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Mr. Peter Robinson (Belfast, East) (DUP): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace), whose experience in Northern Ireland has brought a valuable insight to the House. On his last remark, it is not even just an issue of the intimidation of those who might be donors to political parties in Northern Ireland—the reality is that Northern Ireland is a very divided society, and as soon as anyone is identified as a supporter of one party or another, that person will automatically lose a large section of their clientele. That is off-putting and it will harm the political parties and democracy in Northern Ireland if people are not encouraged to continue to give to the political parties there.
I can confirm that my party gets money—perhaps not as significant as that received by the SDLP—from people in the Republic of Ireland, but we still believe that all donations should be governed by one piece of legislation. We should not have another jurisdiction dictating the manner in which there will be an announcement or publication of the names of those who have donated to political parties in Northern Ireland. It is vital that that issue is dealt with in Committee.
A number of hon. Members—indeed, probably all who have spoken—have referred to the wide-ranging nature of the provisions in the Bill. It has been described in many ways. It was first a dog's dinner. The dog was then in a manger. I am not quite sure where the dog will end up by the end of the debate. The Bill's provisions clearly range from Dan to Beersheba, but the central issue is policing and justice. That was clearly the most prominent issue that the Government had to deal with, and I should say why. It is also very clear that there is no practical requirement for legislation on policing and justice powers to come before the House at this stage.
I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr. Anderson), who spoke passionately in describing devolution. I found myself nodding in agreement with him as he went through the attributes of devolution. I am a devolutionist. I believe in devolution for Northern Ireland in the right circumstances and at the right time—if it is of the right kind. He spoke of his desire to see devolution in his area. We agree with him on all those matters, but he somehow made a leap that the Bill was in some way necessary to make that stride forward. Of course, it is not.
The Government are putting the cart before the horse with the Bill because policing and justice will not—cannot—be devolved to Northern Ireland under existing United Kingdom legislation. That cannot happen. The existing legislation under the Belfast agreement will not enjoy the support of the majority of the Unionist community. Cross-community support is required for any form of devolution to take place. Therefore, there will be no devolution.
The Government know that they must change the form of devolution to get an Assembly up and running, yet instead of doing what is required first, they have decided to leapfrog that and deal with the policing and justice issue. Why should they do that? What is the imperative that requires the Government to introduce legislation to provide an enabling power on policing and justice to an Assembly that is not sitting and for which
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the legislation that will allow it to sit is still not in place? The answer is clear—they have been colloguing with Sinn Fein-IRA.
Sinn Fein-IRA required changes in policing and justice matters to give them a cloak for various statements in the past. That is the basis of the legislation, but it will not be required for years to come. Does any hon. Member really believe that, if the Assembly were up and running, anyone would seriously allow policing and justice powers to be devolved to Northern Ireland?
The Minister talked of a triple lock. I suspect that none of those locks will be opened if policing and justice powers are devolved to Northern Ireland. The Government certainly would not consider that the time was appropriate to hand over the responsibility for policing and justice to the Northern Ireland Assembly, particularly if it included those who are still involved in criminality, according to the Government's own watchdog on the matter. The Northern Ireland parties in the Assembly would not vote on a cross-community basis for that to take place; nor would the community in Northern Ireland allow it to happen. Therefore, the three locks that the Government say are in place—I will come back to that issue in a moment—would not be unlocked by the Bill.
We are talking about what could happen years down the road. Even if the Assembly wanted policing and justice powers to be devolved years down the road, I am told quite reliably, by the Minister's officials, that it would probably take about two years before they could devolve them. The practical requirements after the Assembly took the decision would take several years to work through the system—enough time, I should have thought, for even the hard-pressed business managers of this place to find time to have this legislation passed. There is no need to deal with the Bill tonight; there is no practical purpose. It is being done for a political purpose—a purpose that is between the Government and Sinn Fein-IRA.
I said that I would return to the triple lock. It has changed—it is no longer the triple lock that was in the Government's proposals for a comprehensive agreement. I have spoken to the Minister privately about the matter, but I think that it is necessary to put it on the public record. When I met him privately, I accused the Minister of being involved in some mischief, and he assured me that he was not. He assured me that the Government would look at the matter and that it was not their intention to depart in that respect from the proposals for a comprehensive agreement. However, the comprehensive agreement proposals specifically contained another lock, which is not in the Bill.
The proposed comprehensive agreement required any proposal for policing and justice powers to be devolved in Northern Ireland to be made jointly by the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. Why is that such an important proposal? It is because even though the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) rightly recognises the advance in the Bill allowing, in effect, a veto for Unionists under the arrangements, regrettably, a cross-community vote in the Assembly does not require a majority of Unionists to be in favour, because one of the triggers for cross-community voting requires only 40 per cent. of Unionists. I do not question the bona fides of the Ulster Unionist party, but the UUP and the Progressive Unionist party could provide that
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40 per cent., so without the consent of the majority of the Unionist community as represented in that Assembly, legislation could be enacted to have policing and justice powers devolved in Northern Ireland. Two of the crucial locks are absent. Cross-community support in the community itself, which is one of the requirements of the proposals for a comprehensive agreement, would not be provided, and the requirement in the comprehensive agreement for the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister to act jointly has been removed. Clearly, such a proposal would not have the support of the largest party in Northern Ireland.
