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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Yes. I was about to make exactly that point. The Secretary of State referred to the events of last year—to the IRA statement announcing the end of its so-called armed struggle and to the act of decommissioning in September, which General de Chastelain reported involved a very large quantity of guns and explosives. Both those IRA actions were of major significance, and had they happened five or six years ago, when they should have happened—when democratic politicians from both traditions had every right to expect them to have been taken—they might have been of decisive importance in building trust. However, and in response to the right hon. Gentleman’s point, it is not enough simply to take the events of last year as conclusive. They marked significant steps in the right direction, but we need evidence to convince us that the republican movement’s commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful means of attaining its political objectives is both permanent and irreversible. The type of comment that police officers and others in Northern Ireland have made to me is that although matters have undoubtedly improved hugely on the security and policing front, they cannot yet be certain whether we have reached the definitive end of an IRA campaign that has been going on since at least the early 1920s, or whether it is another lull in that campaign, such as occurred in the 1950s.