Northern Ireland

May I join others in saying that my colleagues and I are delighted to see you back in your place, Mr. Speaker? We are particularly pleased that you look so well. I echo the shadow Secretary of State’s comments about paragraph 10 of the Prime Minister’s statement—the threat applied to Unionists should the date of 24 November not be met. That threat was crass and foolish, and is contrary to any concept of the principle of consent. I hope that the Secretary of State will make it very clear that there will be no constitutional change as a result of the Provisional IRA not meeting the deadline that is set for 24 November. Will the Secretary of State also find some time to take his hon. Friend the Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) to one side and explain to him the principle of the mandate? We are living in a parliamentary democracy and, in a parliamentary democracy, the electorate can change the mandate from one election to the next. The electorate have freely, at the ballot box, made it very clear in the Unionist community that they oppose the Belfast agreement. My colleagues and I have suggested the changes required to achieve a satisfactory agreement that can win the support of the Unionist community. There is a deficiency in the Prime Minister’s statement, as it does not provide a road map to show how that can come about, and the timetable does not take account of the necessary steps to bring it about. There is another deficiency in the timetable. The Prime Minister seems to have opted for the notion that the Unionist community can be timetabled into an Executive. The issue will be determined not by the clock but according to whether various conditions have been met and whether paramilitary and criminal activity has ended. That is the critical factor for my party. We want to move into devolution, and we want an Executive in Northern Ireland, but the principle of our mandate indicates that we can only share power with those who are committed to exclusively peaceful and democratic means. Will the Secretary of State say very clearly at the Dispatch Box that he does not expect anybody to share power in government with those who continue paramilitary and criminal activity? I remind him that the Prime Minister’s statement was sandwiched between two events—the killing of Denis Donaldson, in which members of the provisional IRA were involved, and the vodka heist in the Republic, in which members of the provisional IRA were involved. The Unionist community wants to be certain that the provisional IRA did not organise and sanction those events.