Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

: I will endeavour to address the questions that were raised by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik), whom I am delighted to see in his place today, and our thoughts continue to be with him. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Campbell) has already said, were are not yet in a normal situation in Northern Ireland. It is not that we need politics to normalise; it is that we need society to normalise. We need to have the terrorist threat removed. No one would suggest—though at times I wonder—that we do not have a normal political system in the United Kingdom, and that this Parliament is part of that normal political process. Yet across the United Kingdom there is a threat from terrorism that has required the Government to introduce special legislation and enact special powers for the police and others to deal with that threat. So we are not talking about normalising, or the necessity to normalise, politics to remove the need for this legislation; it is about dealing with the threat from terrorism. We have special provisions in Northern Ireland for our judicial system because it is not possible when there is a significant terrorist threat to operate a normal judicial system to deal with trials relating to terrorist activity. In the past, witnesses have been intimidated, and I am aware of many cases in which the prosecution collapsed because witnesses were intimidated by terrorist suspects and organisations. The potential remains for members of juries to be open to such intimidation, hence the need for the Diplock courts system. If the Provisional IRA were to maintain a ceasefire, and if we were to receive evidence that it was not participating in further activity, either criminal or terrorist, it would not represent an end to terrorist activity in Northern Ireland, welcome though it would be. We have clear evidence, which is highlighted in the Independent Monitoring Commission reports, that the main loyalist paramilitary groups are engaged in ongoing terrorist activity, and the republican terrorist organisations are engaged in such activity, too. The so-called Real IRA and the so-called Continuity IRA are both splinter groups from the Provisional IRA, and they both continue to be active. The Government’s legislation dealing with the release of prisoners and the proscription of terrorist organisations specifies those organisations as being ineligible to receive the benefits of Government concessions, because, as the Government accept, they are continuing to engage in and prepare for acts of terrorism—the Government also accept that that is true of certain loyalist groups. Indeed, I recently participated in a Standing Committee that dealt with the specification of the Ulster Volunteer Force, which no longer benefits from certain Government concessions, because the Government have judged that it is continuing to engage in or prepare for acts of terrorism. It is clear that there is a continuing threat from terrorism, and the judgment that must be made is how long we think that it might continue. At this stage, there is no evidence that the Real IRA or the Continuity IRA have any intention of ending their campaign of violence within the next two years, because they have not made a statement indicating that that is the case. We are aware that a debate is currently taking place within the mainstream loyalist groups, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence Association, and we will encourage them to move down the path to a peaceful existence and to ending their violence and crime for good, and we would like to see all armed terrorist groups in Northern Ireland do the same. We must be prudent in planning ahead and provide for every eventuality. To borrow a phrase from the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire, we need an insurance policy, and I want an insurance policy that will not expire before a reasonable period has elapsed, which would allow real progress on ending all forms of terrorism in Northern Ireland. I have no basis for believing that that will happen within a two-year time frame, which is why my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry has tabled the amendment. The provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 are still needed in Northern Ireland in the foreseeable future. Extending the period specified in the Bill by a further four years is a prudent step that will provide a reasonable time frame in which to allow developments to take place, pressure to be applied and, I hope, those terrorist organisations that continue to engage in or prepare for acts of terrorism to see sense and end—or for the security forces to bring to an end—their terrorist campaigns. I hope that I have addressed some of the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire. I appreciate the desire to normalise society in Northern Ireland, but there is also a need to protect society and the judicial process in Northern Ireland. In recent days, we have seen that organisations that have declared that they have ended their involvement with violence still have the capacity to frustrate the judicial process. The Robert McCartney case is a clear example how the Provisional IRA has sought to frustrate the process of justice in recent times—in that case, by cleaning the murder scene and refusing to co-operate. We must bear it in mind that the main republican movement in Northern Ireland still refuses to support the police and to recognise courts of law. Even those organisations that claim to have ended their campaigns still do not recognise the judicial process in Northern Ireland, and I therefore suggest that we still have some way to go. In those circumstances, our amendment is a reasonable and prudent safeguard. If the circumstances change within the four-year time frame, the amendment would not prevent the Government from returning to this House to seek to foreshorten the time scale and introduce new proposals. I urge the Government to reflect on the matter and not to end the provisions and safeguards for the judicial system prematurely.