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Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): This is a sobering moment, because the words that the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady) just uttered should be in all our minds throughout the debate. He told the House that people in his constituency and others would be afraid for their lives, their families, their property and their businesses if it were known that they made a donation to his party, or the party that the right hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) represents or the party that the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) represents.
We must be careful to acknowledge that what the hon. Gentleman said is a fact. He is an honourable man and I believe implicitly all that he said. Having heard the evidence to our Select Committee in the past few weeks, we must recognise that, sadly, we are not yet dealing with a normal part of the United Kingdom. That should inform all our discussions and decisions. I shall therefore go along with the hon. Gentleman's plea for anonymity for an indefinite period, because it is made with great personal knowledge and we should respect that. I am sure that all members of legitimate parties from the Province recognise that.
The Bill was described as a dog's breakfast by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who leads the SDLP. It is not made up entirely, as I said to the right
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hon. Member for North Antrim, of Pedigree Chum, but has several other ingredients. We should concentrate on two specific aspects of it. First, we should consider the pro-consular powers that it grants the Secretary of State. I do not impugn his integrity or good intentions, but it is not only the road to hell that is paved with good intentions. I am nervous about giving pro-consular powers to a Secretary of State over such an important issue as determining the dates of elections.
My misgivings were reinforced by the answer that the Secretary of State gave to my intervention, to which the hon. Member for Foyle referred. I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether, if the legitimate Northern Ireland parties that are represented here today—the DUP, the SDLP and the UUP, perhaps together with the Alliance party, which is also fully democratic—had misgivings about the timing of an election, he would heed them. The answer was not reassuring. He said that he would be reluctant to proceed, but he did not say that he would take notice of such misgivings.
We have to be conscious that the Bill gives power to the Secretary of State to determine the crucial issue of the date of elections. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik)—I am glad that he has retained his portfolio—also referred to the order-making powers for which the measure paves the way. I know that the Minister will agree that that is an unsatisfactory way of legislating and it applies only to the Province, because we do not deal with matters in Scotland, Wales or England through order-making powers exclusively in the House. However, it is increasingly the pattern for Northern Ireland and will remain so until we have devolution.
Lembit Öpik: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the creeping erosion of our democracy is going even further than he suggests? A piece of legislation relating to the government of Wales is introducing the Order-in-Council process wholesale. I have little doubt that that is in large part because the Government have already got away with using it in Northern Ireland. Our contention that these precedents are serious—although the Government say that they are not—is being borne out by their promotion to higher status for other parts of the UK.
Sir Patrick Cormack: You would probably rebuke me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I went off on a long excursion into Wales. However, I take the point, made with knowledge and feeling, by the hon. Gentleman, who speaks for his party on Northern Ireland and Wales.
On devolution, which is central to all our concerns, I was impressed by the speech made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), the shadow Secretary of State. He spoke powerfully of the need to have an Assembly—[Interruption.] It would be good to have an audience here, too. He talked—[Interruption.] Hon. Members should not say those things. I did not call myself to speak; I was called by the occupant of the Chair, as other hon. Members may or may not be. It is important that we all recognise that and listen to each other accordingly in this place.
Let me go back to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury, who speaks from the Front Bench and who made some powerful observations
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about policing. I am strongly opposed to devolving power over policing to any Executive who have Ministers from a party that refuses to take any part in the Policing Board. If we move towards devolution and a power-sharing Executive, and if we have a Deputy First Minister from Sinn Fein—as the arithmetic suggests that we might—it would be preposterous to give devolved powers for policing to an Executive that included Sinn Fein, if Sinn Fein were boycotting the Policing Board and playing no part in returning Northern Ireland to the normality to which we aspire.
It is incumbent on Sinn Fein to pause for a moment. If it is really anxious to have devolution and to play a part as a constructive democratic force, it must do two things. First, it must totally repudiate any connection with organised crime and urge any of its number still involved with organised crime to disgorge their gains. The same goes for the so-called loyalist paramilitaries—I hate to use that term in this context—although they do not have the political muscle that Sinn Fein has. Secondly, Sinn Fein must co-operate with the Assets Recovery Agency and with the police, and play its proper part in making Northern Ireland a law-abiding community again.
If Sinn Fein did all that and, having done so, played a part in the Policing Board, it would not be giving up its nationalist aspirations or its desire for a united Ireland. If, some day, the people of Northern Ireland vote for a united Ireland, so be it. I would not do so because I do not want that. I am a Unionist and I support Unionism. However, I wholly honour the way in which the hon. Members for Belfast, South (Dr. McDonnell), for Foyle and for South Down approach their parliamentary duties and advance legitimately their proper cause. Their party has joined the Policing Board and striven to bring a degree of normality to Northern Ireland. If Sinn Fein would do the same, it would not be necessary for the hon. Member for South Down to make the kind of chilling speech that he made, with his customary charm and great moderation, a few minutes ago. As long as it is possible for such chilling speeches to be repeated and echoed, we shall remain a long way from the state that we wish to be in.
I say to the Minister that I hope that the Government, in their legitimate desire to see devolution restored, will not treat with any degree of preference, or perceived preference, a party that does not play by the democratic rules. I hope that they will not seek to rush things, or to impose or over-use the powers of Orders in Council. I hope, above all, that they will not seek, arbitrarily and against the wishes of those who have been democratically elected and who play by the democratic rules, to force a date for an election, as that would be perceived as yet another concession to those who are not prepared to come in.
