Security (Hansard, 12 December 1991)

§ 5. Mr. Molyneaux
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the security situation in Northern Ireland.

§ Mr. Brooke
Since I answered a similar question on 14 November, seven people have been killed as a result of the security situation, of whom six were civilians and one was a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment.
The Government remain entirely committed to bringing terrorism to an end through the vigorous and impartial actions of the police and the Army. They have succeeded in bringing suspected terrorists to justice. Up to the end of November this year, 367 people had been charged with terrorist offences, including 37 with murder and 75 with attempted murder.

§ Mr. Molyneaux
The Secretary of State will be aware from his own sources of the vast array of weapons being assembled and stored as far south as Limerick for transport to Northern Ireland. Is there not now a good case for strengthening the frontier wire, as a matter of urgency?

§ Mr. Brooke
The right hon. Gentleman knows, as does the House, the scale of the shipments from Libya before the Eksund was apprehended by the French customs. It is known that a substantial part of that weaponry is in the Republic of Ireland. Of course, I am delighted that from time to time the Garda find some of it.

§ Rev. William McCrea
I am sure that the Secretary of State will join me in expressing in the House sympathy for my constituent's family on the murder of Mr. Newell, a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment. Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate the tremendous fear felt throughout the Province as we face the Christmas period, bearing in mind both the warning given by the security forces of an impending IRA outrage near Christmas and the signal given by the nationalist community in the result of a by-election at Magherafelt today, where there was a 43 per cent. increase in the Sinn Fein vote and a 34 per cent. decrease in the SDLP vote?

§ Mr. Brooke
Of course I share the hon. Gentleman's sympathy in the case of Mr. Newell. All terrorist crimes are horrible, but I find those which follow the pattern of Mr. Newell's death especially horrible. The hon. Gentleman is right, too, to tell the House of the warning that the Chief Constable of the RUC gave at the end of last week about the potential level of terrorist violence in the run-up to Christmas.
As for the pattern of voting in the by-election in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, there may be others besides myself to whom he might address that question.

§ Sir Patrick Duffy
May I draw the attention of the Secretary of State to the report in The Irish Times yesterday week about the recent meeting of the British-Irish parliamentary group in Dublin, and the contribution of his hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) about the security situation in proximity to the border? Were the reported remarks of his parliamentary private secretary in accordance with an official departmental brief?

§ Mr. Brooke
Necessarily, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) is my parliamentary private secretary, he will have taken advantage of the opportunity of briefing. With regard to security at the border, I have consistently said in the aftermath of conferences under the Anglo-Irish Agreement that, although we are delighted that good co-operation exists, it can always be better, and I am confident that we can make it so.