---

Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

I agree with everything that my right hon. Friend says. She came from an upstanding family. I must say to the Secretary of State that I have no faith whatever that Sinn Fein-IRA will follow the democratic line on policing and the rule of law. I sit on the local district policing partnership in my council area, and recently the district commander gave us a report. He told us plainly and clearly that, in the past two weeks, nationalist community organisations had withdrawn from contact with the Police Service of Northern Ireland. They had started to engage with the community police, but have now withdrawn their support from the PSNI. There have been shootings at police stations and bombs in Londonderry and in my own constituency. That is all put down to the dissidents, but as the Secretary of State well knows, nothing happens without the authority of the Provisional IRA. No trust is felt by the Unionist community, and if the deadline needs to be changed, it should be changed, so that we can deliver proper democracy and devolution in Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) mentioned his cousin, and all of us in the Democratic Unionist party can relate to such situations involving family members. I have said it before in the House, and I do not intend to repeat the detail, but I lost four members of my family. I must tell the Secretary of State that it is difficult to go forward on devolution knowing that an individual mentioned in the House today was responsible for giving the orders to assassinate them; that is a fact of life. We must resolve the policing issue. We cannot fudge it or run away from it, and any party that does not sign up to policing and the rule of law has no place in the government of Northern Ireland. We need a time frame in which it can be proved that the people concerned are coming up to the mark. Of course, there are other issues, too, such as sanctions, which have been mentioned today. We have talked about criminality and the structures of the Provisional IRA, too. If Sinn Fein-IRA are to become so-called democrats, and if they are to come to Stormont as devolutionists, why would they want to hold on to terrorist structures? All of us will have our opinion on that, but I assure the Secretary of State that the people of Northern Ireland will accept no less than the changes we have mentioned, and nor will our party.