| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
10 Feb 2003 : Column 707—continued
Lady Hermon: I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman because I was following his speech closely. He will remember that the IRA issued a statement on 6 May 2000 in which it promised the people of Northern Ireland and the people of Ireland that it would put weapons permanently and verifiably beyond use to maximise public confidence. It lied to the people of Northern Ireland then, so why we should we believe it this time when it says that acts of completion have been completed?
Huw Irranca-Davies: That is a hugely valid point, as that sort of incident destroys confidence in the whole peace process. I am therefore categoric in saying that we must seek clear assurances on complete disarmament, the destruction of weapons and taking the gun out of the hand—there can be no grey areas. I began my contribution by saying that, in the politics of Northern Ireland, I was struck by the extremes of opinion on both sides. However, this is one issue where things do have to
be black and white—we must have that assurance. I want representatives of Sinn Fein and every other group who have made that commitment to serve on the boards—that is their duty as representatives of all the communities in Northern Ireland. However, the hon. Lady's point is extremely valid.I have relatives, not in the north of Ireland, but in the south or Eire. I recall a conversation with my relatives in Dublin when the peace process was starting many years ago. They told me, "You are too optimistic about what you see from across the water in south Wales. You see the problem in far too simple terms. It is not going to happen because our troubles are too embedded. The factions in our society are too deep-rooted, and the problems run through generations." However, I think that both we in the House and the people of Northern Ireland are proving them wrong. We must have confidence in the peace process and paramilitaries must put their weapons beyond use. With the right assurances, I believe that the Bill is another step forward in that process. I appreciate the concerns that have been expressed, but we have a duty to move that process forward a little bit more.
8.4 pm
Rev. Ian Paisley (North Antrim): We listened with great interest and care to the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). We welcome his first visit to Northern Ireland and appreciate the things on which he picked up. However, let me tell him that we who sit in Parliament do not speak for people from afar—we go down into the ring. He met people over a pint—he can be sure that I would not drink such a thing at all—and they told him all those things, but they are not elected, are not sitting in the Chamber and do not carry the burden in the heat of the day. They do not know what it is to have their homes bombed, their friends maimed or their families attacked.
Huw Irranca-Davies: I bow to the hon. Gentleman's great experience and the fact that he represents the very communities that we are talking about. However, in case I was not clear, I sat down and talked with people in those communities—not people back in south Wales—who told me what was going on.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind all hon. Members that we are discussing the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill.
Rev. Ian Paisley: I was simply commenting on a speech that you did not rule out of order, Madam Deputy Speaker; I therefore thought that I was in order.
Some of us have to go down into the fight, and have to fight for our votes. When we are returned, we speak with a mandate. I have the largest Unionist mandate of anybody in Northern Ireland, and am not being boastful when I say that I have been elected at the top of the poll five times for Europe. However, the hon. Member for Ogmore has not analysed the character or motivation of Irish nationalism and Irish republicanism. I shall provide a simple illustration. There was a terrible bombing in an Orange hall at Tullyallen on the Armagh border, in which men were murdered. I went down to see families in the
neighbourhood who were connected to the church that I belong to. I asked a lady who had lost her husband, "Do you have any idea, dear, who did that?" She said, "Yes, the man who did it is sitting in there, at the top of my husband's coffin. He is weeping and calling him by his Christian name, saying, 'Who would do that to my friend?'" When the net started to close around the murderers, that man left everything and skipped the country, because he was a guilty man, never to return.That does not change overnight. We are asking tonight not for words but deeds. The IRA must disband and shut down its murder operation. It must say goodbye to that, and its weaponry, stained with the blood of our kith and kin and of its Roman Catholic colleagues and neighbours, must be put to the fire. That is the issue—the House would be foolish to think that one representative standing up and telling us that the war is over will end anything, because it will not. The hon. Member for Ogmore said we should have trust, but he knows perfectly well that the party that I represent is not enamoured with the Bill, the Policing Board or the way in which it has worked. We had no part in it—more than that, we opposed it. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) had much to tell us, but our attitude was entirely different in that debate.
However, the Policing Board came into existence, and because we had the numbers, we were told that we could have places on the board. I went to see the then Secretary of State, one back from the present one. I said to him, "Can you give me a promise that if I move on this and put two men on to the Policing Board, you will not use that as a lever to try and get the IRA on the Policing Board?" He replied, "Certainly not. What's more," he said, "if you don't join up on that day"—he pointed to a date in the calendar—"you'll not be in until there is an election, and then the matter will be reviewed." I asked, "Are you telling me what you are telling the IRA: that if they don't come in now, they will not be in until there is an election?" He said, "Yes." I said, "I'd like to believe you," but I did not believe him.
We were hardly into the Policing Board before agitation started to get the IRA on to the board. The police chief has been a propagandist. He wants the IRA on the board. How can I have any confidence in those who say that they will keep the IRA out of the Policing Board? The IRA could have been on the board. Let us not forget that. Some hon. Members seem to think that IRA members were shut out of the board. They shut themselves out of the board. I must be fair: the police chief would not have had members of my party on the board, and I think some of the Unionist members would not have been on the board, either.
We must face the facts, and we do not believe what the Government are saying. We have heard it all before; they have said it all before. The last statement from the hon. Member for Ogmore about what he was asking sounded to me like a planted statement—exactly what the Government would like to respond to. I have sat in the House for more than 30 years. There is nothing green about me. I will listen with great interest to what the Minister says on the matter. I have made my own comment.
