Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

No, I will not be led astray again. Sinn Fein is trying to fool its electorate by suggesting that some fanciful date will be given in respect of policing and justice. Let me make it abundantly clear: we will not be led by the nose by Sinn Fein into the devolution of policing and justice just to placate its members. Some of my colleagues have rightly said that the date will not be in their political lifetime—or even in 10 lifetimes—but we will not be fooled, or fool the electorate, by saying that reality will be softened just to please Sinn Fein or anyone else. I want to mention a few other things before I draw my remarks to a conclusion. A number of issues must be nailed down. There must be a default mechanism; it is a great weakness that the Bill does not include one. Sinn Fein wants to get through the door, because it knows that in the past the SDLP did not have the guts to put its members out. The Ulster Unionists hardly ever had the guts to put them out. Those parties worked together to keep them in. There must be a default mechanism to ensure that if people do not stay on the path of democracy, they should not be in the democratic Government of our Province. What about ill-gotten gains? What about the proceeds of crime? We cannot run away from those issues. What about the structures of the IRA?