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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

The heading for the new clause is ““Conditions for devolving policing and justice matters””. My colleagues who have spoken in the debate have made it abundantly clear that, for us, there can be no new conditions. The conditions for the devolution of policing and justice matters are also the conditions for a devolved Government, which are, as we have said so many times before, that there must be not only a complete and absolute end to terrorism with a renunciation of terrorism and all acts of terrorism, but a complete and final turning away from criminal activities and a renunciation of them. That includes those who still live on the rewards of crime. We do not close our hearts and minds to a fact that many people have forgotten: £20 million is still in the hands of the Provisionals. We cannot allow people to continue to live on the fruit of their past criminal activity. We are making no new conditions for the devolution of policing and justice matters; the conditions for any democratic society are that everyone must uphold the rule of law and support those who exercise it in the Province on behalf of Her Majesty and Her Majesty’s Government. There can be no fuel laundering, no money laundering, no extortion, no intimidation and no continuation of the wide range of criminal activity that the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein-IRA have so successfully carried out for so many years. We demand an absolute end to such activity. I want to make it clear that this is not a new condition laid down by the Democratic Unionist party; it is a statement of our position right from the beginning. We shall not change our principles for the Government or anyone else; we shall not sacrifice the principles of a democratic society.