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Northern Ireland

My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the responses of both noble Lords, as indeed I was, on behalf of the Secretary of State, for the responses of the parties in the other place. There is not much more that I can say in addition to the Statement. Let us be clear: the Bill is dead. It will not be coming back. That does not mean that the issue goes away, which was recognised in both comments. This issue will have to be dealt with at some point in a legislative form. It is not something that can be done behind closed doors or by executive action, but the Bill is effectively dead. On the issue of victims’ needs being paramount, as the Secretary of State said in the Statement, we knew that this would cause great upset to the victims and they made that abundantly clear, both to the Secretary of State and other Ministers. Therefore, we want to give careful thought to the issue. There is no deadline. The Secretary of State said that he would take stock in the autumn. Although there is no deadline, the issue will not go away and we want to make that absolutely clear. There needs to be a wider consensus and there must be a rebuilding of trust, which is implicit in the Statement, from both sides of the community. There must also be the acceptance by Assembly Members and putative Ministers of support for the police and the rule of law. This is a black-and-white issue: if you do not support the police and the rule of law, you are actually supporting criminals, rapists, muggers, thieves and embezzlers—that is the implication. You cannot expect to be in Government in that situation, so that is implicit. There are other parts of the process to be carried through, and we understand that there are further devolutionary moves ahead. We want to make it absolutely clear that there is no walking back from them. In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, there are no dates. To be honest, it would not have been helpful if the Secretary of State or the Government had said today that we will need to get an agreement, or that MLAs will lose their salaries, or that we will need the Assembly up and running, all by a certain date. We have made it clear about 2006; we have also made it clear—I think the consensus among all the party leaders is—that the elections that would normally take place in 2007 will not take place if the Assembly is not up and running in 2006. There must be a process for stopping those elections and that, as has been made clear, cannot be left until the last minute. So putting in a date of any kind at present would not act as a spur; in fact, it could have almost the opposite effect. The issue of the on-the-runs is, as I have said, one that we will have to think about and take stock of in the autumn. It is not a question of having no discussions, but there cannot be any side deals. The deal which was already done was reneged on by the one political party that had asked for the legislation. It wanted it and supported it, but it has reneged on it because it did not like it being double-sided; that is the bottom line here. It wanted one-sided treatment, which we are not prepared to accept. We have made that absolutely clear in the Statement.