In Northern Ireland, we have serious trouble. There is deterioration. I was amazed to hear a former Secretary of State tell us that things were moving and so on. I have only to switch on my radio at 6.30 am and listen to the first news: muggings, murders, elderly women raped, homes ravaged—a catalogue of darkness, every morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Dodds) knows all about it, because it happens in his area. He sits up half the night taking calls, then takes out his car, goes to the affected area and tries to instil confidence in people who have lost confidence.
What we need is not a fancy Bill, cobbled together to get murderers into position on policing boards. We need real policing in Northern Ireland—policing that will shut up and shut off the people who are doing those things and gaining strength. The amazing thing is that we have, sitting unemployed, a body of men who are fully skilled and fully trained and know all about such matters. They could be called in at a moment's notice and brought back for the current emergency, but because of the 50:50 principle in the Bill they will not be called back and they will not be brought in to do a job that they could do in the present situation. So the bombings, burnings and murders will go on and the situation will deteriorate. Of course, the IRA wants that to happen, because it is only from a state of mayhem that it will get the concessions that it seeks.
On the 50:50 principle, let me say to the hon. Member for Ogmore and the rest of the House that it is not right to make a concession to anybody when that concession is wrong. The 50:50 principle is wrong. It is wrong in European law, it is wrong in moral law, and it is illegal under our own laws. People are told, "Oh, you'll be recruited this time, because it's 50:50." Some of them go away angry because they are not recruited, but the reason they are not recruited is not that they are Roman Catholics, but that they do not come up to the required standards. They are not accepted because they do not have the necessary qualifications. Slowly, however, the standards are coming down.
The general public do not know that the new recruits are allowed to do some things and not allowed to do others. A new recruit in the RUC is not allowed to fire a baton round for a long period, until he is passed to do so. I mentioned in the House this afternoon the excessive expenditure on the ombudsman's inquiries. At present the police have to report to the ombudsman on every occasion a baton round is discharged. That results in an inquiry by her office and a full printed report. Even when the baton round was fired without complaint, it is investigated and reported. The cost of such investigations is £2,000 per baton round fired. That is the situation in Northern Ireland.
An investigator is employed at £13 per hour, and a senior investigator at £41 per hour. To date the reports have simply recorded that the rounds were fired as a necessary part of policing, yet the cost of the investigations is excessive. In the past nine months, the police ombudsman has spent £3.5 million on such investigations and reports, with an average complaint and report costing more than £1,000.
There is mayhem, murder and burnings on the streets. Old people cannot go out at night. There is no peace. I say to the House that our first duty is to give the people the right to live. They cannot live under the present circumstances. That is why the people of Northern
Ireland have had enough, and why public representatives in the House must take a tough line on the issue. There can be no compromise. Those who commit the acts that I have mentioned must be made to obey the law. If they will not obey the law, they must be imprisoned.The Government must be firm. The courts must impose much stiffer sentences. The court system needs to be tightened up and should be a real threat to lawbreakers. We need to devise a new anti-terror law that will bring all agencies together in one common battle to defeat terrorism. We need to postpone the fourth year of the Patten severance policy. We need to offer immediate contracts to former RUC officers to fill the gaps that now exist, but cannot be filled. There is no way in which they can be filled. The police thought that they could bring policemen from over here, but they cannot do so, so we have a serious problem. We must upgrade.
Various Governments have treated the full-time reserves abominably. The reserves have been insulted. They comprise men who gave up their jobs and entered the full-time reserve without proper security for the future, and they have now been dumped simply because they IRA did not like the fact that they were RUC men. Sinn Fein, which did not like the RUC, does not like the present Policing Board. It is issuing the same attacks on the Policing Board as it issued against the RUC in its literature. I come from a constituency where terrorists tried to kill a young Roman Catholic who had been recruited, and his father and mother. The policy is the same. What is more, this House should be aware that the IRA has been feeding into every firm in Northern Ireland a piece of literature saying "Treat ex-RUC men the way we always treated them." That is official. It is in the paper. Would Members believe that, after a man has circulated that at a place of employment, people can get up and say "It's all over"? We believe that such men are liars and murderers. What do they care about the truth? They know nothing about it.
Political policing needs to stop. We have political policing in Northern Ireland. When somebody joins, they are asked "Are you a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?" After they have passed the test, whether or not they are a decent fellow, they are told "We're very sorry, but you're not going to be a policeman here because you don't go to the right church." That is what happens and it is wrong. If that happened on the other side of the fence and Protestants were doing that, we would be hounded. We are told that we must make concessions. To whom are we making concessions? We are doing so to men who have devised the greatest system of terrorism in the world. We are seeing in Colombia their ability to teach others to repeat the same acts.
It is all coming out in the wash, but why do the Government want to put these men into office in Northern Ireland, when at an international level they want us to hound them? It is about time that the Government started to hound these men, no matter what side they come from. I have had my bedroom windows smashed with bullets from so-called loyalists. My wife, a local councillor, has been attacked by them. I know all about them. We have only to read the literature that these men circulate—I am talking about so-called loyalist gunmen—about me to know that they
look on me as danger man No. 1. I have been through all that. When my son was at Queen's university, the nuts of his car wheels were screwed off to the last thread. When he came out and started to drive, if one of those wheels had come off, he would probably have been killed and the car would have been wrecked. I have been through all that and I want to say that better men than me have died in this battle. I am here tonight to say to the House and plead with it: let us get the job of real policing done.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |