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27 Mar 2003 : Column 541—continued
David Burnside: Would not the Minister like to give the context of section 19 of the Belfast agreement, which authorised Patten and the commission to make recommendations that would encourage widespread community support? A raft of policing proposals—some are already in law and others are about to be enacted—has been introduced in Northern Ireland. They have no widespread community support.
Jane Kennedy: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's contention. I know that many members of his party would make the same point, but the changes in policing have been supported. For example, they have cross-party support on the Policing Board. I look to that to continue as a result of the changes to the Bill.
As I have said previously, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has come a long way already. The new beginning for policing has not foundered, despite what some of its critics would have us believe. One has only to consider the reception that was given to the Chief Constable and the two new recruits at the White House earlier this month to realise the high regard in which the Police Service of Northern Ireland is held in America and elsewhere.
Since the agreement, the change has been most marked in policing. I pay tribute to all who have played their part. I look forward to the day when those who have yet to do so step forward to embrace policing on the basis that the Prime Minister set out.
Lady Hermon: I am grateful to the Minister for allowing me to intervene on her closing remarks but the point that I wish to clarify is crucial to whether we support the Bill.
I understood from yesterday's debate that the commencement orders would not be brought to the House until after acts of completion had taken place. I listened carefully to the Minister, and she used the phrase "in the context of acts of completion". Does "in the context of" mean "after"?
Jane Kennedy: Throughout our proceedings yesterday and today, I used the phrase "in the context of acts of completion." I assure the hon. Lady that acts of completion—putting away paramilitary activity in all its forms in Northern Ireland—is an essential part of the change that we want to happen. I am not going to get into a debate about the detailed sequencing of how events might happen. The acts of completion that we are looking for have been stated many times.
I began my remarks by talking about the necessity of re-establishing trust, but that trust must reside not just in the Governments of Britain or Ireland. The parties to the arrangements that we want to re-establish in Northern Ireland will have to make those partnerships work. It is within that context that we would consider the changes being brought forward.
The Bill provides a further basis for the development of the new beginning to policing that is already well under way. For that reason, I commend the Bill to the House.
6.10 pm
Mr. Quentin Davies: Three clear conclusions emerge from the debate. First, the Government's abuse of the guillotine in business as important as this is nothing less than scandalous. Rafts of new clauses and amendments have gone through without discussion.
Secondly, an otherwise good-tempered debate was marred towards the end by the most extraordinary display of bad temper by the Minister of State that I have seen in the House for a long time. She appeared to be so riled by our criticism of the Bill that she lashed out with insults to all concerned—to me, the Liberals, and the Democratic Unionists. I choose my words carefully, but she seemed in danger of giving a false impression to the House by implying that there had been a vote on the Policing Board about the substance of new clause 4. I am assured by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley)—an honest man—that that was not the case.
Mr. Davies: I shall not give way to the Minister, although I have never failed to do so before. Earlier, she declined to give way to me because she knew that she was utterly in the wrong. I am now going to pay her back in kind. She must recognise that the courtesies in the House must be reciprocal.
The matter of reciprocity has an even more important context. The third thing to emerge from the debates over the past two days is that the Government have reverted to the bad habits of the past. They prepare and bring forward and offer new concessions to Sinn Fein-IRA in advance of, and in the absence of, any necessary movement from the other side—that is, acts of completion. The tactic is completely misconceived, at a time when we have been waiting in vain for any such moves from Sinn Fein-IRA, and in a week when a major arms cache has been found. Much of the arms and other equipment may be new, and so represent very clear evidence of a breach of the ceasefire.
It is utterly inept of the Government to bring forward concessions to Sinn Fein-IRA and to try to incorporate them definitively in primary legislation. The Government have been guilty of that ineptitude over and over again. There were moments when they seemed to accept that it was a great mistake, and I am sorry that they should be making the same mistake again.
This is a bad Bill, made a great deal worse by the incorporation of the new clauses introduced by the Government on Report. It is based on bad strategic and tactical thinking—or perhaps no such thinking took place, even though it should have. The Bill's inadequacies have been ineffectively covered up by a display of bad temper.
I can think of no reason why the Opposition would do otherwise than vote against the Bill. I hope that it will receive the more profound discussion that it so evidently deserves in another place, and that their lordships will be able to give it the treatment that we in this House have been unable to give it because of the Government's abuse of the guillotine.
