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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I am sure that the debate has certainly stirred the hearts of quite a number of Northern Ireland Members, especially given the contribution made by the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound). He tells us that we must live in the real world. With the greatest respect to him, no one, but no one, is living in the real world more than the people of Northern Ireland. We must tell the Government that, many times, they seem to be sleepwalking. They are not facing the realities of the situation. They are not part of the real world whenever they make demands and requests of members of the Unionist community or the nationalist community who have suffered grievously under all acts of terrorism. The hon. Gentleman said that we must move away from the sad past to a peaceful situation. Again, I say to him genuinely that there is no one who wants to see Northern Ireland in a peaceful and prosperous state more than the Unionist Members here today and the Unionist family completely. We genuinely want Northern Ireland to move into a peaceful state, but the reality of the situation is that, yesterday, a bomb was being prepared in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), in Lurgan, by the republican movement. In the constituency of Foyle, a few days before that, once again there was a primed bomb ready and activated to carry out a dastardly deed—certainly, we believe, of destruction and we were told by the police that it would have brought forth the reality of murder, had it gone off. That is the reality of the situation and we close our eyes to it if we do not face that.