Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 (Specified Organisations) Order
Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Tuesday 11 January 2005
[Mr Martin Caton in the Chair]
Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 (Specified Organisations) Order 2004
8.55 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Ian Pearson): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 (Specified Organisations) Order 2004. (S.I. 2004, No. 3009)
It is a delight, Mr. Caton, to serve under your chairmanship. A draft of the order was laid before Parliament on 17 November 2004. The decision to despecify the Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters was taken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland following a period of contact between officials in the Northern Ireland Office and the political representatives of loyalism. The Secretary of State himself spoke to them prior to making a final decision.
In explaining his decision to despecify, my right hon. Friend said that it was a further step towards resolving the problems that had dogged political progress in Northern Ireland and towards achieving an inclusive future for all based on an enduring political settlement. The Government are mindful, however, of the consequences of that decision for others, particularly victims. I take this opportunity to reassure victims that we have not forgotten their suffering, and we will continue to support and work with them.
The Ulster political research group statement on 14 November contained a number of important undertakings. First, it committed the group to work towards the day when, to use its own words, there will no longer be a need for the UDA or the UFF; and it reaffirmed that the UDA will desist from all military activity, declaring that the organisation's future strategy will focus on community development, job creation, social inclusion and community politics. Secondly, it agreed to enter into a process with the Government that will see an end to all paramilitary activity. Thirdly, it confirmed that it will re-engage with the Decommissioning Commission; indeed, I understand that that has already begun.
The Government have always made it clear, however, that while welcoming that initiative, all paramilitary organisations will be judged by their deeds and not their words alone. To that end, I have taken a close interest in reports of loyalist paramilitary activity over the last few months.
I am encouraged by the information provided to me by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which shows that, since the UPRG statement in November, the number of incidents involving loyalists generally has fallen dramatically, and that none are attributable to
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the UDA/UFF. In recognising that, I acknowledge the political leadership work done by the UPRG. I also appreciate the contribution of members of other political parties who have helped to create the conditions whereby the initiative has at least had a chance to develop.
We agree with the UPRG that the loyalist community's enemies are issues such as poverty, social deprivation, drugs and crime. However, those problems are faced not only by loyalist communities. All organisations that claim to represent those communities should work with us to tackle common issues, so that all in Northern Ireland, no matter where they come from or who they vote for, can enjoy a society free from the burden of paramilitary and drug-related crime. Having mentioned crime, I remind the Committee that the UDA remains a proscribed organisation and that the police will relentlessly pursue any criminal activity undertaken by its members or those of any other group.
All hon. Members who have followed the undoubted progress in Northern Ireland since the signing of the Good Friday agreement will agree that the time has long since passed for all paramilitary groups, loyalist and republican, to cease their activities once and for all and to decommission the weapons that have brought so much suffering. The future that we all seek for Northern Ireland can come about only through inclusive and peaceful political engagement. The order is a move in that direction, and I commend it to the Committee.
8.58 am
Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury) (Con): I too welcome you, Mr. Caton, to the Chair of this Committee.
The statement from the Ulster political research group is certainly welcome. I hope that the Minister will forgive a certain wry amusement at the pledge to concentrate on fighting poverty, drugs and crime. Drugs and crime have, of course, been two of the mainstream activities of loyalist paramilitary groups, activities that have plagued decent people in loyalist areas of Belfast and elsewhere for far too long. The Minister would probably agree that one of the reasons why there is still poverty and why it is so difficult to attract new investment and jobs to those hard-pressed loyalist areas is precisely because of the dominance of paramilitary organisations, which will put off any employer who is thinking of bringing new enterprise to the area.
If the UDA is indeed serious about ending its paramilitary activity, that is undoubtedly to be welcomed. However, in the light of recent events involving the Provisional IRA, I am sure that the Minister will understand that we are right to question him on whether the pledges made by a paramilitary organisation can be relied upon.
I have a number of questions for the Minister, which I hope that he will be able to answer. First, can he be absolutely clear whether he and the Government believe that the UDA leadership is indeed genuine about wishing to change and to give up paramilitary
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activity? I certainly welcome hearing from the Minister that the UDA has begun to engage with the International Commission on Decommissioning, but I wonder whether there is any indication yet as to the likely time scale of action to implement decommissioning on the part of the UDA.
