Arms and Explosives (Hansard, 27 April 1995)

§ 11. Mr. Cyril D. Townsend
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress is being made over the removal of arms and explosives from illegal organisations. [19618]

§ Sir Patrick Mayhew
The security forces continue to recover illegally held weapons and munitions. The most recent example was a find on 4 April of a substantial quantity of weapons, weapon parts, ammunition and weapon-making equipment in a house in Holywood, County Down, and the subsequent recovery of a substantial quantity of arms in a house in Chester-le-Street in County Durham. The RUC will continue to seek out terrorist weaponry with the utmost vigour.

§ Mr. Townsend
I warmly welcome that news. Will my right hon. and learned Friend assure the House that that topic remains right at the top of the agenda? Does he agree that any talks between various groups in Northern Ireland which fail to address that subject could be fatally flawed? Does he believe that organisations, such as the United Nations, and individual countries have a part to play in helping with the removal and destruction of illegal arms and bombs in Northern Ireland?

§ Sir Patrick Mayhew
I agree with my hon. Friend. I reckon that the people of Northern Ireland and the people of the whole island of Ireland are sick to the back teeth of weapons being used for political purposes and of those who justify such use. I agree with what he said about the importance of addressing that matter in talks as well as with what he said in his concluding question.

§ Mr. Trimble
The Secretary of State, in reply to the previous question and to earlier questions, tried to state the circumstances and requirements for the decommissioning, as it is now called, of terrorist arsenals. May I tell him that he did so in extremely uncertain and opaque language, which people outside will find difficult to understand, that the vague and uncertain criteria stated by the Northern Ireland Office provide an opportunity for the ill-intentioned criticism of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon), from which he suffered earlier, and that such language also opens the door to the sort of slippage of the Government's position that has happened so often over the past few months? The only sensible thing to do is to state the clear requirements of decommissioning and the surrender of weapons and to stick to them.

§ Sir Patrick Mayhew
The Government have stuck, throughout the whole of this period, to the conditions that they have described. It has been perfectly clearly stated that to make a transition from exploratory dialogue to main political talks, in which I trust that the hon. Gentleman's party will soon be taking part, there has to be substantial progress on the decommissioning of arms. I have been asked what is meant by that. I described it in Washington as a declared willingness in principle to disarm progressively, a common practical understanding of what decommissioning would entail, the decommissioning of some arms as a tangible, confidence-building measure to test practical arrangements and to demonstrate good faith and a signal of the start of a 975 process. The hon. Gentleman waves his arms as though he cannot understand that, but it is very easy to understand and it makes very good sense.

§ Mr. Shore
In the talks on the decommissioning of terrorist weapons, should not the surrender of Semtex explosives have the highest priority since those particular weapons are clearly in use only for aggressive rather than defensive purposes?

§ Sir Patrick Mayhew
Nobody would disagree with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. I am sometimes told that there is a long tradition of hiding the pike in the thatch when violence has come to an end. That cannot possibly be prayed in aid in favour of those who retain Semtex, given the appalling capacity of even a few pounds in weight of that material.