Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. All the evidence suggests that, leaving aside dissident republican activity, which is aimed at the security forces and members of the Catholic community who, for example, serve on local police boards, many organisations such as the IRA and those on the loyalist side are turning increasingly to protecting their criminal empires and activities. Their members will not think twice about intimidating witnesses. If there were jury trials, they would want to influence the outcome. The Assistant Chief Constable and other leading police officers in Northern Ireland have made it clear that the evidence shows that criminality and racketeering are ““institutionalised”” in those organisations. We will not get rid of such activities in a short time. It will take a long time and a great deal of effort to rid our society of criminal activities by paramilitary organisations. We give our support to—and look to the Government for adequate resources for—agencies such as the Assets Recovery Agency as well as the police in their efforts to bear down on such criminal activities. That emphasises that it would be premature to agree with the proposition that, by July 2007, Diplock courts and other provisions should disappear completely from the statute book unless they are renewed for only one further year. That would be wrong and misguided. The Government should not so hastily do away with provisions that would be enormously useful in prosecuting the war against terror and criminality in Northern Ireland. What difficulty or harm can there be in keeping the provisions on the statute book, even if they are not often used, as a safety net and reassurance so that, if a case arose in which there was considerable danger of interference with a jury or of its members feeling threatened, they could apply? Although we have heard comments about optimism, wanting an end date for such emergency legislation and the progress that has been made—there has been progress—we have not yet reached the end game. We look forward to hearing the comments of the Independent Monitoring Commission in the coming months and years as its reports roll out. In that sort of time, we can make an assessment of the position. The Chief Constable and other security sources will also produce reports and we will make our assessments, and so on. It is clear to the people of Northern Ireland that we have a considerable way to go. People do not feel confident that the IRA is moving to disband its organisation or dismantle its terrorist structures. I was interested to note that the Minister for Justice in the Irish Republic was recently quoted in The Irish Times as saying of the IRA that"““there are indications that the organisation’s intelligence function remains active, though its focus may become more political.””" That provides little reassurance to those of us who represent constituencies in Northern Ireland. The idea that we should take the IRA’s moving its intelligence, focus and resources to more political matters as a sign of great progress, and that we should welcome IRA and Sinn Fein into the normal democratic fold or even government, when it continues to carry out the sort of activities that we have outlined is difficult to accept. For many people in Northern Ireland, nothing short of the disbandment of the IRA will do. Michael McDowell, the Minister for Justice in the Irish Republic, also said that there was no room for ambiguity, ambivalence or double talk and that the IRA should be disbanded. He said that, without that, there would be no progress on the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement and, until that happened, the provisional movement excluded itself from government anywhere. The people of Northern Ireland would say a massive ““Hear, hear”” to that. What is good enough for the Irish Republic is good enough for Northern Ireland. We will not be treated as second-class citizens or accept a standard of democracy that others are not prepared to accept. We will move forward only on the basis of the cessation of all terrorism, the dismantling of all terrorist structures and the disbandment of all terrorist organisations. I urge the Under-Secretary to reflect carefully on today’s debate and consider whether it is wise to rid the statute book of an important provision, which is a safety net that can provide reassurance to the people of Northern Ireland. I ask him to think carefully before rushing ahead with something that is unnecessary at this stage.