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Northern Ireland

rose to call attention to the situation in Northern Ireland; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I begin by welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to his new post. We all look forward greatly to working with him. In the past eight years Sinn Fein/IRA has won concession after concession. We have dismantled our security apparatus and greatly weakened the police. It is still recruiting, training and buying new arms. HMG’s policy has, in effect, been one of appeasement. However, there are, in the past year, some encouraging signs, notably the excellent work of the IMC, the Organised Crime Agency and the Assets Recovery Agency. But we should look at the balance sheet since the Belfast agreement of 1997. First, as regards, law and order, half the experienced officers in the then RUC and many of the best Special Branch sources have been retired—the sources under the new ethical policy. Respectable citizens, curiously enough, are not best placed to penetrate criminal groups, and the police are therefore without eyes and ears when they are needed. They have lost the very people who could penetrate the paramilitaries and who often have very good reasons to help the law. After the emasculation of the force to meet its needs, Sinn Fein/IRA proceeded to shoot one of the young new entry and Gerry Adams said then that its attitude to the police had not changed. Many of the DPPs set up to bring the police closer to the community have been attacked. Because of the extreme difficulty of getting witnesses to testify in court and juries to serve—five were empanelled in succession on one case—justice is regularly denied to citizens, and a rising number of prosecutions are failing because the complainant declines to proceed. The reason is the malign power of intimidation exercised by the paramilitaries within their communities. Moreover, Gerry Adams has publicly said, first to the people of Omagh, and then in answer to a question from me as recently as this year, that Sinn Fein/IRA does not recognise British justice. It is, he said, an oxymoron. Evidently the Saville inquiry, which has so far cost £155 million, and the judicial review which Sinn   Fein/IRA itself recently put through the courts, are excepted from this policy. Most recently, the McCartney case has exposed Sinn Fein/IRA’s absolute determination to refuse justice to its victims and to protect murderers. The brave sisters had to go to the EU for funds for a civil action, while the people of Omagh were only granted help by Her Majesty’s Government last year for a civil action, and so far they have received only £354,373 compared to the £155 million, still rising, for the Bloody Sunday inquiry. The citizens of Northern Ireland are regularly denied justice, not by the State but by violent paramilitaries who keep them in a state of fear in their daily lives, exact tribute from families, small shopkeepers and businesses, and exile to the mainland members of the community who have crossed them, where, incidentally, they get no support from Her Majesty’s Government. They would be better off as asylum seekers in their own country. No one dares complain to the police, go to court, or talk to the media; and this in a free country—the United Kingdom. This happened before the Belfast agreement, but it has continued ever since, despite assurances given both in the agreement and by the Prime Minister. We let out all the prisoners. The then Secretary of State, when asked why we did not halt the flow of releases until the paramilitaries stopped their beatings and shootings, refused, saying that they must be expected to do ““a little domestic housekeeping””. Yet the agreement expressly guaranteed the human right to choose where to live and the right to freedom from sectarian harassment. Thanks to Sinn Fein/IRA, the forces of law and order have been severely weakened and those living under the heel of the paramilitaries are denied their human rights. Since 1997, Her Majesty’s Government and the Dublin government have appeared to have two aims; to persuade the IRA to disarm and therefore to end the terrorist threat to the mainland, and to encourage Sinn   Fein, partly through the new power-sharing agreements and the mechanisms for North-South structures to become no more than an all-Ireland political party. Every concession has been made to that end. First, it was the release of prisoners and the Saville inquiry; then the de Chastelain commission to enable the IRA to hand in all its arms without loss of face. We all know the sorry outcome of that procedure and its irrelevance since the PIRA has regularly brought in new arms since 1997, including a new lightweight machine gun, and it is still recruiting and training. I suggest that in any further discussion of IRA arms, including those acquired since 1997, Her Majesty’s Government should insist on the verification being carried out, as the Act provides, by qualified US and Canadian ordnance officers and the results being publicly reported. Neither the general nor the clergyman proposed by the IRA would, with respect, know a rocket-launcher or Semtex if they saw them. In 1999, the IRA saw a prospect for a media coup, when P O’Neill announced that they just might know where a number of those whom they ““executed”” might be buried. The Northern Ireland (Location of Victims’ Remains) Act 1999 was welcomed with joy by families hoping at last to be able to bury their son, or daughter, or husband. The Act provided expressly that any forensic or other evidence found, whether on the body or at the scene, would not be admissible in any criminal proceedings, including private prosecutions, anywhere in the UK. The murderers were to be protected. The IRA basked in favourable publicity. Two bodies were found—that of Jean McConville not until some years later—and the families were ordered by Gerry Adams to conduct discreet, private burials. Not least, compensation for the families of the victims was expressly ruled out. Though there are to be several inquiries at the request of the IRA, including on Pat   Finucane as a result of the Cory report, no one has proposed to inquire into the Disappeared. The splendid new Independent Monitoring Commission has exposed and attacked the monstrous paramilitary grip on their community. Interviewed when   the 2003 proposals were being discussed, Martin   McGuinness said flatly that Sinn Fein/IRA would not consider allowing exiles to return, as that would not be ““for the good of the community””. It has not therefore happened. He was, however, more than ready to require the return of the on-the-runs, those who fled Northern Ireland after committing horrific murders and now wish to return scot-free to the bosom of their families. Despite setting up the Bloomfield Commission on victims, Her Majesty’s Government have done very little for them, though there have been plenty of focus groups, victims groups and charities, some providing a happy home for Sinn Fein/IRA infiltrators, to the great danger of the people they are supposed to help. So far, I have spoken only of the denial of