The Minister also cited the UPRG statement about the UDA pledge that it would desist from military activity. Does military activity include crime? Does military activity include the beating up of people in loyalist areas who get out of line? Does it include such things as armed bank robbery or holding people hostage?
Can we trust a commitment given by the UDA or its political allies when, within the last 24 hours, Mr. Johnny Adair—someone for whom no Committee member will have any truck—was released from prison and immediately flown out of Northern Ireland to live in Bolton? If reports are to be believed, had he tried to resume his previous life in Belfast, he would have been set upon by the UDA, which the Minister tells us is now committed to giving up military activity for good. A little clarification would be welcome. Most of us wish that Mr. Adair were a long distance not only from Belfast but from Bolton. That case, however, might be the cause of a potential discrepancy between the pledge and the threat of action on the part of the UDA that we should explore.
Secondly, is the UDA sufficiently cohesive to deliver what the UPRG has promised on its behalf? Anyone who has been looking at the Northern Ireland media over the past few weeks will have read of incidents in Portavogie recently and will have seen reports—the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) is in his place—that the self-styled brigadier of east Belfast has been challenged because he cannot maintain control over the active UDA members in his bailiwick. If the order is agreed to, is the Minister confident that the law is capable of dealing with UDA splinter groups—people who may still be operating under the UDA banner but who are not willing to abide by the decisions of its leadership?
Thirdly, who will judge any alleged breaches by the UDA of the commitments into which it has entered? Will it be Ministers? Will it be the Chief Constable? Will it be the Independent Monitoring Commission? I recall that at the time of the Tohill case, the Secretary of State took the view that it was not for him or the Government to decide whether that action amounted to a breach of the ceasefire, which would have called into question the despecification of the Provisional IRA, but that it was for the Independent Monitoring Commission to assess the evidence and make a report. Will that argument apply also to the UDA if the order becomes law?
Finally, I welcome the Minister's assurance in his closing remarks that the police will continue to work vigorously against crime, even if it is being carried out by people who claim membership of a group that is being despecified. I hope that the Minister, in his winding-up speech, will give an absolutely unequivocal assurance that there will be no soft-pedalling whatever, either by the police, the Assets
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Recovery Agency, Customs and Excise, or anybody else, and that the law will be rigorously enforced against criminal activity, regardless of whether it might cause political embarrassment in any way.
9.6 am
Mr. Peter Robinson (Belfast, East) (DUP): I join the welcome given to you, Mr. Caton. I do not know what you did wrong to be here chairing our proceedings, but we are glad that you are.
I should like to tell the Minister that I acknowledge the difficulty that the Secretary of State and his team will have when they have to address the issue of whether an organisation should be despecified or specified. I have had, from the beginning, two guiding principles that I have suggested to the Secretary of State. Regrettably, he has paid no attention to either of them. The first is that, in exercising his power under the legislation, he should at all times act equitably and treat every paramilitary organisation in the same manner. The second is that he should have clear guidelines, which, when crossed, will mean that any organisation is specified, and, equally, that when an organisation reaches a certain level of inactivity, it should be despecified. I say that he has not kept to those principles because, in the first instance, it is clear that the Provisional IRA has been involved in gun-running from Florida and has been convicted in the courts for doing so.
The Provisional IRA has been involved in training terrorists in Colombia and in attempting to procure in Colombia a new type of weaponry for Northern Ireland; again, it was convicted in the courts. We know about the Stormont spy ring, the Castlereagh raid and the 22 murders, 250 shootings and more than 450 beatings carried out by the Provisional IRA. However, that organisation was not specified. How can it be that an organisation involved in that level of activity was not included on the list?
When one looks at the list provided in the notes, we find an organisation called the Orange Volunteers. How many members of the Committee have heard of the activities of the Orange Volunteers? I have certainly not seen that name mentioned in any newspaper for well over a decade, although it is specified under the legislation—yet an organisation involved in murder, shootings and all forms of gangsterism is not specified. Although the Secretary of State could justify specifying the UDA on the basis of activities that it was carrying out, he could not justify specifying the Provisional IRA. The first difficulty that he has is having different levels of tolerance for different organisations. I do not think that any member of this Committee could be in any doubt why the Secretary of State was more tolerant of the Provisional IRA than of the UDA: it is because there would be political consequences if he were to specify the Provisional IRA. Whatever his arguments might have been at the time that he decided to specify the UDA, there can be no argument today about why he should not specify the Provisional IRA. Since then, it
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has continued its activities. Indeed, we might have read in our newspapers in the last few hours about the Provisional IRA shooting a man in Northern Ireland.
