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26 Mar 2003 : Column 389—continued
Mr. Mallon: It would be unfair to take the Minister to task, because Belfast is a difficult city. I appreciate her problem. Part of it lies in the difficulty of devising a relationship and an organisation that will be capable of the takeover that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) described. That is why it would be unfair to blame the Minister in any way—Belfast just happens to be a very difficult place.
There was a difficult situation in a part of Belfast when I was in office. With all the contacts of Government and all the influence of office, we could not deal with it without actually going to visit the people to whom the hon. Gentleman referred: members of paramilitary groupings. I shall go a little further if we are going to be honest: we facilitated meetings of members of the republican movement and loyalist paramilitary groupings to try to resolve the matter. If the devolved Administration in the north of Ireland faced such a problem, will it not also be faced by the present Government in the north of Ireland?
If we are going to debate the matter, let us at least be honest. There are parts of Belfast in which no Government, police service or wing of the security services will be able to deliver what is needed. For that reason alone, there is great merit in the proposal to get people involved in a DPP sub-group. Yes, there are substantial risks, but there are risks in everything that we are doing in the peace or political process, whichever we wish to call it. The reality is that Belfast is a difficult place, and continuing demographic changes have made it even more difficult. There is not going to be the nice pat symmetrical arrangement for DPPs that there will be in most other places in the north of Ireland. Hence the difficulty in arriving at proposals that will have substantial built-in protection against takeovers by any paramilitary grouping.
I fully accept that this is, as the Minister would readily admit, a difficult one to explain. However, if we are trying to respond to needs, we must realise that they go beyond the semantics of our self-righteousness, as we speak from the safety of the green Benches.
David Burnside: Is not the demographic shape of Belfast—the fact that west Belfast is Catholic and nationalist—and the demographic make-up of the greater city of Belfast, with the split between Protestant and Catholic, and Unionist and nationalist communities, the strongest argument for a unitary policing institution covering the whole city? Do not the demography and the breakdown of the community argue for one such institution rather than four?
Mr. Mallon: I am not arguing for either. May I make it clear to the hon. Gentleman that I support the Government on this because I know from experience that there must be involvement on the ground by people who were members of paramilitary groupings if we are to get stability in places like Belfast? That may not be what people want to hear or face up to, but it is the reality. I repeat, I have personal experience of not being able to do anything about a security situation in part of Belfast. That situation was flashed across the world to the discredit of the whole of the north of Ireland, and the only recourse was to enlist the help of both loyalist and republican paramilitaries.
If we start from that basis, some of our attitudes may change a little. It is easy to feel self-righteous here, in the comfort of our own situation. It would not have been easy to be self-righteous in parts of east or north Belfast last year, and those who would put their own sense of self-righteousness before the safety of people in those areas should think again. I know that that is not what is being suggested, but I am trying to explain that experience tells us that there is a difficult problem that is not going to be resolved easily. There is not going to be any nice, neat, little piece of legislation that will achieve that in relation to either DPPs or sub-groups.
Mr. Dodds: From what the hon. Gentleman is saying, it appears that he is advocating the membership by paramilitaries of the sub-groups in Belfast, if not DPPs more widely. Will it not reinforce the fears of many ordinary people who have lived for years under the heel of those paramilitaries in parts of Belfast if they hear an hon. Member saying that it would be a good thing for paramilitaries to serve on a body that is supposed to monitor and oversee the functions of the police?
6.45 pm
Mr. Mallon: In a contradictory way, yes. I want to see those who were involved in paramilitary violence not just on sub-groups, but on DPPs and policing boards. If we do not work towards that, and if we cannot arrange and deliver that in the coming period, we will have a gaping hole in the middle of what we are trying to achieve in the political process. Let us take it a step further, and let us see how harsh the questions are that we have to answer.
There will be proposals, whenever they come, before the House in relation to the devolution of powers and responsibility for policing and justice. They will come before the House. They will be brought forward by a Government, and by and large it is those sitting in the Chamber tonight who will vote on them. What that means, in essence, is that the positions within the devolved Executive and the devolved arrangements are open to those who have paramilitary backgrounds, both loyalist and republican. It is not a nice, easy world that we live in, and there is no nice, easy, pat answer that the Minister or anybody else can give us on the matter tonight.
Rev. Ian Paisley: The hon. Gentleman is correct. We are at stage 1 on the ground, but there are stages 2 and 3 to come. Today's papers tell us what the IRA is. Mr. Adams and his friend say that they will soon be in charge of the courts and the police in the devolved Government—that is right on the front of the newspapers—and they congratulate the Prime Minister. They have every confidence that even though there is a war on in Iraq, he will see them through.
Mr. Mallon: I cannot speak, nor would I purport to speak, on behalf of the Prime Minister, but I know that when matters start to resolve themselves, the issue will come to the Floor of the House, just as it has tonight. There will be no easy way of dealing with it then, any more than there is an easy way of dealing with it tonight. I want to focus on the need that exists in a place like Belfast, but if west Belfast were not west Belfast, I wonder whether there would be the same reaction to the proposal.
The hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) asked me a question. I ask him to think about what made west Belfast demographically, physically and politically. It might be a question worth asking. If the answer to it is honestly faced, we may start together to face the problems that we have. Yes, there will be people with paramilitary backgrounds sitting on the sub-groups and on the DPPs. There will be people from republican paramilitary groups and people from loyalist paramilitary groupings sitting on those organisations. There will be the colleagues of those in the IRA who killed people in the north of Ireland, and there will be the colleagues of those whom we have seen operating in loyalist parts of Belfast sitting on those groupings.
The answer is not going to lie there, however; it will lie in the courage of people generally in Belfast, who will themselves impose their requirements. There are brave people in the north of Ireland who will not let themselves be pushed about, whether in west Belfast or anywhere else, as is being suggested. That is where the future lies, but let us not fool ourselves that there is some easy way
around the situation or that it can be sanitised so as to become entirely different. We cannot do that and the more we try to do so, the more our thinking becomes counterproductive.
Mr. Trimble: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I agree that there is no easy way of dealing with these matters, but his exposition of the situation as he saw it might have been helped if he had been clearer about using the past tense in referring to people with various backgrounds. The situations that are envisaged will come about only if those with paramilitary backgrounds have clearly given up their activities, if the paramilitaries are no more, if we are operating in a context in which that is clearly in the past and if we have the safeguard of people who will monitor and apply remedies and sanctions should that become necessary.
Mr. Mallon: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. Of course, that is the type of world in which we would like to live and which we want. Things would be a lot easier in such a world, but we have yet to get there. We must do so on the basis of a reality that he recognises. I am glad that he recognises it and I praise him for doing so. It is much too easy for all of us to hide behind our own self-righteousness at times, for want of a better word. It is much more difficult to stare reality in the face and see how we can deal with it.
It is for that reason that I shall support the Government new clause. I shall do so not because I think it a work of art—I do not—nor because any work of art is available in dealing with the problem, but because it is an honest attempt to deal with that problem, in a very difficult city, in a way that is inclusive and that holds out a prospect, hope and confidence that, somehow or other, with people on the ground working together, an Administration of Northern Ireland working with them and the proposed structures in between, we can change the face of Belfast and other places.
It is much too easy to say that the difficulties are too great, that there are nasty people out there and that we do not want to have much to do with them. It is the reality for us as politicians and legislators that we must recognise the difficulties and assume the type of courage that is needed to try to deal with them. It is for that reason, not because the new clause is a legislative gem, but because it is an honest way of dealing with the issue, that I shall support the Government on this issue.
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