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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I understand why the Government have introduced the Bill and I understand their justification that we must maintain the momentum of the peace process so that there is lasting peace, but we must be careful that the momentum does not become a rush. Far too often recently, the Government have used maintaining that momentum as an excuse to overlook some of the failures of parties such as Sinn Fein in the peace process. The Government could implement some of the measures in the Bill quickly, but that may not ensure that justice is done and that the process is thorough. I urge the Minister to take that on board. Momentum is one thing, rush is another. One of the main issues that has been raised throughout the debate is the devolving of policing and justice, which is important. The background is that following the Patten report, certain elements in Northern Ireland were keen to get their hands on parts of the policing service. We should not kid ourselves: the jewel in the crown for Sinn Fein has always been to try to get hold of elements of special branch and the informer network, which decimated the party and helped to force it to the negotiating table. Sinn Fein constantly pushes for that, but it is extremely important that we protect the men and women who gave information that led to the conviction of many men and women who had committed mass murder. The Government’s solution, and their stated aim, is to remove those elements from the policing service and include them in the security services. One of their justifications for the proposal to remove those people from under the umbrella of the PSNI is that it would reflect uniformity across the United Kingdom. That is not technically correct. Obviously, SO12 in the Metropolitan police is involved in informer and agent handling. The security services have primacy, but they do not necessarily carry out operational actions. The uniformity argument is also undermined by the fact that on the mainland the two organisations report to two Ministers in the same Government. We could end up with the security services reporting to a UK Minister and the Police Service of Northern Ireland reporting to a justice Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, with conflict between the two lines of responsibility. I am sure that whoever the justice Minister was, they would like to be informed of security service operations, especially when they entered the realm of police executive action. Therein lies a problem: when would members of the security service want to tell the justice Minister about an operation that involved somebody of their own political persuasion; for example, Sinn Fein? I urge the Minister to work out the details. One option is, as in the Patten report, to keep the security services in the PSNI, but have them reporting to the Secretary of State. Another option is to consider special provision to allow the security services to have some form of executive power in Northern Ireland. Those are just off-the-cuff suggestions, but these are important details. The strength of the RUC and PSNI special branch was the fact that cases went from intelligence to evidence to conviction in the same organisation. That is one reason those cases were successful.