The ongoing violence of the Provisional IRA cannot be ignored by the Government. If they were right to specify the UDA, it must be right to specify the Provisional IRA, in the light not only of its terrorist activity but its terrorist-related criminal activity. As the Chief Constable indicated when he was giving details about the Northern Bank robbery, that was not some Robin Hood activity carried out by the Provisional IRA: in carrying out that offence, two families were terrorised and held hostage under the most trying and difficult circumstances.
One must also ask what the Provisional IRA is going to do with £26.5 million. Is it not to be used for terrorist purposes, and is not the requirement under the legislation for the Secretary of State in those circumstances to judge whether an organisation has ceased to be involved in any acts of violence—it has broken that already with the Northern Bank raid—or in preparing any acts of violence? If it is not preparing for violence, what does it intend to do with the money that it took from the Northern Bank? For all those reasons, there is a powerful argument for the Secretary of State to specify the Provisional IRA.
Returning to the issue of the UDA, it is clear from the remarks made by the shadow Secretary of State that he touched on one of the difficulties with the UDA. It does not have, as the Provisional IRA or the UVF do, a cohesive central organisation or leadership. It is very much based on the so-called brigadiers, the commanders in six areas of Northern Ireland, so the levels of violence and gangsterism that prevail, even today, depend entirely on the individual commander in a particular area. Reference has been made to the brigadier of east Belfast not being able to control his volunteers, but some people in east Belfast fear the commander more than his volunteers.
Many people have watched with absolute amazement the activities of certain individuals in the leadership of that organisation, who have been feathering their own nests and preying on the people whom they are supposed to be protecting. Since 1 January this year, three businessmen in east Belfast have come to me about the gangster activities of the UDA there. The intimidation and racketeering that prevail as well as a massive drug-dealing operation indicate that there is clearly a criminal element still within the UDA who intend to keep its business operating. I believe that it is probably a minority within the UDA, but it is the minority that is causing the problems to the people whom I and others from Northern Ireland represent.
My second piece of advice to the Secretary of State is to have a policy of zero tolerance. Every paramilitary organisation, whatever the circumstances, will attempt to determine what level of tolerance the Secretary of State has in determining, under the legislation, whether an organisation should be specified or not. They will push him to that level. As soon as he
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indicates that his tolerance is not zero, one can be absolutely certain that they will take up whatever slack is available. When they see the Provisional IRA literally getting away with murder, they know that the Secretary of State will have a fair bit of tolerance for the activities that they can engage in. I recognise that he has the further task of trying to encourage circumstances in which organisations will move from being terrorist and criminal organisations to peaceful and democratic ones involved in community activities. Everybody would accept that he must make judgments based on the information available to him. Given that zero tolerance has not been his watchword in this process, total success in it would have been inconceivable.
The Minister is right that there have been significant improvements in terms of the more violent activity of the UDA over recent weeks, and it is right for us to acknowledge that. However, there is still a lot of work to be done on criminal activity. When I question people about why they allow some of their members to engage in that type of activity, they find themselves faced with a conundrum—although they seem to have come to terms with it in relation to Johnny Adair. It is the same kind of conundrum as that identified by the shadow Secretary of State. It is that these organisations cannot simply go up to an individual and say, ''Look, we would like you to stop your drug dealing, and it would be a good idea if you stopped intimidating people and asking for so much each week from shopkeepers and business men.'' They need to have some muscle to stop those people because those people will use muscle themselves. If the organisations are moving towards peaceful and democratic means and they want to get involved in community activity, they find themselves in the difficult position of attempting to stop people within the organisation by using the very means that they are being asked to leave behind. That is ironic.
I accept that that is a difficulty, but the very least that those organisations can do is publicly disown such members and make it clear that they are no longer part of their organisation. That is what I call on the UDA to do in relation to its criminal elements. It should disown those people and set them apart. It should not give them any cover whatever. The community wants them to take that step.
In the circumstances that existed, it was right for the Secretary of State to give the UDA the opportunity to engage entirely and exclusively in peaceful and democratic politics. Some of its members are determined to do so, but it is essential that the Secretary of State gives a clear message that unless the organisation disowns those who continue in criminality, it will be specified once more.