Those who are not prepared to come in are not here in the Chamber, but I wish that they were. They will be able to read the report of this debate, and I hope that they will do so. I say to them that the door is open for them to come in. If they want a truly peaceful Northern Ireland for their sons, daughters and grandchildren to grow up in, they must take away the system that obliged the hon. Member for South Down to make the speech that he did this afternoon, and they can do that.
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6.57 pm
Rev. Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP): The Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill has certainly been well named. The "miscellaneous provisions" seem to be a smokescreen to hide what the Bill is really about. Its main thrust, and the Government's main motivation in introducing it at this time, is to deal with policing and justice under devolution.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington) admitted tonight that it is all very well to talk about having Sinn Fein on the Policing Board, and about its members taking part in policing and justice, but there should be no place on the Policing Board for anyone associated with terrorism and with the crime that follows hard on the heels of the terrorist organisations, whether they are the UVF's nominee, who is now on the Policing Board, or not. Of course, if that had happened to be a DUP man, he would have been kicked off. He would not have seen daylight. He would not have been allowed to eat his bread. I myself, even while a Member of this House, was not permitted to enter Downing street for two years. I was looked upon as a leper and was not allowed in through the door. It did not do me any harm—actually, it did me good. But I am used to the knocks of the House. I am a democrat and I believe that, in the end, democracy will win this battle.
There is another thing that I must say, which is that we cannot have in the Government of Northern Ireland those who are still in terrorist organisations, and in fact control, run and dictate those terrorist organisations. I did not lock the door at Stormont. I had nothing to do with it. Who brought down Stormont? The representatives of the Government and the Secretary of State—he brought down the Stormont Administration. They are the people who brought Stormont down. Why did they do it? Because the terrorist activities of Sinn Fein were quite open and people saw what it was doing.
I never voted for the Executive when I was at Stormont—neither did my party and neither did many others—but others voted for them, including the Social Democratic and Labour party. They voted into power those who were active in terrorist work and they sat down with them. They talk about excluding people. It is a terrible thing to be excluded. The Minister got up and said that those people will not be excluded. I hope he gets up now and says that we will not be excluded either.
Let us be very fair about it—we were excluded, but we did not argue about that. In fact, we were referred to as Ministers who should not be allowed to be Ministers, but under the terms of the agreement the law said that we could be Ministers. Still people tried to exclude us, but what good did it do? Did it convert Sinn Fein? Did the leopard change its spots or the Ethiopian his skin? Not likely. They became more and more aggressive, and, even today, Sinn Fein has only one word to say, which is that the Democratic Unionist party is calling the shots and keeping it out of government.
The majority of people in Northern Ireland, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, do not want terrorists in the Government of Northern Ireland. That is the opinion of the vast majority of people, and the House needs to learn that. We cannot tolerate terrorists in any Government of Northern Ireland. Of course, if the Bill goes through, the Government seem to think that
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eventually we could have a Sinn Feiner as the head of the police and the head of the Department. They are arguing now that we could have two people involved—this matter of having twos is popular. We could have a Sinn Feiner and someone else in charge of the police.
I wonder when Sinn Fein and the IRA will come with their millions of pounds that they stole from the Northern bank. When will they put that on the table and say, "We are going to finish with our terrorism"? We do not see repentance, and it should be a repentance not to be repented of, but it has not come. Therefore, the Bill looks away into the distant future. It is nothing to do with today, tomorrow, next week or Christmas. Does anybody believe that, with the standing of Sinn Fein today in Northern Ireland, it will give up its violence and its terrorism?
The House, in its wisdom, set up independent commissions. Those independent commissions have met and looked at the situation. They have told in their reports that terrorism is not over. I heard the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box today telling us it was all settled and all over. It is not all over. The Government's own commissions said that the police had informed them that the IRA still had guns. We were told all the guns were gone, but no one could say that all the guns were gone because no one knew how many guns it had. There was no inventory and no proper challenge.
We wanted something that could be seen and that people could depend on. That did not come about. The clergymen who were involved admitted to my party when they met us that they had been brought to the place not by the British Government—they were not appointed by the British Government—but by the IRA. One of them then said that the IRA never was engaged in violence anyway, such is the credibility of the people who were supposed to verify whether the arms were done away with.
Now we have this Bill. I have sat as a Member of the House for a long time, and I have heard Government after Government—Tory and Labour—say, "We would like to pass legislation, but there is a lack of parliamentary time." How is it that we are getting time tonight for something that cannot and will not be accomplished by passing the Bill? The House can pass as many Bills as it likes. That will not accomplish the doing away with terrorism, nor will it alter the fact that there will not be devolution in Northern Ireland until the terrorists are exiled—put out of business. We need to recognise that.
We are called here to waste our time and to argue about points that are not really in the debating Chamber, because they are not going to be dealt with. SDLP Members are worrying about the election of a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister. They need not worry in any way whatever. They can enjoy 17 March and even drink green beer, because that is not going to come about.
Here we are in the House, which is the signal to the world of democracy, and parliamentary democracy at that. We have been called here by the Government to hear their spokesman going on and on in a long speech, but this is like a canary in a cage: plenty of activity, but no progress. There cannot be progress until the House opens its eyes wide and says, "We cannot have terrorists in the Government of any part of this United Kingdom."
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When the Government and the House come to do that, there will be a move—a move in the right direction for democracy. I hope it comes sooner rather than later, but I think it will be later—maybe much later, after we have done what we are doing in the House tonight.
7.8 pm
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