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Northern Ireland

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his questions, and the positive nature of them. It is a question of moving forward. Whatever the issue relating to Northern Ireland, all the parties around the table must feel that they have a share of the success. The language of victory and defeat has got to go, and they must come to the table and be at the table thinking, ““We’ve got a piece of success””. If they can all start thinking that, we can actually move forward to a much brighter future. On some of the issues that the noble Lord raised, I cannot go beyond what I said about the need for support for the police and the rule of law, because I would be qualifying what I said—and I think I expressed myself as strongly as I possibly could. I have not come with the figures, but I would probably dispute—and I think that the Chief Constable would probably dispute—what the noble Lord said about levels of crime. I have listened to interviews with the Chief Constable recently. He did a fairly long radio interview—I believe that it was on the ““Today”” programme—just before Christmas. Massive progress is being made by the Police Service of Northern Ireland in getting into areas where it would not traditionally have been, where officers have been able to police in a way that traditionally they have not been able to. I heard that they have been on bicycles—although I understand that that can be a problem sometimes even for policing in GB. But I shall seek to get an up-to-date position from the Chief Constable, and I shall make sure that a note is placed in the Library. I cannot dispute the generality of the noble Lord’s remarks without the figures, but I understand from listening to the Chief Constable that the position is not as bad as the noble Lord said.