Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. At the heart of the Bill is the integrity and reliability of the operation of a system of justice in Northern Ireland. That is why several provisions that will come on stream soon, including community restorative justice, are pertinent to this debate, and why other hon. Members have also referred to them. We want progress to be made, and I welcome what the LVF has said. I join other hon. Members in acknowledging the good work, the hard work, and the difficult and dark work, of the people who have helped to bring that decision about. I hope that it will be brought to a full, proper and positive conclusion and that a similar conclusion can be reached by other loyalist paramilitaries. Just as we welcome the LVF’s statement today, and just as the Secretary of State welcomed Gerry Adams’s comment at the weekend that the war was over, it can often ring hollow for the victims when politicians describe occasions such as these as ““seismic”” or ““historic””. Those words are easy, but the victims’ wounds are still very sore. A sense of futility stabs them when they hear people saying, after all this time, that the war is over, and when they see the terms under which those people have settled. Those terms have been available for some time. The Sunningdale agreement was mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), and today’s terms were available in that context in the early 1970s. People will ask why this is happening. The hon. Member for Belfast, North spoke earlier about there being violence on both sides. I ask the Government and all hon. Members to bear it in mind that many people in Northern Ireland do not regard themselves as having been party to any form of violence. Many people, not just victims, are very clear that there was no violence committed by their side. I do not regard the Provisional IRA as being on my side any more than many Unionists regard loyalist paramilitaries such as the LVF, the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defence Association as being on their side. Thankfully, there are many young people in Northern Ireland who did not live through the horrors of the troubles and who, as part of the ceasefire generation, did not grow up on a daily diet of atrocities, bombings and shootings. However, there is a danger that, because of the way in which we bandy some of this language about, we shall end up creating a false impression that the troubles were somehow a necessary and inevitable prelude to the peace process, and that there was something legitimate about the violence used by republicans, loyalists or anyone else. I ask the Government to take care in the language that they use, and in the way in which they express their welcomes and offer assumptions about progress. They must remember that there are deeper values and deeper hurts involved as well. We want to travel forward on the basis of hope, rather than fear. I have heard what other hon. Members have said about the need for caution, and no party has been more cautious than we have about these issues. However, I believe that the Government should show far more caution in regard to some of the choices that they are about to make regarding other aspects of justice, such as community restorative justice. They should also show more discretion and caution in relation to what they are doing with policing. The policing arrangements are the one element of the agreement that has worked and I hope that the Government will not adopt the position that it will be okay to bacon-slice Patten at either end as long as that is balanced, and that what will be left in the middle will still be the core of Patten—it will not be.