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5.50 pm
Mr. Peter Robinson (Belfast, East): I apologise to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for missing his remarks at the beginning of the debate.
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My colleague and I were delayed because of a flight delay, which was due to the weather, although the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara) will probably blame it on Drumcree; he appears to blame everything that goes wrong on Drumcree. When he next considers that subject, he might like to bear in mind the fact that it was the threats of those on Garvaghy road that ensured that the police did not do their duty and make sure that people had free access to the highway--but I know that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, would not wish me to discuss Drumcree, as we are debating the issue of decommissioning. I am sure that we shall debate Drumcree on another occasion.
I usually enjoy the speeches of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon). He has made many fine speeches, but his speech today was not one of them. I got the impression--I could be wrong--that his heart was not altogether in it, because at the centre of the argument with which he began was the necessity for him to believe that there was some prospect of the Provisional IRA genuinely ending its campaign of violence. I do not believe that any intelligent person can look at the behaviour of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein and feel that there is any genuineness or sincerity on their part about permanently bringing their campaign of violence to a conclusion.
The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh offers choices, although he limits them. He says that there are two ways in which decommissioning can take place, but he makes an assumption in offering that choice--that decommissioning might take place. I do not believe that it will. Indeed, I can only take the organisations that are holding on to arms at their word when they tell us that it will not take place. I shall develop that point further later in my speech.
The issue of decommissioning has become all the more important because of the method that the Government have used on this occasion to set up a talks process. Decommissioning would not have become an obstacle if it had not been the intention of Her Majesty's Government to concede to pressure from the Government of the Irish Republic to bring terrorists to the talks table. We have had many types of political negotiations in the past, but the marked contrast is that, on all previous occasions, the talks were between legitimate--some would call them constitutional--political parties; on that basis, they might have had some difficulty in agreeing an agenda, but at least they came to the table with the level playing field that one would expect those involved in negotiations to have.
The Government decided, however, that, because of the violence that was taking place, particularly the bombs in London and the mainland, they wanted--no doubt, from their point of view, for the best of motives--to draw the IRA into a situation where it would become politically more difficult for it to carry on its campaign, and dangled before it the prospect of being involved in negotiations. That caused a major difficulty, because it required the Government to sell the idea that other political parties in Northern Ireland should get down into the gutter with the IRA and talk on its terms.
Just before the IRA ceasefire, the Secretary of State said:
At that stage, it was clear that the Government's requirement was not that constitutional politicians should move to the position of terrorist leaders, but that terrorist leaders should move and prove themselves worthy to be involved in negotiations by being exclusively engaged in democratic politics, and doing so in a peaceful way.
It was not very long, however, before the Government started to lower their sights; the Secretary of State was requiring only "substantial progress on decommissioning", and the rot was beginning to set in. It was not long before the Prime Minister told the House:
The final move--sorry, I should not say "final", because it may not be the Government's final move. The Government's position was then to accept the findings of the report of the international body, one of which was that some weaponry could be decommissioned during the process--some and not all weaponry, and certainly not at the beginning of the process, with no indication that it must be other than at the very end of that process.
Like many people in Northern Ireland, I had thought that that was the Government's final climbdown. However, many of us are a little nervous when we hear
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Are those the same intelligence service experts who advised the Prime Minister several years ago when he made a working assumption that the ceasefire was permanent? If the Prime Minister was betrayed--those were his own words--on the basis of information that he received from the intelligence services, what confidence can the community have that he will not be similarly fooled on this occasion, and that the IRA will not have conned the Government once again?
No one is more easily conned than someone who wants to be. I do not doubt that the Government--indeed, everyone in the House--want a genuine cessation of violence by the Provisional IRA, but we would be foolish and lacking in judgment if we were to fall for the same trick twice by the Provisional IRA. I have no doubt that the Provisional IRA has no intention of committing itself to a complete and permanent cessation of violence. The evidence shows that the Provisional IRA has one objective, and it is prepared to use violence--or turn it off from time to time--if that helps it to achieve its objectives.
Decommissioning means much more than simply taking guns out of the Northern Ireland process. One could easily accept the argument often advanced by the Social Democratic and Labour party that, if the IRA were to hand over its weaponry tomorrow, within a short time it could substantially replenish it. I am advised by the security forces that the IRA has sophisticated manufacturing means at its disposal. Even if it could not bring in weapons from outside, it would be capable of producing high-class weaponry. It is not simply a matter of getting weaponry out of existence--good and right though that would be. To use language on which I am not keen, we need confidence-building measures.
