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Lord Rogan: My Lords, I support the order, which makes a number of amendments to the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. The fact that the order is required at this time should come as little surprise to many of your Lordships, who will remember the passage through the House of that legislation, which implemented the recommendations of the Patten report. Your Lordships will also remember that many of those recommendations were flawed and inadvisable and caused great offence to the greater number of people in Northern Ireland. I assure your Lordships that those strong feelings have yet to wane.
Unfortunately, the effects are beginning to tell. Noble Lords may have read in the newspapers recently that more than 970 RUC officers have left the force since the beginning of this year. That includes many senior officers. Your Lordships may also be interested to know that, at 31st March this year, the RUC was supposed to have encompassed 8,488 regular officers and 3,202 full-time reservists. The actual numbers were 7,810 regulars and 2,496 reservists. That is a shortfall of 1,384 officers from establishment. Those numbers have fallen even further since then, with the departure of another 594 officers. To put those figures into a mainland context, if the same proportion of shortfall occurred in the Met, that force would be down 4,483 officers. If ever figures were able to tell a story, that drop of 1,978 RUC officers does so. The Royal Ulster Constabulary is fast coming dangerously close to being a police service in crisis.
I believe that your Lordships will share my sense of regret that Article 2 of the order, which substitutes the Police Authority for Northern Ireland for the new Policing Board, has proved necessary. I hope too that your Lordships will be in no doubt as to why that is the
case. It is because representatives of the Social Democratic and Labour Party have refused to take their seats on the board, seemingly in the hope of squeezing out yet further concessions to their objectives on policing and other areas during the negotiations, which the Government claim reached their climax at Weston Park just over a week ago.We await the outcome of those talks in the form of a so-called package of measures, which our Government are currently in the process of drawing up with the Irish Government. It is rumoured that a "take it or leave it" package is due to be given to the pro-agreement parties by the end of this week, although it is proving difficult to get confirmation of that fact.
In addition, I should like to highlight what I understand to be meant by "pro-agreement parties". To the mind of any sensible person--perhaps presumptuously, I like to include myself in that category--"pro-agreement parties" means parties in favour of the agreement. That means the whole agreement, not just the parts that we want.
I was chairman of the Ulster Unionist Party in April 1998, when the Belfast agreement was assented to. Only recently have I given up that rather testing position. As anyone who follows these matters will be only too well aware, throughout my period in office my party experienced difficulties with many aspects of that agreement. However, despite those problems, we held in there and stuck the course; we fought for that agreement and we popped the bitter pills. But we did so because we believed that what we were doing was right not only for ourselves but for all the people of Northern Ireland.
We could so easily have taken the easy way out. Had we done so, my tenure as party chairman would have been far less testing, as, indeed, would have been that of David Trimble, my party leader. But we took the more difficult option. We did everything that we could to implement the aspects of the agreement over which we had power. We have now come to the crunch--the end game, to use a phrase which has become popular with the media in recent weeks.
Two major stumbling blocks remain, if the agreement is to be fully implemented. The first is obviously that of decommissioning. For what it is worth, I wish to call yet again tonight on the paramilitaries, both loyalist and republican, to put away their weapons beyond use, permanently and without delay. As democrats, my colleagues in the Ulster Unionist Party and I shall continue to make that plea until it happens. Let us hope that it happens soon, if not now.
The second major stumbling block is the refusal of Sinn Fein/IRA and the SDLP to move forward on policing. Again, for what it is worth, I call on the republicans to fulfil their obligations under the agreement, which they claim to support, and to assent to the new arrangements, including those concerning the Police Board. If anything, it is now more vital than ever for the SDLP to climb down from its lofty high wire and nominate to the new Police Board. In doing so, it will leave the republican movement more isolated
than it has been for many years. Inevitably, as party leader, the onus for that will be on John Hume. Since he was announced as joint recipient, people have called often on David Trimble to demonstrate his worthiness as a Nobel Peace Prize winner and statesman. I believe that he has done so on more occasions than I can even begin to remember. It is now time for his fellow Nobel laureate, John Hume, to do the same.
Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, with great respect. I have watched from afar with admiration the stand taken by the party of which he was chairman and the price which it has had to pay for that, not least in the recent general election.
We are here tonight, albeit at half-past 11 on the penultimate day of this Session, not to resume for another three months, because the Government have got into trouble with their timetable. No one who has served as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland makes a party point about that; we have all been there. However, while there is no argument about the need for these orders, there is plenty of anxiety, and, therefore, room for argument, about the reasons that have made them necessary. Yet we have not been offered the opportunity to debate in this House those reasons, which are grave.
When this matter was made the subject of moderate complaint by my noble friend Lord Glentoran on the Front Bench, I am afraid that I heard the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, say that he was not surprised that we had been refused a debate. Either the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, or the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said that they were not surprised.
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I think that that is totally unfair and I hope that the noble and learned Lord will agree that he misheard.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, neither of us said a word.
Lord Mayhew of Twysden: My Lords, of course I withdraw that at once. I can only say that I heard those words from somewhere and I was rather shocked. I find that I am not alone on this side. I accept at once the assertion that has just been made.
At any rate, I am surprised. It is extremely important that whenever a government get into difficulties in Northern Ireland they should come to this House and the other place and say what is happening. In my experience, having got into quite a lot of trouble in my time, I always received a sympathetic and informed hearing. If the Government want to carry Parliament with them, they should do that.
In the other place the Minister of State, Jane Kennedy, said:
- "In spite of the Government's considerable efforts to bring about the necessary agreement on outstanding police issues to enable the Policing Board to be established, it is not yet in place; nor is it likely to be in time to be consulted before the regulations
- for the trainees are needed. It is planned that the trainees will be appointed in September. The order accordingly substitutes the Police Authority for Northern Ireland for the board for the purposes of consultation".--[Official Report, Commons, 19/7/01; col. 484.]
- "the Government's considerable efforts to bring about the necessary agreement"?
Whatever the viewpoint of republicans and nationalists, what do the Government make of the RUC's assessment of the shortfall from its need? That was referred to in the debate in the lower House. I do not know whether it is accurate or not but it was said in that debate that the RUC estimates that,
- "there will be a shortfall of about
Other points were made in the lower House that were extremely worrying. It was reported that in,
- "1997-98, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee noted that
- 'the major reason preventing young Roman Catholics coming forward to join the RUC is the fear of violence which would be offered towards them and to members of their family'".
In the debate in the lower House it was pointed out that, "the Gaelic Athletic Association"--refuses to repeal,
- "its offensive and discriminatory rule 21".--[Official Report, Commons, 19/7/01; col. 489.]
I shall not go on at this time of night. There are other matters that other noble Lords will wish to raise, but I state with considerable force that it is a great pity that at this stage we have been denied a debate on Northern Ireland. That denial suggests a rather contemptuous attitude towards Parliament.
I hope that we can all be relied upon to take a grown-up and sensible view at what is always a sensitive time in the negotiations which are taking place. But we need to be told what is happening. I have too much experience of responsibility for the affairs of Northern Ireland to believe that any government are faced at any time with simple choices. No government ever are. But equally, I know from experience that any government who preside over continuing horrifying violence in Northern Ireland, coupled with cynical goalpost-moving by those who refuse to start giving up their arms, need always to take Parliament into their confidence. If they do not do that, that serves only to add fuel to suspicions that there is something disreputable in the offing. There is already far too much fuel for that suspicion.
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