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Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill

I want to put on record some of comments that I made in Committee. My party believes that the legislation should have been allowed to lapse rather than being extended even to 2008. It should certainly not be extended to 2012. We are normalising in Northern Ireland. We have made significant progress and we want to move on. We welcome the progress that has been made, and the removal of the Army observation posts and all the other outdated or unnecessary military equipment. We thank the Government and the Prime Minister for the progress that has been made on that front, because it brings a sense normality to ordinary people. It is impossible to conjure up a sense of normality while major military installations are being retained. Increasingly, the normal laws and legal processes will be able to deal with any potential terrorist activity that might emerge. While I understand and respect the views of my hon. Friends in the Democratic Unionist party, I disagree fundamentally with their attitude. We can concentrate on the substantial progress that we have made, or we can seek problems that barely exist, or exist only on a small scale, and exaggerate them. We are concerned, however, about the mixed messages that are being sent out by the legislation. We welcome the effort to move on, and we hope that the provisions will terminate in 2008—we had hoped that they would terminate in 2007.