Christmas Adjournment

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I wish you and the staff here in Parliament a very happy Christmas—not winterval, winterfest or Xmas, but Christmas? I hope that the Minister will tell her Government colleagues in Departments where there may be a tendency to follow the terms that the politically correct mob would foist on us that this House would like to see Christmas referred to by its proper term and not by these other names. I am sure that those of other religions—in this House and outside—do not take offence at the fact that we use the term Christmas around this time. I want to raise a matter of great concern to people in Northern Ireland. Much of the time during the past Session was taken up, quite rightly, with the Government proposing legislation and regulations and providing reports on the war against terror. All of us support the Government in their actions. In Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the world, the Government are conducting their war against terror but, in a most despicable example, they have ignored the state that has been the greatest sponsor of terror with the greatest impact on people in the UK: the state of Libya. For many years, Libya sent arms to, financed and trained the IRA, which carried out acts of terror not just in Northern Ireland, but here in Great Britain. Many at this Christmas time mourn loved ones and are still living with the loss of limbs and livelihoods as a result of the terrorism sponsored by the Libyan Government over the 1970s, 1980s and into the early 1990s. The IRA campaign of terror could not have been sustained without the support of the Libyan Government. In 1992, the Chief Constable of the then Royal Ulster Constabulary gave an intelligence estimate of the weaponry that had reached Northern Ireland from Libya. He catalogued it as 6 tonnes of Semtex; 1,500 AK rifles; three heavy machine guns; 500 handguns; 20 SAM missiles; 50 RPG-7 rocket launchers and 10 flamethrowers. Some of that Semtex was used in the most cowardly and dastardly terrorist actions committed during the troubles in Northern Ireland. That Semtex was used in a bomb at the war memorial on the November Remembrance day when 11 people were killed. It was used to blow up a bus near the Ballygawley roundabout in which eight soldiers died. It was used in the attempt to blow up the Cabinet in Downing street in 1991, and it was used in at least 250 booby-trap bombs, many of which led to loss of life and all of which led to the loss of limbs. Many shipments were intercepted. It is estimated that 200 additional tonnes of weaponry were on the three ships—the Claudia, the Marita Anne and the Eskund—which were intercepted on their way from Libya to Ireland. Libya not only supplied arms; it also supplied finance. That has been borne out by Libyans themselves. The head of the Libyan London section confessed that at least £6 million was made available to the IRA by way of suitcases of money passed to IRA couriers in Tripoli. That money then came back to Ireland, was reinvested in property and businesses in Dublin at a time when property was booming, and made terrorism sustainable—it enabled the apparatus of terrorism to be financed through Libyan money. The Libyans not only financed terror; they also trained terrorists. In ““Bandit Country””, his excellent study of the IRA in south Armagh, Toby Harnden highlighted a number of the godfathers of terrorism in that area who had been trained in Libya and then returned to Northern Ireland to carry out bomb attacks against the security forces and organise the terror campaign that led to many targets here in London being blown up. It would not have been unreasonable to expect that the Government, who are committed to ensuring that states that sponsor terror pay for their actions, would have had some urgency in making Libya pay for the years of terror it sponsored in the United Kingdom—terror which, as I have said, has had a far greater impact on individuals in this country than that of the Taliban or al-Qaeda or any of the other terrorist groups that the Government are currently pursuing. There are well-documented precedents of compensation. When WPC Yvonne Fletcher was murdered near the Libyan embassy in London, compensation was sought for her family. When an airliner was blown up over Niger and 170 French citizens were killed, the French demanded compensation and refused to support the lifting of sanctions until it was paid. Rightly, the British and American Governments jointly demanded compensation for the victims of the Lockerbie bombing. But when it comes to victims of Libyan-sponsored terror here in the United Kingdom, rather than making demands for compensation, the Foreign Office has campaigned to have sanctions against the Libyans lifted—it has twisted arms to make sure that they were lifted. The most bitter irony of all is that the Foreign Office has now sanctioned the sale of arms from this country to Libya. According to the records in this House, over the past two and a half years in standard individual export licences alone £50 million-worth of armaments has been sold by the United Kingdom to the Libyan Government, and that country has still not even apologised for the harm and suffering it caused to citizens of the United Kingdom. I would like the Minister to seek an explanation from the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister as to why in a recent letter to one of the victims' groups in Northern Ireland the Government said that as far as they are concerned the case is closed. If war can be conducted against the Taliban and their assets can be frozen, and if we can go into Afghanistan to pursue terrorists, then at least Libya should be made to pay for the harm and hurt it has caused the people of the United Kingdom by sponsoring terrorism in this country for so many years. I want briefly to raise one other matter. Over last weekend, another three Orange halls in Northern Ireland were destroyed, making an average of three per month over the past year and more than 200 in total since the sectarian campaign began of destroying what are in many places the only local community facility—although they are attached to the Orange Order, they are used by a wide section of the Northern Ireland community. Because of the number and widespread nature of the attacks, it has been virtually impossible for the people who run the halls to obtain insurance. Therefore, many halls scattered around Northern Ireland are lying derelict, burnt out and ruined—and of course every ruined building is an encouragement for those who want to continue such sectarian behaviour to do so, because they can see the highly visible results of what they do. The Government had promised the Orange Order that if it was not possible to arrange private schemes they would look again at the issuing of Chief Constable certificates, which would open the door to compensation. Currently, to get a certificate it must be proved that at least three people have done the deed—often, halls are in the middle of the country and the deeds are done at night when no one is around, so it is impossible to establish that—or that it has been done by a proscribed organisation, but no proscribed organisation, regardless of how militant it might be, will confess to being involved in such a sectarian campaign. The result is that many of those halls are left empty and derelict. The Government have not honoured their promise to the Orange Order of some time ago that if private insurance cover could not be obtained they would look at how to ease the way and review Chief Constable certificates. I ask the Minister to establish what has happened in respect of that promise and to ensure that it is fulfilled in 2008.