Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

The hon. Gentleman will not catch me trying to justify or defend the appalling behaviour of Sinn Fein negotiators at Leeds castle. As he rightly says, they and their cohorts in the IRA were planning a major bank robbery as they negotiated to join a devolved Government. That is unacceptable. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I divulge the details of a personal conversation that we had at Leeds castle. We met outside the members’ cloakroom and I asked him, ““Ian, will you be First Minister?”” He replied, ““I don’t know, I just don’t know.”” I walked away thinking, with all due respect, that that was the most positive thing that I had heard him say during 20 years of Northern Ireland politics. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) intervened on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at the beginning of the debate and raised the genuine concern that if the provisions of part VII of the Terrorism Act 2000 needed to be in force, the Government could not justify reinstating the allowances of Sinn Fein Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I remind the hon. Lady that throughout the whole period from 1999 when Sinn Fein Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly were receiving their allowances, section 7 powers were in force. There is thus no contradiction in the Government’s policy to give back those allowances to Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. As someone who voted to remove allowances from Sinn Fein Members of the House, I hope to have the opportunity in the near future to vote to reinstate them as a direct result of developments over the summer. It is a tragedy that Members representing Sinn Fein in the House have chosen not to take their seats and so, once again, are not here to represent their constituents on a matter of crucial importance. When I last pressed a Sinn Fein Member about why they would not take up their seats, I pointed out that their ideological, ethical and moral objections to entering this place were exactly the same as those they had raised against sitting in the Dail and in the devolved Northern Ireland Assembly, in both of which they now sit.