access to the rule of law for victims and the evil power of the paramilitaries over their communities. There is, however, another aspect of the damage that they have done and are doing, and that is the devastating effect on both the political scene and civil society, and on the economy, of their illicit activities. It seems almost laughable that Sinn Fein/IRA alone was expressly exempted from the legislation requiring political parties to declare donations from aboard on the grounds of protecting the security of those donors. It is probably the richest party in the UK, certainly in the Republic of Ireland. Vote-rigging, at which it excels, is hardly necessary. Where, apart from the generous US support in the past, does the money come from? The criminal activity of paramilitaries of all parties costs the country in one year £4 million from the sale of counterfeit CDs and software. Some £600 million has been lost to the Exchequer in illegal fuel deals. Drug dealing has cost us £5 million, hydro-carbon oils £6   million, and loss of duty on alcohol and tobacco runs into tens of millions yearly. It has cost Her   Majesty’s Government £209 million to set up the organisations that are now successfully fighting this, apart from police costs. Perhaps the worst price that Northern Ireland pays for paramilitary criminality is the effect on legitimate business, especially on small   firms, which must pay protection money or be destroyed. Multinationals will be paying up to £200,000 a week; small men £20. The effect is devastating. All the while, a new generation is growing up thinking that this is normal. Fortunately, 75 per cent of people recognise that the paramilitaries are responsible for virtually all organised crime, and surveys show that 95 per cent of the population believe that the police must have the main role working with the Organised Crime Agency and the Assets Recovery Agency in tackling organised crime. Sinn Fein can no longer represent itself as the brave defender against the security forces in a political context. Unfortunately, because of the extreme fear of 77 per cent of the population, and even though 79 per cent recognise that criminal activity should be reported to the police, more than 40 per cent will never do so. Crucially, only 27 per cent will give evidence in court. I owe those useful statistics to the Northern Ireland Office criminal justice directorate, and I am grateful. They demonstrate how clearly the public perceives the criminal nature of paramilitary activity, both IRA and UVF, and how powerless they feel to help to bring them to justice. We must remember that the young are growing up in this climate of fear and inability to defend their rights as citizens. All this, eight years after the Belfast agreement. The political fall-out from the Northern Bank raid, and still more the new readiness by the Dublin government to recognise the IRA as an immediate threat to all Ireland, have introduced a new and encouraging element into relations with Sinn Fein/IRA or, as one Irish Minister prefers to call them, IRA/Sinn Fein. Co-operation between the PSNI and the Garda is close. The Dublin government must be warily observing the electoral success of Sinn Fein, backed as it is by unlimited funds. Joint operations to end money-laundering will benefit both countries. Dublin’s reaction to the McCartney murder was strong and unequivocal. Little things, such as the IRA’s antics in Colombia, have not endeared them to the Americans either. When the EU voted money for the McCartney civil action, Sinn Fein MEPs said that Sinn Fein/IRA would never co-operate with the PSNI, about whom they alleged there were ““huge doubts among nationalists””. They are in danger of being regarded as dinosaurs in the real world. In short the IRA is, though rich and not short of manpower, in political baulk at present. I should say at this point that the Continuity and Real IRA movements are no more than useful lightning conductors. The Provisional IRA would never allow any genuinely independent faction to exist. They are useful as scapegoats. A period of benign political neglect would, I suggest, be the best course to pursue. No more concessions, no more overtures, no more agonised efforts to find yet another ““quid”” to secure the elusive ““quo””. Some of the people of Northern Ireland, a minority, voted for Sinn Fein/IRA out of a mixture of fear and loyalty to a now-outdated concept; the majority did not. They deserve to see Her Majesty’s Government concentrating on ending crime and the fear and the serious economic loss that go with it. As the Prime Minister said on 27 January, ““let us sideline them””. What progress has been made, if any, on the Prime Minister’s statement that he was ready to abandon the principle of inclusive all-party rule by coalition, on which the peace process has been based, unless paramilitary violence stopped? He said:"““If it proves impossible to go forward on that inclusive basis, we will have to look for another way forward””.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/1/05; col. 302.]" Does that mean a possible return to devolved government without Sinn Fein/IRA, presumably with the SDLP representing nationalists’ political interests? It is surely not possible to consider allowing two individuals, now publicly recognised as members of the IRA army council, to return to wield political power with   their weapons still under the table. That would make a mockery of democracy and of Her Majesty’s Government’s whole nationwide policy on terrorism. No doubt there will have to be talks with Sinn Fein/IRA, but let them be confined to Her Majesty’s Government receiving a cast-iron commitment to disband the IRA and the paramilitaries and to make no further move whatever until that act has been completed. I realise that that can be achieved only by talking to Sinn Fein/IRA; I hope that the new Secretary of State will not think he is talking to the ANC. One of the more outrageous acts of that hyena Gerry Adams, in his overweening vanity, has been to dare to compare himself to Nelson Mandela. Meanwhile, let the Prime Minister invite the SDLP and the Ulster parties to Downing Street and consider the modalities of restoring the Assembly. Sinn Fein/IRA needs a period of neglect, not further attention, and—a most important point made by the monitoring commission—the culture of respect and deference to Sinn Fein/IRA must end. It is for its members to do the only thing which could really be significant—they must not only disband their antiquated army, but cease to protect the paramilitaries from justice. The world has begun to see them in their true colours, as nasty small-time terrorists and thugs battening on a decent community. Above all, we must not let them have any access to the organs of justice. Let us not dream of giving them a place on the PSNI board, for instance, in the false hope of involving them in decent government. They will destroy whatever they can from within. There is a phrase used in this House to deal with a recalcitrant Peer. Let us propose to Her Majesty’s Government that, for the time being, Sinn Fein/IRA be not heard. I beg to move for Papers.