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Let us consider what might happen in future, given the current political shifts in Northern Ireland. We cannot pass a Bill without considering the consequences, for those who will the means also will the consequences. We cannot simply say, "Oh, we passed the Bill, but we don't worry about the consequences." Everything that we do in the House has a consequence for citizens--whether a few or many--given Sinn Fein's rampaging electoral success in Northern Ireland.
It is clear to those of us who live there--perhaps it is obscured as yet from those who live elsewhere in the United Kingdom--that there is a strong possibility that Sinn Fein-IRA will replace the SDLP and some of its Members in the House. If that happens and IRA members are elected to the Dail, the whole concept of the Union and the consent principle embodied in the agreement will be undermined, hollowed out and destroyed. That is what the IRA is about.
The IRA is perhaps rather cleverer than some hon. Members seem to think. I have never thought that there was such a thing as mindless violence in the IRA's lexicon. Its violence is always for an end and it is always carefully thought through, and the Bill is part and parcel of its attack on the integrity, territory and constitution of the United Kingdom. In all truth, unless the Minister sees it in that light and understands it, he does not know what he is trying to push through the House today.
Why have the Government given the IRA those consequences? What threats were made or implied--bombs in London, Manchester and Birmingham? The capability exists; the IRA has the weapons, explosives and people. It has spent the past two or three years recruiting, and shifting weapons and explosives. We are facing an even more sophisticated and dangerous organisation than that which existed several years ago. Its troops are on the street. Far worse, its sleepers are on the street, and they are over here.
Is that body of people--Sinn Fein-IRA--worthy of the concession? The Minister has told us that they must meet the obligations involved in sitting here--they do not; they will not. They do not want to sit here. They have a totally different agenda. They are simply using the House as the excuse to claim that they are the representatives of a people in an all-Ireland republic. No doubt, there are warm relationships with Dublin, but at what price have
they been bought? What is the warmth of the relationship between Sinn Fein-IRA and the Government of this country?The Government maintain that the ceasefire is intact so long as the terrorist leaders do not say that it is over or do not take part in active attacks--but that means active attacks on the security forces. Murders of civilians, especially of those of the same denomination and religious community, are dismissed as mere housekeeping. Neither I nor the victims and their families think that that is housekeeping: it is murder, but some folk in the House sanitise it using the phrase "killings in Northern Ireland." Killings? They are cold-blooded, ruthless murders in furtherance of Sinn Fein-IRA's political and constitutional objectives and of undermining normal, decent society in Northern Ireland, which in many parts of the Province such as the inner cities, has been replaced by mafia rule.
Numerous concessions were made on the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. The Dublin Government, the SDLP and leaders of the Roman Catholic Church pocketed them, but they were not considered to be enough. The concessions made yesterday were not enough. Further changes will be demanded of the police, and the special branch will have to be broken up. Local policing boards will have to be put in place and that will give greater power to Sinn Fein-IRA. It is all part and parcel of the Government's capitulation to terror, murder and violence. The people of Northern Ireland pay the primary price now, but the lessons for the rest of the United Kingdom are real and dreadful.
Honour in this place demands integrity over democratic structures. Our national interests have to be protected and we should reject the Government's attempt to reinstate the Bill. We have got to forget about sordid little deals with thugs and murderers for political gain. We should stop being afraid of what the IRA might do to us and concentrate on what we can do to the IRA to destroy it as a terrorist, military and political force. Only when that evil organisation is destroyed--it can be destroyed only by being exposed--will we achieve real peace. That is why the Bill is wrong: it helps, rather than diminishes, the IRA's influence.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross). Not only do I agree with virtually everything that he said, but I had the great pleasure of being with him all night on 25 and 26 January when he was able to give us the benefit of his very sound advice. I know that Ministers particularly appreciated that.
I place on record my apologies to the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for not being present when he opened the debate. Unfortunately, one cannot be in two places at once, and I was doing a press conference with Baroness Young in the other place on the age of consent, another measure that the Government have sought to railroad through Parliament. The Under-Secretary and I shared the night together on 25 and 26 January--if I can use that expression without it being misunderstood.
The House should remind itself of what happened on that occasion. The Minister rightly reminded us that not many Members voted against the Bill on Second Reading,
which took place the day before the Committee stage. I was one of them, because some of us had the suspicion that the Government were trying to smuggle through a measure that they described as modest. They suggested that there was nothing of great moment in the Bill and that we could all be perfectly comfortable with it.I, along with some of my right hon. and hon. Friends, thought that there was something odd about the Bill. It was clearly designed to extend to Members of the Irish Parliament the same rights enjoyed by Members of Commonwealth legislatures. It is a bizarre idea that, given all the struggles of the 19th century, citizens of the Irish Republic should want once more to be part of our Commonwealth, or empire as it formerly was.
Given the Prime Minister's obsession with the word "modernisation", it occurred to me that, instead of repealing the legislation that to this day allows Members of Commonwealth legislatures, such as those in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Nigeria, to sit in this place, he wanted to extend the right to sit in the House. However, that right was being extended not to another Commonwealth country or to one, such as South Africa, that had been a member and was then readmitted, but to a country that had emphatically renounced any idea of wishing to be part of the Commonwealth of which Her Majesty the Queen is the head. It struck me as astonishing that, far from seeking to repeal the measure in the name of his pet obsession of modernisation, the Prime Minister actually wanted to use it. I tried to discover why. The reason is that the Government found a purpose for the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975. We began to wonder whether that purpose was legitimate or whether there was something more sinister behind it.
There is no doubt that when we discussed the Bill in a Committee of the whole House, some of us were concerned about concessions being made to Sinn Fein. We tried to press the point. In my intervention on my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth), I pointed out that the Minister said on Second Reading:
- The Bill is not part of the Good Friday agreement, but it is consistent with it. Separate development of direct interparliamentary links between the various legislatures was envisaged at the time of the Good Friday agreement.
We pressed on through the evening to try to discover whether that was the case and I referred to something else that the Minister said on Second Reading. He sought to allay our fears by saying:
- It is time to build a sounder basis to our institutional relationships and to provide a basis on which we can proceed, as two islands just off the mainland of Europe, with many common links, historical and otherwise, between the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic--a basis for ensuring that those closer links are given some institutional background. I believe that that explains this fairly modest Bill.
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