the various suggestions that have been made, but I am a loyal proponent of the name offered by my right hon. Friend.
Mr. Mallon: The suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (Dr. Godman) is interesting, except that when that name is shortened, people will say, "I was nicked by the NICs."
Mr. Taylor: I am sorry that I cannot follow the hon. Gentleman on that, except to say that when I was at the Lord Chancellor's Department, the NICS was the Northern Ireland Court Service. There are too many initials and acronyms these days. DPP now stands for district policing partnerships, but I always thought it was the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Mr. Pound: In your personal experience?
Mr. Taylor: Yes, of course it was my personal experience. We have a logjam of acronyms. By the way, the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) made an exceptionally good speech, which was passionate and full of great eloquence and oratory. I did not agree with any of it.
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