6.14 pm
Mr. Mallon : In many ways, the conclusion of the Bill's passage through this House is the end of an odyssey in relation to policing and my participation in it over the past 30 years.
I say to people here who do not like the Bill that if, like me, they were a spokesman for a small party and had lived and worked in south Armagh over the past 30 years trying to sell a message that was political to the core because it centred on justice and policing, they would have a different perspective on what has transpired today on the Floor of the House. It is a sea change. I advise hon. Members to think back to what was happening—dead bodies day and night; policemen being killed and killing; constituents being killed; emergency prevention of terrorism legislation. That was the staple diet. Somehow or other, we were able to keep alive the hope that there was a political process; that peace was available and that central to both peace and the political process was a resolution of the policing issue. I maintained for years that when we cracked policing, we cracked the political difficulties. I still believe that passionately for many reasons, but for this one especially: that one cannot have a viable organic political process that works in devolutionary terms in a divided society unless it works together effectively on political and administrative issues, and it cannot do that unless it addresses the issue that goes to the core of stability, which is the provision of fair and just policing for the society that it serves. We now have the opportunity to achieve that.
I am sorry that two years were wasted, but I believe that we have now got it right. There have been enormous changes. The Minister referred to the Policing Board, which has been, and will be, an enormous success. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) would agree that in the past the Police Authority was not a place for him or for me. People were chosen. One had to have the right colour eyes to be part of that set-up. If a couple of castle Catholics, maybe two garden centre Unionists and at least one lapsed member of the Alliance party were stuck on to every board in the north of Ireland, that was called representation and accountability. Whatever the difficulties that arise from people's political views, warts and all, the current situation is much more viable and contains within it the seeds of hope that did not exist before.
Lady Hermon: I just want to pay tribute to those who served on the Police Authority, many of whom were threatened and intimidated during their years of service. I want it to be on the record that they did a service for the people of Northern Ireland.
Mr. Mallon: The hon. Lady misses the broad point that I am making. I am not attacking the people who were on the Police Authority. I know that some people were intimidated; I know that some people resigned, and I know why they felt obliged to do so. But those are things of the past.
I want to finish with a political point—a brutal political point, because political points in the north of Ireland are never that nice; they are underpinned by a harsh reality from which we sometimes try to hide. The negotiations that took place at Weston Park represented an act of completion in relation to proposals on policing that was essential to the Bill and to the political process.
I regard that as the act of completion in terms of this issue. If it is not the act of completion in terms of this issue, there will be a reaction not just from people such as me, but right across the board.I trust that Weston Park was the act of completion, because I want to refer to a further act of completion. I know how difficult it is for Ministers to speculate about what will happen in the next two or three weeks. I have the freedom now to say what I believe will happen and what must happen. It would be inconceivable if, in effect, when this legislation has been drawn to a close, as an act of faith in the future and as an act of reconciliation within the community in the north of Ireland, those who call themselves patriots did not prove it by taking their rightful place on the Policing Board. That is the acid test of all the political theories, ranging from the principle of political consent down to every dot and comma of the Good Friday agreement.
That act of completion must be there to facilitate other acts of completion, which will lead to the restoration of devolution. And in my view, that will happen. I put it directly and bluntly to the Sinn Fein leadership, "Show your courage, show your political courage, show your capacity to look at the whole question of justice and policing in the north of Ireland, and put your representatives where you must put them: on the Policing Board." There can be no prevarication about that. There can be no further demands. There can be no back-room negotiations, post-negotiations or other movements on this issue. The moment of truth has come for that organisation and for everybody else. I believe that they will respond, and that they will do so for this reason: people in England, Scotland, Wales, the Republic of Ireland, the United States and all the European states are looking at what is happening here. At present, there are distractions, but they are looking here, because this is the template for how these issues of violence and division can be resolved. The Northern Ireland resolution, the Good Friday agreement and this legislation contain the template of what can be applied in other countries throughout the world.
That is why it is so important that we do this not just for ourselves, for where we live, and for those whom we represent, but for other places throughout the world that can learn something from what we have gone through. It is a small thing to ask, in historical terms, to show now the courage to lead from the front in terms of real justice, real stability and real peace, which will arrive from this legislation.
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