Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997 (Amnesty Period) Order 2009

My Lords, I thank the Lord President of the Council for present this statutory instrument to the House. What she has said needs to be read by all noble Lords tomorrow because it is really the basis of why my party is here tonight. When this order was first laid on 3 December, we felt we were not able to sign up to it and we travelled a long way debating among ourselves how to handle the situation. We did not want to fall out with the Government over Northern Ireland affairs. We have not done so more than once, that I can remember, over 10 or 11 years, and it is a credit to the Northern Ireland Ministers that we were able to reach ultimately a commonsense compromise. Although we abhorred the thought of giving the loyalist paramilitaries a further year—in fact, we abhor the thought of giving them any further extension to their amnesty—when the Government offered six months it would have been churlish to risk relationships here and there. As those of us who work in the Northern Ireland political world know, the Government always have the whip hand because they know things that we do not, cannot and probably should not know about the security situation at the time. In doing our duty, we on this side of the House have to trust Ministers to be straight with us and we have our own arrangements for confidentiality. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, will speak for himself but he and I spoke about this statutory instrument some time ago and discussed how we felt about it. There is no doubt that, had we chosen to take on the Government, they would have lost in this House. That would not have been good for your Lordships’ House or for the Northern Ireland process. That may have sounded a rather long ramble, but ultimately we have come to the right solution. I have one query for the noble Baroness. Our condition is that some ordnance is seen and photographed by the people responsible for verifying the handing-in of weapons. If there is some disarming before August, we can then be satisfied that we will have something substantial to put against the order. Having said that, I support the Motion.