Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. I believe that all Opposition Members publicly—and perhaps Labour Members privately—recognise that a deal was done unilaterally between the Prime Minister and Sinn Fein, and we are all trying to pick up the pieces. If I am honest, I do not blame the Minister or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for the difficulty with the on-the-runs, but the lesson for this Bill is that, if the Government are going to make promises of cross-community, cross-party scrutiny of legislation before its publication, those promises must be kept; otherwise, the Government will reap the kind of resentment, bitterness and resistance that resulted from the on-the-runs legislation. To the credit of the Minister, he has given us assurances, in a sober and measured way, that go a little bit further than what I have heard before to reassure me that those commitments will be kept. I want to finish on the matter with which we began our Second Reading debate. It is the contradiction between how the Government choose to approach terrorism in Northern Ireland and terrorism on an international basis. I support the Bill in its present form—with the reservations that I have highlighted—sufficiently to vote for it, should there be a Division tonight, but I find it extraordinary that there is no joined-up thinking between the Government’s attempts to normalise life in Northern Ireland and what they are seeking to do to normalise life in the post-9/11 world in which we find ourselves. It is perhaps a vain hope that we can educate the Government to see those contradictions, however, because I believe that they would secretly admit that there is an utter contradiction in providing concessions to and negotiating, sometimes directly, with the paramilitary organisations in the Province, while thinking that suppressing the opportunity to terrorise is the answer to the problem in the rest of the United Kingdom and the world. The Minister is an educated man and he is experienced in these matters. He has steered this legislation effectively, if not always in the way that I would like. Is there nothing that he can do to educate those in the Home Office and the Foreign Office so that they understand that the lessons from Northern Ireland provide a more powerful and effective solution to undermining the motives of terrorism than any effort to suppress the opportunities to terrorise ever did? I think that we have ended up with a flawed but usable piece of legislation. My great regret is that the lessons of Northern Ireland and the many hundreds of hours that each of us has spent debating them are not transferred to the wider debate about terrorism. We can win the peace in Northern Ireland but there is every risk that we will lose the war on terrorism elsewhere.