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Lord Glentoran: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for taking us through the details of this Bill with his usual clarity. I am delighted to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, to his first debate on Northern Ireland in your Lordships' House. I very much look forward to hearing from the noble Lord in his maiden speech.
As the Minister made clear, this Bill deals with a wide range of issues, some of which we may stretch even further in Committee, that are important to the future of Northern Ireland, including electoral matters, party funding and the possible creation of an all-Ireland wholesale electricity market. We shall of course be able to examine each of these issues in detail in Committee, and I can assure the noble Lord that the Official Opposition will have some important amendments to table, especially on party funding and electoral registration.
I intend to confine my comments to what I and the noble Lord consider to be the heart of the Bill and, at the same time, easily its most important element. Part 5 makes provisions for the devolution of policing and justice functions to a new Northern Ireland Executive. It does not bring about devolution, nor does it contain the mechanism for triggering it. As I understand it, that is set out in the Northern Ireland Act 1998, under which policing and justice are reserved matters. Under that Act they can only become "transferred" by order of the Secretary of State following a resolution of the Assembly passed on a cross-community vote, as clearly outlined by the Minister today.
That procedure remains unaffected by this Bill, which I welcome. In no circumstances should policing and justice become devolved unless and until the Assembly—with cross-community support—requests it. That will itself only be possible once the Northern Ireland parties involved in the current negotiations have agreed on what is known in the current jargon as the "modalities", including institutional models. Indeed, in our view this is one of the issues on which the success of the current initiative ultimately hinges.
The Bill is intended to facilitate devolution by enabling the Executive to put in place arrangements for ministerial appointments to a new department, or departments, of policing and justice without the need for further primary legislation to amend the 1998 Act. It is therefore a small change but, in the wider scheme of things, of potentially huge significance.
I accept that the eventual devolution of policing and justice was clearly envisaged in the Belfast agreement and endorsed by the Patten commission. It has
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subsequently been reiterated in the 2003 British/Irish joint declaration, and in the proposals for a comprehensive agreement published by the British and Irish Governments in December 2004. In addition, it is accepted, admittedly with varying degrees of enthusiasm, by all the main Northern Ireland parties—including, I understand, by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, when he served as First Minister in the Assembly.
The Conservative Party, too, is supportive in principle of devolving policing and justice, but—and I suspect that this point will be strongly shared by noble Lords from Northern Ireland, most of whom sadly are unable to be here this evening at this late hour—it can only happen when the circumstances are right and with the strongest possible safeguards. Essentially, that means that the Assembly must have shown itself to be stable and durable and—crucially—when all political parties in Northern Ireland that aspire to serve in the Executive give their unequivocal support to the police and the criminal justice system.
That is clearly not the case today. As the US Special Envoy, Mitchell Reiss, has made clear, Sinn Fein remains the only political party in western Europe that still refuses to support the police. It does not recognise the courts. As recently as the McCartney murder only last year, we have seen how Sinn Fein/IRA manages to place an iron grip around the communities in which it operates to thwart police investigations. The graffiti along the Short Strand area of east Belfast said it all: "Whatever you say, say nothing". Most recently, the president of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, described a certain notorious figure in South Armagh, whose farm was the subject of a joint PSNI/Garda operation, as,
The clear implication remains that any activity sanctioned by the republican leadership, or the so-called IRA Army Council, does not constitute a crime.
It is against the background of such events that unionists are being asked to consider the possibility of a Sinn Fein Minister of Policing and Justice, when most of their experiences of Sinn Fein justice have been the bomb, the bullet and the baseball bat. The onus is on Sinn Fein to change.
The Independent Monitoring Commission, in paragraph 2.19 of its most recent report, stated its view that the Sinn Fein
"leadership has accepted the need to engage in policing if it is to achieve its aim of devolution of policing and justice to an Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland".
"It has not however yet determined how this might be delivered. The issue is still very controversial on the ground and has not been resolved to date within PIRA despite robust discussion".
Until that matter is resolved, there can be no question of policing and justice being devolved. It would simply not be accepted by the people who live there and it would certainly not pass a cross-community vote in the Assembly.
Let me make one thing very clear. Supporting the police should not be equated with taking up seats on the Northern Ireland Policing Board and the district
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policing partnerships. It requires more than that; it requires an ideological shift, in which republicans urge people within their communities to work with the police, to report crime to the police and to join the police. There can be no equivocation about this as far as my party is concerned.
There are three further points. First, any form of devolution of policing and justice must preserve fully the operational independence of the Chief Constable and the basic tripartite structure of policing as it exists throughout the United Kingdom. There can be no question of ever going back to a situation such as existed in Northern Ireland prior to 1970 when the Minister of Home Affairs could effectively direct the police.
Secondly, the independence of the judiciary must be upheld by all Ministers. For that reason, I can see no reason why the Government in the other place rejected our amendments making it a requirement of holding office in the Executive for a Minister to pledge to support the police and uphold the rule of law. I give notice now to the Government that this is an issue to which we shall want to return and on which we may well want to test the opinion of this House at a later stage.
Thirdly, we agree with the Government and the Patten commission that national security and intelligence matters must not be devolved but must be the responsibility of the Security Service—MI5—and politically of the United Kingdom Government at Westminster—this Government.
I am firmly of the view that resolving the policing issue is absolutely fundamental if the current attempt to restore devolution to Northern Ireland stands any chance of success by the Government's target date of 24 November. We wish that initiative well. We want to see a proper, fully functioning devolved government in Northern Ireland that is accountable to the electorate. But it will not happen if we kid ourselves into thinking that we can have Ministers who do not back the police.
Furthermore, although the small loyalist parties will not be in a position to qualify for the ministerial positions due to their lack of support, it should not absolve them of their responsibilities to persuade the loyalist paramilitaries to end their criminal activities and disarm. Their activities are both abhorrent and a blight on their communities.
The Bill is intended to encourage republicans to support the police by facilitating the devolution of policing and justice. The proposals for a comprehensive agreement in December 2004 made clear that the Government envisaged the process beginning once the legislation was given Royal Assent. I should be grateful if, during his winding-up speech, the Minister would reaffirm that that is the Government's clear understanding of the Sinn Fein position.
There are many other issues in the Bill that we will address in Committee. In principle, we do not have any major problems but, as so often, the devil may be in the
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detail. There are certainly a number of issues which we shall want to address as the Bill proceeds about which I have not spoken tonight.
In principle, we wish the Bill well and support the process.
8.11 pm
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