HC Deb 28 January 1982 vol 16 cc994-5
10. Mr. Adley

asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a further statement on the plan for a ministerial visit to the United States of America to counter the misrepresentation there by sympathisers of the Irish Republican Army of the situation in Northern Ireland.

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Nicholas Scott)

There are at present no definite plans for a ministerial visit to the United States of America, but my right hon. Friend expects to go there in the spring or early summer. Any other such visits will have as part of their purpose the explanation of the Government's policies in Northern Ireland and countering the misrepresentation to which my hon. Friend refers.

Mr. Adley

While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask whether he is aware that the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Carron) appears to have broken the American immigration rules with impunity and yet is sought after and féted by some influential American politicians? Does that not make the journey to which my hon. Friend has alluded urgent? Will my right hon. Friend, when he visits the United States of America, try to speak to the American people in a language that they can understand and tell them that if the majority of people in Northern Ireland wish to choose their own constitutional arrangements with the rest of the United Kingdom they should be free to do so, as the majority of the people in Puerto Rico are free to choose their constitutional arrangements with the rest of the United States?

Mr. Scott

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will have heard my hon. Friend's view about the line that he should take when he goes to the United States. Incidentally, I am also convinced that the antics of the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Carron) will have done something to awaken the American public as a whole to the problems that we face.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell

Will the Government bear in mind in this connection that the principal threat from the other side of the Atlantic to the peace of Northern Ireland does not come from the Irish-American community in the United States, but from the State Department and the Pentagon?

Mr. Scott

No, I cannot accept that.

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