Commons Sitting of 16 January 1997

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  TREASURY

    The Euro
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will estimate the cost to the United Kingdom economy of converting to the euro. [9515]
    Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what estimate he has made of the costs to the United Kingdom Government of transition from the pound to the euro. [9526]
    The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): The Government have not yet made any full assessments of the transitional costs to the Government or to the economy of introducing the euro. We will make an assessment of such costs at the appropriate time as part of the assessment of whether the United Kingdom should participate in the single currency.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: As we must decide this year whether to join the euro, and as the cost of doing so would run to many billions of pounds because all business systems, computers and shop tills would have to be changed, does my right hon. and learned Friend think that a welcome contribution to the debate, which I know that he wants, would be to make and publish such estimates? Have estimates been made of the direct cost to Government Departments such as the Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise and so on? If so, will he undertake to publish them at an early date?
    Mr. Clarke: If the euro were to go ahead on the timetable contemplated, and we were to join, Government Departments of the sort that my right hon. Friend cited would not have to change their accounting systems until 2002, when notes and coins are intended to be introduced. We are in close contact with the banking and retailing world and a great deal of consultation has taken place. When the sensible time comes for making a full assessment of the choice facing the United Kingdom, things such as compliance costs will obviously be relevant. By then, we should be able to produce some reliable figures and estimates.
    Mr. Prentice: Would not the costs be very considerable? In the 1960s, the Government decided to decimalise five years before D-day and the relevant
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    legislation was on the statute book four years before. Why does the Chancellor think that the country can make this momentous and irreversible decision, with euros coming to the United Kingdom in January 2002 and the pound disappearing in June of that year, in less time than it took the country to decimalise in 1971?
    Mr. Clarke: Member states are considering the precise transitional arrangements. The British Government are contributing to the necessary rules and regulations that would govern the transition to make it less expensive and to reduce the costs to an acceptable level. As I said, on the strictest interpretation of the timetable, we are talking about a changeover of notes and coins by 2002. At the moment, the sensible thing is to wait and see precisely what the transitional arrangements will be and to continue discussions with banks and retailers. Banks and many financial houses will have to change their systems anyway if the euro is formed by other countries, because I expect much trading in the euro to take place in the foreign exchange markets in the City of London.
    Mr. John Townend: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the cost of introducing the euro, which everyone accepts will run into billions of pounds, will have to be paid for by increases in taxes and prices? If we have the same experience as we had with decimalisation, conversion prices will be rounded up. Will not the introduction of the euro therefore result in a significant increase in inflation, pushing up prices and feeding into higher wages and costs?
    Mr. Clarke: I think that it is an argument; I am not sure that it is a fact. I agree that it is perfectly legitimate to claim that there will be substantial transitional costs; the Government must be in a position to estimate them and will do so at the sensible time when we face the choice. I well remember taking part in the controversy about decimalisation. The debates were still going on when I first arrived in the House. My only recollection of decimalisation is that, after much agitated debate running up to it, the changeover was almost a non-event.
    Mr. Gordon Brown: Following the discussions in Dublin on the euro, its costs and other matters, the Health Secretary said that he favoured renegotiating our position in Europe and was supported by the Prime Minister, who said that he favoured renegotiation. This morning, the Chancellor said that he does not think that that means renegotiating. Who speaks for the Government? Does the Chancellor support the Prime Minister's position on renegotiation?
    Mr. Clarke: We have a clear position on negotiating in the context of the intergovernmental conference. We have produced a White Paper, and have set out a clear negotiating position. I have not the first idea what the Opposition's view of any of that is; they have not produced any such document, and this is one of the many areas where it is not possible to get any straight answers out of them.

    Small Businesses
    Sir Wyn Roberts: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what economic measures he is taking to encourage small businesses. [9516]
    The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mrs. Angela Knight): The main contribution that the Government can make to a successful small business sector is to provide a stable macro-economic environment, with low taxation, limited regulation, and support and guidance where necessary: this we are doing.
    Sir Wyn Roberts: I welcome my hon. Friend's reply. Does she agree, however, that the economic stability and excellent prospects that small businesses now enjoy, and the help given to them in the Budget with business rates and corporation tax, will be put at risk if the electorate are foolish enough to take a leap in the dark and vote the Labour party into government?
    Mrs. Knight: My right hon. Friend is right: he has made an important point. The major criterion that all small businesses want us to achieve is a stable economic environment, and they now have that. It is also important to note that we now have uniform business rates because, before they were introduced, too many Labour-controlled local authorities continued to put up rates, thus milking dry companies in their areas and inhibiting their ability to employ and foster. It is not surprising that small businesses are so worried about the Labour party's policies.
    Mr. Foulkes: Is not one of the additional burdens borne by small business men the extra cost of value added tax on fuel? Will they not have been rather upset, if they voted Conservative at the last election having been assured that there would be no VAT on fuel, to find that it was immediately imposed?
    Mrs. Knight: That just shows how little the hon. Gentleman knows about small businesses. They claim the VAT back. What they are very worried about is the question of the minimum wage and the social chapter, with which they know the Labour party is threatening them.
    Mr. Tredinnick: Is my hon. Friend aware of any proposals to give control of business rates to local authorities? Does she think that, were that to happen, business rates would go up or down in councils controlled by Opposition parties, such as Hinckley and Bosworth borough council in my constituency?
    Mrs. Knight: My hon. Friend raises the issue that worries so many businesses. When their local authorities were controlled by Labour, they felt that they were having to pay far too much for far too few services—and, what is more, statistics prove that they were absolutely right. The Labour party's promise that it would return small companies to local authorities for business rating purposes shows just how little the party knows about companies, and shows why companies justly fear its policies.

