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7 Apr 2003 : Column 47—continued
5 pm
If the Government are to be taken remotely seriously, and if there really is a fork in the road—the Prime Minister used that phrase in his speech in Belfast in November—and a choice between peaceful and non-peaceful means, that choice has to be made 100 per cent. this Thursday. This is perhaps the last opportunity before Thursday for me to repeat what the Minister has heard me say countless times before in the past one and a half years: we must settle for nothing less than complete decommissioning and complete disbandment. It is therefore a mistake to suggest that we will settle for anything less. It is wrong to use some other intermediate term or abstraction; we should be using a phrase that is extremely definite, extremely clear and extremely unambiguous. For the Government to introduce an element of ambiguity where there should be none is not tactically clever; actually, it is tactically very foolish.
I turn to my second concern. If, as the media tell us, matters are moving towards the crunch and we may get a settlement on Thursday—perhaps with the help of the honest brokerage of, or pressure from, the President of the United States in Belfast today and tomorrow—and if it really is the balanced, comprehensive and definitive settlement that we Conservatives have called for for a long time, we shall of course welcome it with great enthusiasm. However, we shall naturally examine it with scepticism, to make sure that it really is such a settlement.
Whatever happens, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Parliament, as I know you will agree, will have to take a decision, and it should have the right to do so as soon as the facts are known. It is therefore very important—I hope that the Minister will forgive me for saying now what I have said to her privately—that a statement be made to Parliament on Thursday. If the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister are to make an announcement on Thursday—I hardly think that Mr. Speaker would not consent to interrupt business for such an important matter—we, too, should have a statement, regardless of the time. If the Prime Minister cannot be here himself, my opposite number, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, would be the natural person to make such a statement, in order to explain to Parliament what has happened, and to allow it to take a view. It would be utterly wrong for such a statement to be left until Friday, when everybody else has had their say in the media, and for us still not to have heard from an authoritative and unambiguous source about what happened in Belfast. It would be a crying scandal and an insult to Parliament for such a statement to Parliament to left until after a weekend of speculation.
David Burnside: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that perhaps matters will not move quite as fast as he fears? In terms of deciding on the package and on acts of completion—I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the semantics of "acts of completion"; I would prefer the
phrase "complete acts"—the crucial element is the decision of the Ulster Unionist party. We will take the decision as to whether we rejoin an all-inclusive Executive. As our party's leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), has said often in this House, we will not be jumping first again, as we have done in the past three or four years. We need some time to see whether disbandment and destruction of illegal weapons and explosives is complete and absolute. Unless that is achieved, we will not enter into an Executive.
Mr. Davies: I am reassured to hear the hon. Gentleman say that, and he is right to do so. He is also right to set out the score in advance, so that there can be no misunderstanding about what needs to be done. He will undoubtedly agree with me that any misunderstanding could be absolutely fatal. Any sense on the part of Sinn Fein, or of anybody else, that something less than the real thing will be settled for—that eventually, if necessary, 85 per cent. will be settled for—would be absolutely disastrous, and could cost us the last real chance to bring to its consummation the peace process launched by the Belfast agreement. We all know that, if we do not grasp this opportunity now, it will be very difficult to continue that process under any circumstances much beyond this summer. I am therefore glad that the hon. Gentleman has made his point so clearly.
I of course understand that the Ulster Unionist party will need to take its time on this issue, and I am sure that we will hear its view, along with those of the other parties in Northern Ireland, in due time, which must be in their time. However, I was talking about the Government. If they publish the Hillsborough document on Thursday, come to some provisional agreement with another Government—I am thinking, of course, of the Government of the Republic of Ireland—and make a statement to the press, a statement must be made to this House at the same time. [Interruption.] I see that the hon. Member for South Antrim (David Burnside) is nodding, and all of us, as parliamentarians, must agree with that principle.
When we are dealing with important matters that have been the subject of detailed negotiation, and when the moment comes for the Government to make a public statement, perhaps jointly with the Government of the Irish Republic, about what agreement has been reached, we cannot allow everyone except the House of Commons to be informed. The parties are told, along with the press, the local media in Northern Ireland, the media in the United States and Australia, but all sorts of speculation, as ever, gets mixed up in the reporting of these matters. The British public might be somewhat confused, but if the Government will not issue an authoritative statement to the House, it leaves us in an impossible position. I trust that the Government will not do that.
Lady Hermon: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for generously taking a second intervention from me this afternoon. In view of what he said earlier, does he agree that when the Secretary of State makes a statement on any agreement coming out of Hillsborough, it is vital to spell out any additional changes to policing in Northern Ireland? The hon. Gentleman will know that after the
Police (Northern Ireland) Bill had passed through the House and before it went back to the other place, changes were made to the Belfast sub-groups and further changes were made to allow people with criminal and terrorist convictions to become independent members. At the Ard Fheis in Dublin, Sinn Fein said that that had not gone far enough. It was still unhappy and its spokesman on policing, Gerry Kelly, is reported to have said that
- "they have not yet achieved the threshold for a new beginning to policing."
Mr. Davies: I hear what the hon. Lady says. She is always well informed about such matters, and she is right that policing is a sensitive subject for both republicans and Unionists in Northern Ireland. As the hon. Lady knows, in negotiating processes, none of the parties secures 100 per cent. of their desiderata. It would be an unnatural and peculiar negotiation if they did, because no negotiation would have been necessary in the first place. It is perhaps natural at this stage that various parties are saying that they do not like this or that.
The Government have the responsibility to make a success of the peace process. I know that they want to do all that they can, but they must take their own decisions on the basis of their conversations, whether individually or jointly, with the political parties. We have said all along that it is a mistake to think that one can square with one party by giving away some concessions and then try to do the same with the next party. That is not possible because everything is interlinked. Only general and contingent conversations are possible: if we are to secure effective agreement, all the parties have to be taken along with the Government almost simultaneously. The Government must be the judge of their own tactics and they can decide whether they want to listen to us. When they have not done so in the past, they have come adrift, but when they have followed our suggestions, they have secured favourable results on the whole. Let us hope that they have learned their lesson.
The Government must also be the judge of the right time to go public and make a statement about what progress has been achieved, and to clarify how they envisage the future of the process. We are told through the media—not through a statement to the House of Commons—that we are coming to a crunch this week and that a statement may be made on Thursday. I hope so: we all hope that sufficient progress will have been made to warrant such a statement. However, if a public statement is to be made, it must be made—ideally, first—to the House.
I realise that a joint statement with the Irish Government presents greater difficulties, but I see no reason not to make a simultaneous statement—or within just a few hours—to the House, following any joint declaration, whether in Belfast or elsewhere, by the two Governments. That was certainly the procedure adopted by the previous Conservative Government after the Downing street declaration. Indeed, a statement was made to the House within two or three hours of that declaration. I hope that the Government will follow that good precedent. They have not said that
they will not, and I trust that they will. As I said, because of the difficulties in the past and in the light of the suspicions in some people's minds, it is right to make the point in public now. I hope that I shall have no further occasion to mention that, except, perhaps, to say on Thursday that I am grateful for such a statement being made as quickly as possible after any intergovernmental declaration.I hope that that is not controversial. Obviously, if the Minister wishes to respond, I shall listen intently. I hope that the Government's business managers and the Leader of the House have taken note of these feelings. On this, if nothing else, I believe that I speak with the support of a wide range of parliamentarians on both sides of the House.
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