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Mr. Quentin Davies: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Jane Kennedy: No, I shall not. I have given way to the hon. Gentleman several times during this debate, and in that regard I have shown more courtesy than he was prepared to show to my Back-Bench colleagues during his contribution. However, I shall give way to the hon. Member for East Antrim (Mr. Beggs).
Mr. Beggs: I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. Does she accept that the failure to disclose the detail on, and extent of, the decommissioning that has occurred to date can provoke thoughts of a similarity to the experience of Lord Saville at the Bloody Sunday inquiry? Lord Saville said to the IRA contact on decommissioning, Martin McGuinness:
- "Firstly you are depriving us of the opportunity of discovering the full facts and matters relating to Bloody Sunday, and secondly it will be suggested in due course, that if you are not answering these questions you have something to hide".
Jane Kennedy: The hon. Gentleman makes a very powerful point, and I shall respond in this way. I agree that the lack of transparency surrounding the event has led to the speculation now taking place. That is a matter of regret; however, it is part of the process. What we now want to see is further progress towards complete decommissioning of all weapons by all paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland.
Attempts to play with words—to imply that people have been misled, in order to stir up distrust and suspicion—are going to advance nothing, and certainly not the prospects for a better future for Northern Ireland. They are highly irresponsible and will impress no one. We need to focus on the future. Real steps forward were achieved on 21 October. A speech by the leader of Sinn Fein referred to the
- "full and final closure of the conflict'".
On a political level, we saw engagement between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist party of a kind never seen before. At least 15 meetings took place between those parties. They did not produce a resolution of the outstanding issues last month, but they are full of promise for the future. That is the advance that has been achieved in Northern Ireland, and the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach have applied themselves to it extremely diligently. The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford, although he professes to be a supporter of the Good Friday agreement, has given the process no assistance at all. He has sought to impede it in various ways, in the hope of gaining some advantage here. Well, I am afraid that he has failed, and failed again today. After the election, we shall seek to advance the political process in Northern Ireland again. It will probably not be an easy road, but I am sure that the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will put all their effort into it.
Judy Mallaber: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Jane Kennedy: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I am coming to the end of my remarks.
Real gains have been made within recent weeks in the difficult and sometimes painful process of healing divisions in Northern Ireland. There is a constructive spirit abroad in relation to Northern Ireland affairs—in Northern Ireland and beyond. The Opposition have other preoccupations. I urge them to put them aside, and to play their part.
1.35 pm
Lembit Öpik (Montgomeryshire): I should begin by making one thing absolutely clear to the Minister. She may question the motives of the Conservative party this afternoon, and speak long and hard about her dissatisfaction with what the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Mr. Davies) has said in the past about Northern Ireland. She will, of course, know that I have chosen many times to take issue with what I regarded as a cynical approach to Northern Ireland issues. Indeed, on many other occasions I have gone on the record in this Chamber as sticking up for exactly what she proposed; however, this is not one of those occasions. The Minister needs to understand that, regardless of what she thinks the Conservatives' motives are this afternoon, the Liberal Democrats share their concern about what happened in respect of the Prime
Ministers' comments and the information that lies behind them. So unless she wants to suggest that we are somehow in league with the Conservatives in order to score cheap political points, she will have to accept that there is a case to answer. I did not hear that answer in what she said.The issue of decommissioning, particularly decommissioning by the IRA, has been a thorn in the side of the peace process since the Good Friday agreement was signed—there is no question about that. The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, headed by General John de Chastelain, was set up in 1997 to oversee the destruction of paramilitary weapons. Since then, the general and his colleagues have worked in very difficult circumstances. Contact between the commission and the various paramilitary groups has often been infrequent, with different organisations breaking contact altogether with the commission at various stages in the past six years.
We can all agree that, throughout that time, General de Chastelain and his colleagues in the commission have acted with the utmost integrity. So my first point is that there seems to be universal agreement in this Chamber—certainly among Conservatives, Labour Members and Liberal Democrats—that General de Chastelain has impeccable integrity. That is very important in terms of analysing the situation as a whole. Indeed, such integrity is vital to the success of the commission's role.
My second point is that that integrity must be maintained. Trust in General de Chastelain must be complete in the eyes of the paramilitaries, in order that he can carry out his functions. The IRA views itself as a legitimate army. This is not the place to conduct a long monologue about the IRA, but in trying to understand its relationship with the commission we must recognise how it sees itself, rather than focusing on how others might choose to see it. I should make it clear that my party and I do not condone, and never have condoned, what the IRA or any other paramilitary group has undertaken in terms of violence and intimidation in the Province. However, as I said, it views itself as an army and does not believe that it has been militarily defeated. So, for the IRA, decommissioning its weapons has been a huge psychological step.
For such acts to come about, General de Chastelain has needed to secure the IRA's trust, and I believe that he has acted impeccably in that regard as well. Of course, the commission also needs the trust of the public in Northern Ireland, so we must all recognise—I hope that this is a further point of agreement—that General de Chastelain must never be put in a situation that compromises his apparent integrity in his communications with the paramilitaries and, equally importantly, his integrity in the eyes of the general public.
That leads me to the third, and crucial, element of today's debate. There simply would not be enough public confidence in decommissioning without an independent outside body to confirm that such acts had taken place. It is hugely regrettable that in recent weeks this delicate balance, on which we all seem to agree, has been called into question. In my judgment, the Prime Minister's intervention has added confusion, without doing anything constructive to help to resolve the issues. I listened to the Minister and her liberal criticisms of the
hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford. On this occasion, however, she is adding fog rather than clarity to events. I was waiting for her to explain precisely what the Prime Minister had in his possession in the way of information—not a guess or a judgment—to give him the extra confidence to make the claims that he did.
Mr. Carmichael : Did my hon. Friend notice, as I did, that the Minister's words today were that the Prime Minister "had a sense" of what had happened, whereas the Prime Minister's own words were that he "had information" about it? Does my hon. Friend agree that those are very different things and that the circle will have to be squared if the Prime Minister's role is to be the subject of public confidence?
Lembit Öpik: My hon. Friend gets to the very heart of the matter. It is not merely playing with words, because what the words imply greatly influences the perceived integrity of General de Chastelain. As my hon. Friend suggests, the Minister needs to explain, perhaps in her summation, why the Prime Minister used the word "information".
It is also worth noting that, according to my recollection, Downing street backtracked to a certain extent towards the end of the week, and issued a statement that the Prime Minister's comments were an "informed guess", which further confused the issue. The Prime Minister has certainly not sought to back down and admit that he over-used the phrase "information" when it was only an informed guess. We therefore find ourselves in this quagmire.
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