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Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me for two minutes. I will try to keep my word, although I did not give it. I was surprised by the remarks of the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady). He has been preaching for a very long time that we must all bow to the Anglo-Irish agreement, which he says is the great test. The Anglo-Irish agreement—[Hon. Members: ““The Belfast agreement.] Whatever one likes to call it—Good Friday, bad Friday or rotten Friday. I want to say to the House that this is where the government of Northern Ireland, and what we do, should be decided. It should not be decided by votes taken in the south of Ireland and then people scrambling out every time there is difficulty saying, ““The whole of Ireland agreed to this.”” The whole of Ireland has nothing to do with it. This is the United Kingdom and we have a right to decide what we do. We are making no preconditions. Everybody knows what I have said; I have been saying it for a long time. I have been castigated and kicked in this House, treated as a leper, refused admittance to Downing street for two years and six months, and so on and so forth, and I am still saying the same thing. The Prime Minister said the same thing from the Front Bench. If he wants to break his word to the people of Northern Ireland, we will not be breaking our word to the people who have voted for us. We are in great difficulties because on Monday and Tuesday we discovered that the Ulster Unionist party had entered into an agreement with the Progressive Unionist party. Any Minister of this Government who is prepared to defend the PUP has only to read what the report that Government Ministers love to read—the Independent Monitoring Commission report—has said about it. All that I can say is that we have a tougher road to travel, and we had better remember that. I hope that this House will remember that, by passing this Bill without amendments that would have been useful to us in the battle to keep to democracy, it is really responsible for what happens. I think that I have exceeded my time, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Thank you.