Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

I regret that the House has to debate this Bill. Like many Members, I want normalisation in its full and most honest sense, so that we no longer need to have all sorts of special provisions or to talk about the reality of intimidation and the residual effects of so many years of paramilitary activity. Regrettably, we are not quite there yet. However, it is clear that only a very small minority in this House would prefer not to go forward with the legislation. I would have preferred the Government to be bolder and to put us on a firmer path to full and proper normalisation in judicial and criminal justice processes—the same path that we have been pursuing in relation to policing. My party and I agree with the Human Rights Commission, which believes, in relation to clause 1—which is essentially a rebadging of part VII of the Terrorism Act 2000—that we are at a point in Northern Ireland where we should be moving away from such provisions. I say that not because I believe that we are free from intimidation in Northern Ireland or because I am in any way naive or relaxed about the nature of paramilitary activities and the various hangover features of paramilitary life, but because we need to take the lead as democrats instead of constantly finding ourselves coming to this House beholden to the latest concession that the paramilitaries are supposedly giving us. We spend our time praising and thanking one paramilitary group for one statement and another paramilitary group for another, and find ourselves diffident about pursuing and applying our own democratic standards. In doing so, we turn things upside down. As constitutional democrats, we often find ourselves beholden to the latest initiative from the paramilitaries. We should be setting the terms, standards and pace of normalisation. I recognise that, as the Secretary of State said, in many ways the Bill connects back to aspects of the joint declaration of May 2003. However, I quibble with his saying that the joint declaration was generally endorsed by all the pro-agreement parties. Although there was general endorsement of some aspects of it, some of us had specific criticisms of other aspects. Some of us never went along with the pretence about having three annexes and two other documents that happened to coincide with them—one about on-the-runs and the other about sanctions that would be attached to the Independent Monitoring Commission. We never went along with the pretence that those documents were not annexes. In the all the talks before, during and since the Hillsborough talks on the joint declaration, including the talks in Leeds castle to which the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) has referred, we consistently pointed out to both Governments that they were turning a blind eye to the reality of continuing criminality. In recent interviews, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) has acknowledged that the Social Democratic and Labour party was the one party consistently to raise concerns about criminality in his time as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. That record of consistency on paramilitary and criminal activity is the background to our preference for not moving forward with this Bill. As we have seen in the case of the McCartney murder, the intimidation that gets in the way of justice in Northern Ireland involves the destruction of evidence and syndicated silence from witnesses. Some people make a big deal about calling on others to go to the police or the police ombudsman with statements, but such statements say little and many are not signed. The real issue in Northern Ireland with the administration of justice is not the difference between a Diplock court and a jury court but whether the evidence exists to take cases forward and whether people engage in conspiracies to deny, destroy and prevent evidence. In recent times, a number of cases have been taken to court after undoubtedly good work by the police service and after many brave people in the community have given information to the police. In some cases, people have been prepared to give evidence in court, only to find that the judge takes a much more relaxed and detached view of the crime in question than do the public. Juries should have been used in some recent cases, particularly those involving a number of loyalists who were charged with not only attacks on members of the nationalist community, but preying on their own community and businesses. Even after those people were convicted, the judge gave them suspended sentences, and they walked free. I am not talking about people who had committed a first offence or minor offences. I find it hard to tell people from all sections of the community in Northern Ireland who were offended and outraged by those decisions that we should maintain Diplock courts. People feel suspicious and iffy about some recent judicial outcomes, and about the concession-of-the-week mode in which we sometimes appear to be operating.