My Lords, my intervention will be brief. When I came into the Chamber, I did not imagine that I would find myself on my feet so soon. I have long admired the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, through a series of mutual experiences over 30 or 40 years.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blood, will recall the run-up to the ending of the first programme of Making Belfast Work. The right honourable—and now Sir—Richard Needham, who was then the Minister responsible for the programme, discussed with me whether it would be sensible to bring the communities, particularly
those in west Belfast, together at Hillsborough on a social occasion, where the total agenda would be what we should do at the end of the first four years of Making Belfast Work, particularly on community relations. It was a high-risk thing to do, and we went into it slightly quaking. I cannot remember if the noble Baroness, Lady Blood, was there, but she is nodding, so I think she probably was and I would have expected her to be there. I hope she would agree that the evening was a tremendous success in terms of the meeting between the communities on both sides. I also greatly admire what she is doing in the context of integrated education.
I return to the first thing that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said about community development, which I regard as being an absolutely key part of the process of reconciliation within Northern Ireland.