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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon). I was interested in her closing remarks because she and I were on different sides of the debate when the matter was discussed in no less a body than the Ulster Unionist Council. When I, sometimes in desperation, tried to persuade the party not to go down the road of sharing power with an organisation and party that engaged in criminality, murder, holding on to illegal weapons and so on, I was sadly in a minority at the time. I therefore welcome the conversion of the Ulster Unionist Council to a new policy position whereby it agrees with the view that the Government of Northern Ireland cannot include, in any circumstances, a political party that is linked to a terrorist organisation, that continues to engage in crime and violence and that has not completed the decommissioning of its weapons. I am glad that there is now Unionist unity on that. I sincerely welcome it because it is essential for democratic parties to stand together on the matter. I also welcome the hon. Lady’s intention to table an amendment in Committee on 50:50 recruitment to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I feel strongly about that and many of the hon. Lady’s constituents, like mine, will have lost out through that discriminatory recruitment policy. Indeed, one of the hon. Lady’s constituents took a case to the High Court in Belfast to challenge the discriminatory policy.