    Inheritance Tax
    Mr. Pike: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many people he estimates will pay inheritance tax in the current financial year. [9518]
    The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Michael Jack): It is provisionally estimated that inheritance tax will be paid on around 18,000 transfers on death and in lifetime in the current financial year.
    Mr. Pike: As a Lancashire Member, I congratulate the Minister—another Lancashire Member—on his elevation to the Privy Council.
    Does not the Government's obsession with the abolition of inheritance tax underline, in many people's minds, their obsession with helping a minority of wealthy people rather than giving a fair deal to the majority? That has been the trend ever since the Government were elected in 1979.
    Mr. Jack: In a spirit of camaraderie, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind good wishes on my appointment to the Privy Council. I listened to what he had to say, but it contrasts starkly with what the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien) said last year in the Standing Committee considering the Finance Bill. At that time, he confirmed your party's wish for more millionaires to be created, and seemed to confirm some interest in the creation of wealth; but you show your usual nasty attitude to that wealth passing down—
    Madam Speaker: Order. Privy Councillors do not behave in that way.
    Mr. Jack: I apologise, Madam Speaker—the heat of battle must have got to me.
    The hon. Gentleman suggested that his party takes a rather unfortunate attitude to wealth being passed on. Inheritance tax statistics show that only 2 per cent. of estates now pay it. Through raising the threshold and our long-term desire to remove the tax, we want to end the worry caused to those with modest estates as they pass their wealth down the generations. We want more wealth to be passed on for productive use by future generations.
    Mr. Nicholls: Does my hon. Friend agree that 2 per cent. of estates being subject to inheritance tax is 2 per cent. too many? The trouble with inheritance tax is not that it was designed to raise revenue for items that must be financed by the state, but that it was devised as a way of punishing people for having money in the first place. It is a thoroughly un-Conservative tax and it should go at the earliest opportunity.
    Mr. Jack: My hon. Friend puts his finger on an important point. It is worth considering the history of estate taxes, or estate duty as it was once called. Such taxes were relevant when the tax base was not as it is today. Today, we have taxes on income, earning and consumption; the time has come for us to make progress on our long-term objective of removing inheritance tax, as and when we can afford it.