It is vital that that issue is re-examined. The Minister said that there was no mischief intended by the Government, but I think that if it was not intended by the Government, there is someone lurking in the draftsmen's department who intends mischief. The draftsmen are extremely careful when looking at the language of agreements and translating those agreements into legislation. I suspect that it would have been impossible to translate the comprehensive agreement proposals into legislation and simply forget the requirement that the proposal come from the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister. I hope that, when he winds up the debate, the Minister will respond to that issue, which many of us consider to be vital.
The main point is that in the foreseeable future the circumstances will not exist for policing and justice powers to be exercised in Northern Ireland. Let me make it clear: my party is a devolutionist party. It believes in the widest powers possible being devolved, including policing and justice powers. It wants that to be done with the right modality, at the right time and in the right circumstances, and that can only be when the community has confidence that those powers will be properly exercised. The community could never be satisfied that those powers would be exercised properly when those who would be exercising them are involved in paramilitary and criminal activity.
The reality that we have to face up to is that there is a party in Northern Ireland that is still entrenched in violence and criminality. The report of the Independent Monitoring Commission—the Government's own appointed body—indicated that that party is still involved in paramilitary activity, intelligence gathering and criminality at the very highest leadership level and at an organisational level.
I congratulate the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Garda Siochana on a recent joint effort. Operating on both sides of the border in the sort of security co-operation that we support and encourage, they descended upon a certain individual. I had asked the Assets Recovery Agency when it was going to act against the man, and I have raised his portfolio in the House on several occasions, so I was glad to see the police on both sides of the border take action. The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Adams), who never presents himself in the House, says that the man in question is just an ordinary decent farmer who is being punished because he is a republican, but I looked at the list of items removed from that farmer's farmyard. He had £200,000 in sterling and euro notes and thousands more in cheques. He had 30,000 cigarettes—he is obviously a heavy smoker. He had 8,000 litres of laundered fuel, although I am not sure in what vehicles he was using it. He also had two firearms—I am quoting
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what was reported in the newspapers, so the information does not come under the sub judice rules. There were also six oil tankers and a number of laptop computers, which are now being examined by the police. Let me ask hon. Members a question—where do people put their laptop computers? The answer is under bales of hay. Hands up everyone who stores their laptop computer under a bale of hay. I do not suggest that there is anything alarming about the fact that that man's laptop computers were found under a bale of hay, but it must make discovering their contents more worth while.
That is a man who, according to the leader of Sinn Fein-IRA, is an ordinary decent farmer. None of the ordinary decent farmers whom I know keeps that amount of cash on their farm, or would even have that amount of cash to keep. Nor do they have that many cigarettes, that amount of laundered fuel or that number of vehicles—and they certainly do not keep their laptop computers, if they have any, under bales of hay. However, I congratulate the Garda Siochana and the PSNI and I trust that the case—together with several related cases that the ARA and the Criminal Assets Bureau in the Irish Republic are handling—will eventually come through to the courts. Mr. Deputy Speaker, I see you sitting somewhat nervously, waiting to pounce if I go too far, so I shall say no more on that subject.
A number of speakers in the debate said that elements of the comprehensive agreement need to be changed. I speak principally of the leader of the SDLP, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who becomes very exercised if anyone suggests changing one letter, never mind one word, and certainly not one phrase, sentence or paragraph, of the Belfast agreement. I understand that he has some emotional capital tied up in that agreement. He believes that it is a wonderful document and that, like the law of the Medes and the Persians, it should never be changed. However, the reality is that it failed.
The hon. Gentleman has not come to terms with that—he is still in denial. He does not realise that the core of the agreement that he negotiated had cross-community support as a key requirement. Without cross-community support, his deal cannot work, and the people of Northern Ireland have moved on—he has not, but they have. They have shown that repeatedly at the ballot box, which is where we encourage people to show their feelings on such issues. They have said that they do not support his agreement, and one of the key reasons for that is to do with accountability. Although the proposals for a comprehensive agreement have not been endorsed by my party, many of them flow from proposals that were made by my party and many others were not the choice—certainly not the first choice—of members of my party.
The hon. Gentleman has identified an issue that was not my party's first choice—the way in which the First and the Deputy First Ministers would be elected or appointed. I do not have any misgivings about the issue, although I find it difficult to understand why he is so tender about the election of the First and the Deputy First Ministers. One never talks about rope in the house of the hanged man, and he would be better served if he did not raise the issue of elections, given his party's background.
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I recall the occasion on which Mo Mowlam, the late Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, came to the Dispatch Box and announced to the House, almost in tears, that the then Member for Newry and Armagh and Deputy First Minister, Seamus Mallon, had resigned. She said that that was dreadful and that he was a good man, and she spoke eloquently about his attributes. At home, the Deputy First Minister's car was taken away, his salary was stopped, and his staff and even his mobile phone were taken away. All the emoluments of office were taken away, but people realised that no one else would be elected to his position because they did not have the necessary cross-community support. They therefore said that he did not resign, even though his resignation was announced in the House, his pay stopped, and he was thrown out of his offices and so on. They decided to overturn everything and make him un-resign. If I were the hon. Member for Foyle, I would not have raised the way in which the First and the Deputy First Ministers are elected, as I would not be on strong ground.
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