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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

My Lords, I shall have some hard words to say about some aspects of government policy. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, will understand that that does not affect my respect for him personally. I only wish that the Secretary of State could answer to this House rather than the unfortunate noble Lord, Lord Rooker, being left to carry the can. It should not be thought that I do not applaud and support what has been achieved to end the bombings and shootings, even if not yet the beatings and robberies, in Northern Ireland. I was fascinated to read in the Daily Telegraph that animal behaviourists have discovered that chickens are not as stupid as we thought. It seems that they are not fooled into believing that something has ceased to exist when it is hidden from them. They know that it is still there but simply hidden. That brings me back to the IRA and why I will not in future pay the Government the compliment of calling them bird-brained. The noble Lord, Lord Smith, reminded us of the amount of fudge that has had to go into persuading both the DUP and IRA/Sinn Fein that their wish lists have been granted, although they were completely and mutually exclusive. Back in the days when I had some experience of industrial relations at grass-roots level, it was always clear to me, when an agreement was drawn up that meant different things to the different parties, that it would be the basis for the next dispute. I fear that that has all too often happened in Northern Ireland. Today, we are dealing with a Northern Ireland Bill, but our audience will spread well beyond that Province. We have to accept that this Bill is another stage in the relentless march of Sinn Fein/IRA into power in Northern Ireland—power which has been won by bombs and bullets because it could not be won by the ballot alone. As this may be—we hope that it will be—the last piece of Northern Ireland legislation in this House for a while, I hope that I will be forgiven for speaking for slightly longer than I normally do. It is deplorable that this legislation should be required to complete all its stages in both Houses in about 36 hours chock to chock. I wonder whether we have forgotten that good old parliamentary adage, ““Legislate in haste but repent at leisure””. It was only this morning that I saw the report of the proceedings in another place. I hope that most noble Lords have now had a look at those words. I shall not repeat the wise words of Mr Lembit Öpik speaking there yesterday. As the Secretary of State had no answer to the points that he raised, I shall not waste the House’s time by expecting answers here. He spoke out not just as a parliamentarian but as an Ulsterman, so I suppose it was no surprise that he got the brush-off. When we read the Hansard report of debates on Northern Ireland in the other place, we forget that, as usual, although Sinn Fein/IRA hold seats in that House, its Members never turn up to participate in the enactment of legislation. I suspect that there is a fairly strong message in that for us all. I know that some will be muttering to themselves that my views on Northern Ireland are distorted by what Sinn Fein/IRA did to my wife. I must say that that annoys me. My views were formed long before 1984. What happened then did not distort but merely informed those views, as did the murders of my friends Airey Neave, the Member for Abingdon, the Reverend Robert Bradford, the Member for Belfast South, Tony Berry, the Member for Southgate, Ian Gow, the Member for Eastbourne, and many others from outside the ranks of parliamentarians. Those who commissioned, authorised, planned and financed those murders and not hundreds but thousands more are now sanitised—almost sanctified—and are about to be put into office to govern Her Majesty’s subjects in Northern Ireland. This morning the press is expressing its horror at the murder of a politician in Lebanon. I said that what we say and do here will be heard outside Northern Ireland, and so it will. It will be heard by terrorists worldwide, and there is a lesson that they will learn: if you are dealing with the British Government, bomb and kill, then negotiate. If you do not get what you want, then bomb and kill some more. When you have it almost all, bargain the release of your bombers and killers for a ceasefire. Then threaten more bombing and killing if you do not get even more. Unlike Alfred the Great’s Anglo-Saxons, Tony Blair’s new Labour pays Danegeld again and again and, as we have heard today, Sinn Fein/IRA is holding back still. Why is it holding back? If it is going to pledge that it will support the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the forces of justice, why does it not do that now? Why did it not do it yesterday or last week? Why is it pushing the Government along to slide through one deadline after another? I fear that that is because it asked for something more, and I fear that it will get something more. Today we face not so much IRA terrorism—one hopes that we will not face that again—but Islamic