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Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Bill

I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris. It is worth while looking at the numbers and the background of the DPPs, especially the independents. I was on the committee of the Policing Board. I would not say that we worked it out, but we were in charge of appointing DPPs. The make-up of the independents was decided after the numbers of party political representatives nominated to the DPP were known. So where Sinn Fein opted out, the balance erred towards those who took part, being a few from the SDLP and other pro-unionist parties. If, therefore, you take an instance of a community where the numbers of representatives in the local council were roughly equal between nationalist and unionist, it would be weighted the other way because Sinn Fein did not take part and had not used up its places. At that stage, we would then appoint the independents, in order to level the playing field and reflect the composition of the community within whose area that DPP was. If the whole system were to be re-operated and Sinn Fein took up its places, certain independents—who would probably be on the nationalist side because they were balancing the lack of Sinn Fein on the political side—might lose their places. So that could be done, but we are betraying the people who took part. We are not actually talking about the reduction in the number of so-called unionist people, who were vulnerable enough by being on the DPPs. We are actually hitting the pro-nationalist independents, who have risked an awful lot by taking part. We have had very large numbers—sorry, I am no longer on the Policing Board—it has had very large numbers of people who have been intimidated and who have been firebombed and for whom we have had to add, through the various measures that are in operation in the NIO, additional protection and so on. Those people, to be honest, have put their lives on the line. You only have to look at what happened to Denis Bradley in Derry. They have put their lives on the line, and because Sinn Fein which, to be quite frank, is perhaps—or at least has been—at the root of the intimidation that those people suffered, we are now going to say to them, ““Thank you very much—you’re off””. This is a tremendous betrayal of what has amounted to people’s conviction and honesty about the future of Northern Ireland from the nationalist side. This is a tremendous betrayal of them. If Sinn Fein takes part, it should either be additional, or the independents should not be disrupted for it. The whole part that the Policing Board and the DPPs play is entirely based on the voluntary side of the independents. The real heroes of that are those who come from the nationalist side of the population and who have played their part in the future.