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Northern Ireland Bill

We have talked about the dissidents, which is a lose word. Such information must not be passed on to benefit terrorism—Slab Murphy and the rest of them up in south Armagh—so we have a difficulty. I used the word ““tantalising”” earlier; the word that we need to emphasise is trust. That is a big factor in setting up the Northern Ireland Assembly. I sat in my own council meeting on Monday night, and when I referred to the bomb in Lurgan, a Sinn Fein-IRA representative stood up and said, ““The bomb should not have happened, and I would ask those in the Lurgan area to stop it.”” However, when I put the question through the mayor to ask the Sinn Fein-IRA representative to tell his people to go to the PSNI station in Lurgan and give all the information that the police need to collect a lot more of those people, there was silence; and we are talking about moving to a full-blown Executive or whatever come 24 November. There is a long, long way to go. If it was wrong—my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Campbell) used words to this effect—to put murderers, drug dealers, paramilitaries or child killers or whatever into government last year, it is wrong this year. There is no difference, because they have not yet changed. I want to move on in the time that is left to my portfolio as my party’s trade and industry spokesman. I have been involved in the business community for some 25 years. My hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley referred to leading a delegation yesterday to meet the Secretary of State. I had the privilege yesterday, along with other hon. Members, to attend that conference and I had been asked to speak there. I am sure that the Secretary of State has been briefed on what I have said about him in the newsletter. I am sure that he is not very happy about it. Basically, I said that, if the Secretary of State were the boss or the chief executive of a firm, he would be sacked. That is because of the de-rating issue and the difficulties that the business community is going through. I count it a privilege to be elected to this House. Having been involved in the business community for 20 or 25 years, I knew a lot of the business people who gathered together yesterday. I would like to think that, in my capacity in this House, I could use my influence to try to help those business people who have come through 35 years of the most hellish conditions, through the troubles and through financial difficulties. The Secretary of State may throw the responsibility back, as he is prone to do, and say, ““Get the Executive up and running and deal with the whole de-rating issue and all the other issues.”” However, with the greatest respect, it is within his power to do something about the situation now. The manufacturing and textile communities are decimated. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley, I ask the Secretary of State to look seriously at doing something about that.