We need tangible evidence that the Provisional IRA is serious. That tangible evidence does not come from the words that it uses in a statement. Whether or not it uses the P-word--permanently peaceful--we need actual evidence that it is not still targeting, training and recruiting people. We need to know whether it intends to continue its campaign. We know from sad experience that, while it was telling us that it was leading "the Irish peace process" and that everyone else was dragging behind, and how enthusiastic it was to have a peaceful and democratic resolution of our problems, it was stacking a garage in this city for another bombing campaign. It was buying vehicles that it could use to bomb Thiepval barracks in Lisburn. It is clear that there was no genuine intent on its part to have a permanent cessation of violence.
It is incumbent on the Government to ensure not only that the Provisional IRA includes the necessary wording in its statement, and that the intelligence services have confirmed that the Provisional IRA is taking no action on any front, but that intelligence sources are allowed a significant period to test that fully and decommissioning takes place. That is the importance of decommissioning to me. It is tangible evidence that the Provisional IRA is serious.
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I say that as someone who has seen no evidence that the Provisional IRA has any intention of calling a permanent cessation of violence, and of committing and submitting itself to the democratic wishes of the people of Northern Ireland.
The debate has already been referred to as an academic exercise. Few hon. Members believe that the Provisional IRA is about to rush forward with its weaponry and offer it up for decommissioning. The leadership of the IRA-Sinn Fein organisation has said that it does not intend to hand over one bullet or one ounce of Semtex until the end of the process, provided that it has what it wants out of that process. It is a thoroughly conditional preparedness to decommission. It says, "If you give us what we want, we'll hand over our guns." It is in effect saying that we can buy its weapons by concessions. That is the IRA's position--even so, I suspect that a few of its members would not want to hand over the stockpile of arms that they undoubtedly have in Northern Ireland and in the Irish Republic.
The Bill is likely to be one of the least used pieces of legislation that the House has ever debated or passed. I suspect that it will have dust on it, and that it will not be used that much by civil servants to determine whether the right means and methods are used to decommission weaponry. It gives me little comfort to know that this legislation will be on the statute book, because it is not backed up by any reality that decommissioning will take place. That is not to say that the Government should not go through with the exercise: the paramilitaries should abide by it, because they have no excuses for not decommissioning.
The Mitchell report is clear. The international team said:
When the process began of bringing terrorists into talks, absolute proof was required that we had a permanent and complete cessation of violence, that if there was to be a ceasefire, it was for real: if the IRA--and, for that matter, the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Freedom Fighters--was to be involved in political negotiations, we had to be absolutely certain that it was totally committed to peaceful means, to use the jargon from the joint declaration. The Secretary of State outlined in that broadcast, and, indeed, in many others, that, as evidence that it was totally committed to democratic and peaceful means of resolving our problems in Northern Ireland, the IRA would have to give up its guns and explosives to prove that violence was over.
"the idea that I will talk to them now, or those who represent them and argue for them, is one that would turn the stomach of decent people through the length and breadth of this Province. If you bring a bomb with you then don't expect the British Government to dignify you with the status of a constitutional politician."
I suspect that many people in Northern Ireland were saying, "Hear, hear!" to the Secretary of State as he made a common-sense utterance--the distinction between those who are legitimate politicians and those who are the front men for terrorist organisations.
"No one has asked for the total decommissioning of all weapons before talks begin . . . 'Show your determination to seek peace by beginning to decommission.'"--[Official Report, 24 January 1996; Vol. 270, c. 361.]
We had moved from the situation in which guns had to be handed over to one in which the IRA had only to start the process. Then we moved to the famous Washington 3 proposal, which required paramilitary organisations to offer some arms
"as a tangible confidence building measure and to signal the start of a process."
Gradually, the Government's requirements were watered down. I find it laughable when I hear some nationalist and republican leaders--even those in leadership in the Irish Republic--chiding the Government for not moving. It flies in the face of what has happened over the past three years: the vast movement of the Government towards a position, while the IRA has not moved a centimetre from its position in 1993.
"the paramilitary organisations will not decommission any arms prior to all-party negotiations. That was the unanimous and emphatically expressed view of the representatives of the political parties close to paramilitary organisations".
I part company with the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh, in that I have never given any commitment to the Mitchell report. I do not agree with it, and I never have. I support the six principles that are contained in it, but I do not believe that its proposals or recommendations are worthy of support. The proposals have no integrity.
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