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Mr. Speaker: Order. May I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we cannot explore the full details of this matter today? This is a statement, and supplementary questions can be put to the Secretary of State, but we cannot have a full-blown debate. Perhaps another time.
Mr. Murphy: The right hon. Gentleman managed to make a fair number of points while he was on his feet. I very much welcome his comments about the foreword to the report, because it puts the matters into context. I am glad that he emphasised that to the House. In terms of the contents of the report, this was obviously a completely independent investigation and a completely independently produced report. It is therefore for Justice Cory to make his own comments on the matters that the right hon. Gentleman has raised. I emphasise that it is Justice Cory's report, not the Government's.
I accept the general thrust of the right hon. Gentleman's point about reconciliation being at the heart of the Belfast agreement. I know that, when the right hon. Gentleman has asked me what we should do about dealing with the past in Northern Ireland, I take the issue extremely seriously because more than 30 years of troubles, misery and death in Northern Ireland have produced some terrible things, right across the board, and it is very important that we move forward. However, we also have to ensure that we uncover the truth.
Mr. Andrew Mackay (Bracknell) (Con): Looking back on my four years as shadow Secretary of State during the last Parliament, my greatest regret is that I supported the setting up of the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday. Does the Secretary of State accept that no good will come of that inquiry and that it is simply a huge waste of taxpayers' money? Because of that, and in the light of what my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) has said today, most hon. Members will have the gravest reservations about these new inquiries and about where they might lead.
Mr. Murphy: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, these inquiries resulted from an undertaking given at Weston Park, and the Government have decided to implement them. So far as the inquiry into Bloody Sunday is concerned, it was and still is the Government's view that the issue was so important that an inquiry had to be held. However, I have taken on board the points
made across the House that there is a need to examine the costs and the time involved in these inquiries, and the right hon. Gentleman can rest assured that we shall do both.
Mr. Nigel Dodds (Belfast, North) (DUP): In relation to the inquiries that the Secretary of State has announced, will he accept that, first and foremost, they must be aimed at getting at the truth rather than at the furthering of any narrow political advantage? On costs, will he accept that the inquiries must in no circumstances be turned into long-drawn-out Saville inquiry-type sagas, with all the associated horrendous costs? Bearing in mind the thousands of victims in Northern Ireland, none of whom should be forgotten and who have already been referred to by hon. Members on this side of the House today, does he also accept that many people believe that there should be an inquiry into the role and conduct of those who aspire to government, like Martin McGuinness, for instance, and Gerry Adams, who are part and parcel of the IRA-Sinn Fein organisation, who are responsible for many of the unsolved murders and other murders in Northern Ireland? Let us take the Hegarty case and the La Mon bombing. Both those gentlemen are associated with both those incidents. Will the Secretary of State indicate what proposals he has in relation to those cases, and, for instance, in relation to the collusion of the Dublin Government at the time of the formation of the IRA in the late 1960s? When are we going to have those issues addressed, and what does the Secretary of State have to say about them today?
Mr. Murphy: There were a number of issues there, too. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that, at the end of the day, the establishment of the truth matters above all else. I hope that these inquiries will do precisely that. I have already touched on the question of costs a number of times, and I share his view on that. Everyone in the House agrees that victims are not confined to one side or the other. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Angela Smith), who deals with these matters, does a tremendous job in trying to deal with victims right across the different traditions in Northern Ireland. I accept the hon. Gentleman's point with regard to those issues.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I must inform the House that I am going to impose a ration of one supplementary question per hon. Member, as should be the case at all times except for right hon. and hon. Members on the Front Benches.
Mr. Stephen Pound (Ealing, North) (Lab): As ever, Mr. Speaker, I shall be extremely brief.
Like all people of good will, I welcome the report and hope that it will continue to build on the successes of the Good Friday agreement; I hope that the boil will finally be lanced. In view of the fact that many right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned so many other cases, does the Secretary of State agree that this might be the
time for us to consider establishing some form of truth and reconciliation commission, finally to resolve these problems?
Mr. Murphy: That may be the case. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we must look to the future, and not look to the past all the time. There comes a stage at which it is counter-productive to keep looking at the past, bearing it in mind that blame can go right across the board. There is a case for considering a truth and remembrance or truth and reconciliation commission—call it what one will—but any decisions on those matters would have to have the confidence of everybody in Northern Ireland to be successful.
David Burnside (South Antrim) (UUP): With as much humility as I can bring to bear on this subject—
David Burnside: It will be good. With humility, on behalf of the families of 1,007 members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Regular Army, the Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Irish Regiment, may I ask the Secretary of State why is there not a truth commission in Northern Ireland? Does he agree that the main problem with having a truth commission, which, I hope, will bring to an end the conflict, is the inability of the Provisional IRA, Gerry "I've never been in the IRA" Adams and Martin McGuiness to tell the truth rather than deal in lies? Is that not the major difficulty in relation to setting up a truth commission to deal with the problems and bereavement of the families of those 1,007 members of our security forces?
Mr. Murphy: The hon. Gentleman is right to point out to the House that more than 1,000 families are affected, whose members were in the police, the Army or other public service. They suffer, too, and there are no public inquiries into their deaths. Obviously, it is important to try to find out who committed the murders, but we must not in any sense undervalue the significance of the grief and pain that those families have undergone. I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman on that. As far as the truth—or whatever one wants to call it—commission is concerned, it is right that all parties in Northern Ireland should consider what their attitude to such a commission should be. I am sure that that would apply to all the political parties that currently have representation in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): The Secretary of State says in paragraph 8 of his statement that the Government have considered carefully their obligation to ensure fairness to individuals. Where is the fairness in the Government making public allegations of suspected criminal collusion against identified or identifiable individuals who were not given an opportunity by the Cory inquiry to deal with those allegations?
Mr. Murphy: The Government, of course, are making no allegations. We will decide what to do when the inquiries have been completed. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman listened to what the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) said about the
foreword in the report, which makes it clear that those are not allegations in the sense to which he has just referred. It is important that people understand that. Even though people are not named in that respect in the report, they are referred to by letter, and clearly we had to ensure that that foreword was included to provide those safeguards.
Mr. Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP): The Weston Park talks to which the Secretary of State referred also brought forward a proposal for an amnesty for on-the-run terrorists belonging to the Provisional IRA. Does he understand the deep sense of hurt felt by many victims in Northern Ireland at the apparent hierarchy of victimhood? One the one hand, we have inquiries into some who have lost their lives during the troubles, and on the other, under the Government's proposal, we will allow terrorists who have committed some of the worst atrocities in Northern Ireland, including the Enniskillen bombing—the poppy day massacre when people lost their lives during an act of remembrance—to be granted an amnesty. When will the Government treat victims with fairness and impartiality, because it seems that that is not happening?
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