terrorism. We rightly ask that imams true to the teachings of Islam condemn the terrorists who invoke the name of Islam to justify bombings and murders. On11 November—perhaps a well chosen day—a newspaper published a picture, which I have here, of Mr Martin McGuinness, who is soon to be a Minister in Northern Ireland if the Government’s plans go ahead, wearing his IRA gunman’s uniform at the funeral of an IRA bomber. It seems that he has graciously given consent to the publication of this picture now, from which we might draw the inference that he thinks his past is no longer a threat to his future. I come back to the superior intelligence of chickens. Something at that funeral was hidden from the camera, but it was there all right. It was a Roman Catholic priest conducting the burial service for a terrorist being buried on consecrated ground, having been granted a Christian service and absolution. He should have been excommunicated. I have no animus towards the Catholic Church or faith—would that our bishops defended their faith with such courage as the Catholic Church does—but how do we expect an imam to condemn Islamic terrorists when he sees how Christian priests in a Christian country have sheltered, excused and supported Sinn Fein/IRA terrorists? The Government have done precisely the same. I was speaking recently to my old friend Robin Chichester-Clark, one time Member for Londonderry, and the last Ulster Unionist to hold office at Westminster, whom a number of noble Lords will have known in the other place. I had the privilege to serve as Robin’s PPS, which is how I became drawn into the politics of Northern Ireland well over 30 years ago. ““May be””, opined Robin Chichester-Clark, speaking of Her Majesty’s Ministers, ““they are cleverer than we think. The Labour Party has long been in favour of a united Ireland, but the majority in Northern Ireland would not give its consent. But if you can destroy the grammar schools without the consent of the people, if you can impose a catastrophically unfair system of property taxation on them, if you can impose on them a compulsory place in government for Sinn Fein/IRA murderers, perhaps even the staunchest Orangemen will look over the border to a more successful, lower-tax country, without gunmen in the Cabinet, and wonder what loyalty to the Crown has brought to Northern Ireland””. He might have added: if you can impose on them the sexual orientation orders by which it seems a Christian priest would be at risk if he read out 22:5 of Leviticus or 18:22 of the Book of Deuteronomy. I have two specific questions about the Bill. First, why does it not put funding for the Northern Ireland parties on the same basis as for the political parties in the rest of the United Kingdom? Why is it so essential that money from dubious sources in north America should be allowed to be recycled through the Republic of Ireland into the politics of part of this kingdom? We do not allow it anywhere else. What is so different? Secondly, how will the Secretary of State know whether the pledges to support the police and justice systems, which we expect may be made, are honest? We must have our doubts. I understand thatMr Adams objects to MI5 operating in Northern Ireland. Must he recant on those remarks? Is it a requirement, understood in the pledge which will have to be made, that references to the police include references to MI5, or will a part of Her Majesty’s Kingdom be off limits to MI5? Will the Secretary of State require Sinn Fein/IRA not merely to make an airy pledge, but to remove the bar which they currently have in place on witnesses coming forward to help bring to justice the killers of Omagh and the McCartney killers? If they do not remove that barrier, which currently prevents the prosecution of those responsible, what will happen? I know—as the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, put it to me here the other day—that the people of Northern Ireland now enjoy something nearer to peace and normality than for the past35 years and more. That is important and I know that, in some quarters, peace counts for morethan principle. What is more, peace has brought jobs to Northern Ireland. If devolved government is established there, there will, most importantly, bejobs for politicians. If it is not, then the politiciansin Northern Ireland—although happily not in Westminster—will lose their jobs. Of course we are all in favour of peace, but at what price? Noble Lords in the Government and their right honourable friend the Prime Minister are in favour of peace in Iraq—which is why, I understand, we made war on that country. I have no doubt of their commitment to peace for the Iraqi people, even if they go about it in a funny sort of way. I accept that Ministers may think that the way in which Airey Neave, had he lived, would have gone about securing peace in Northern Ireland, and the way in which I would have gone about it if I had had responsibility, might be different from this Government’s approach. Of course, that would be right. This Bill will underline the truth of the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I hope that I am proved wrong.