    Economy (North-West England)
    Mr. Elletson: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement about the economy in the north-west of England. [9519]
    Mrs. Angela Knight: The north-west is sharing fully in the success of the British economy, which is enjoying a combination of low inflation, falling unemployment, low mortgage rates and rising living standards not seen for a generation.
    Mr. Elletson: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does it not show that, thanks to the Government's economic policy, north-west England is now one of the most competitive and successful economies in the most competitive and successful country in western Europe? Would it not be crazy to throw all that away on new Labour, new failure?
    Mrs. Knight: My hon. Friend is correct. Unemployment in the north-west has fallen to its lowest level for more than six years and average weekly pay is the second highest in the country. May I turn my hon. Friend's attention to some of the figures relating to Blackpool? It is, as he knows, the country's premier tourist resort, with more visitors per year than Portugal and more hotel beds than the whole of Greece. The Labour party's recipe of a minimum wage, the social chapter and more red tape would damage jobs in my hon. Friend's constituency and would damage the United Kingdom's tourist industry.
    Mr. Sheldon: Is the hon. Lady aware that chambers of commerce in the north-west have stated that they are more concerned about the level of interest rates and a competitive pound than about anything else? Although I welcome the decision by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to overcome the fears of the Governor of the Bank of England, will the hon. Lady ensure that my points about the competitive pound are fully taken into account, bearing in mind the need for manufacturing industry in the north-west of England?
    Mrs. Knight: I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that that is one of the factors that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor takes into account when setting interest rates. The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that we receive many representations from business, commerce and individuals about all aspects of the British economy. I can assure him that they are delighted by our inflation performance. They are also delighted that our interest rates are low, mortgage rates are at their lowest level for almost 30 years, more people are in work and we have a lower unemployment rate than any other major European country. That is the sort of economy that we have created in this country—one in which companies can prosper and thrive and individuals can expect jobs and achieve improved living standards.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I welcome the influence of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his resistance to the blandishments of the Governor of the Bank of England when urging him to increase interest rates. Such resistance has made a direct contribution to the healthy economic situation in
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    north-west England. In my constituency of Macclesfield, unemployment is down to 3.2 per cent. and we have recently had the fine announcement of the second runway at Manchester airport. Only last October, Vauxhall announced investment of more than £300 million in Merseyside, which I hope will go some way to offset today's unfortunate announcement by Ford at Halewood—a decision that I deeply regret.
    Mrs. Knight: I agree with my hon. Friend that any job losses are regrettable. In its statement today, Ford says that it is improving the plant's competitiveness to secure its long-term future, but the future for everyone in this country is a stable economy—an economy and economic policies that ensure the job creation that we are currently witnessing. Recently published figures show that we are creating about 10,000 jobs a week; we are prepared to continue to do so. It is vital for everyone in the country.
    Mr. Milburn: Will the hon. Lady confirm that earlier today the Chancellor described the loss of jobs in the north-west at Ford's Halewood plant as a case of
    "You can't win them all"?
    How can she defend such complacency when the loss of quality manufacturing employment is such a devastating blow, not only to the north-west but to the whole British economy?
    Instead of sitting back and doing nothing, will the Minister agree to make a statement to the House on the impact of those job losses on the people of the north-west and the economy of that region?
    Mrs. Knight: That question was uniquely silly, especially the quotation that the hon. Gentleman attributed to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As I said, all job losses are regrettable. I find them regrettable, as do my right hon. and learned Friend and the Government.
    I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support Ford's measures to improve the plant's competitiveness to ensure its future, and that he will be pleased by the enormous investment that Ford has made in this country. I look forward to his supporting the economic policies that have created and continue to create jobs in this country; unemployment is falling here, but is rising in every other major European country. That ability to create jobs results in this country's success and provides big opportunities for everyone, including people on Merseyside.

    Taxation
    Sir Ivan Lawrence: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the level of taxation in (a) the United Kingdom and (b) the rest of the European Union. [9520]
    Mr. Jack: The overall burden of taxation on the economy in the United Kingdom was 35.75 per cent of GDP in 1995–96. This represents one of the very lowest levels in Europe and is below that of France, Germany and Italy.
    Sir Ivan Lawrence: Does my hon. Friend—whose honour Conservative Members very much welcome—agree that taxation must be a matter for member states,

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    that our policy has enabled us to achieve lower personal and business taxation, details of which I invite him to give us, and that it is not in Britain's interests to give up that control?
    Mr. Jack: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his kind personal comments. On his last point, I hope that I can satisfy him by reminding him of what my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor said to the House of Lords in the EMU inquiry on 28 March 1996:
    "I personally strongly take the view that taxation policies are decisions for the member states of the European Union and should remain so."
    I believe that to be a clear statement of our policy.
    My hon. and learned Friend invited me to give the House information on tax on business as a percentage of GDP. In the United Kingdom it is 8 per cent., in Germany 9.4 per cent. and in France 16.8 per cent. At a personal level, in the United Kingdom it is 17 per cent., in Germany 27 per cent., in France 26 per cent. and in Italy 24 per cent., which clearly shows what an attractive place the United Kingdom is to do business and earn money, with tax at such a low percentage of GDP.
    Mr. Spearing: Do not considerable disparities persist between VAT in different nations of the Community? For instance, do not France and Germany impose a minimum of 15 per cent. VAT on children's clothing, fuel and water?
    Is the Minister aware that, under article 99 of the Maastricht treaty on European Union, such disparities must change? Has he not seen the document that has been sent to the presidency, and to Her Majesty's Government by the Commission, requiring or suggesting a further tranche of harmonisation, including decision by qualified majority voting and central collection and dispersion? Why did the Chancellor of the Exchequer, despite the conversation on Radio 4 this morning, make no reference to that?
    The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, who is sitting next to the Chancellor, wrote a memorandum, which is publicly available in the Vote Office, describing that outrageous suggestion and signed it. Would it not have been better if the Chancellor had seen and signed it?
    Mr. Jack: I do not know what to make of the hon. Gentleman's question. He accuses the Chancellor of not dealing with the central issue, but for once Radio 4's "Today" programme concentrated on asking the Chancellor about the excellent performance of the British economy. My right hon. and learned Friend offered good information about inflation, low interest rates and falling unemployment—the things that really matter in this country to those who are working and exporting to the rest of Europe.
    Mr. Redwood: Will the Minister confirm that the British Government would veto any Franco-German proposal to make taxation a matter of common concern within the Community institutions? Will we stand against any compulsory increase in income tax to bring this
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    country into line with France and Germany, and will he confirm that higher income tax would not be a price worth paying for a single currency?
    Mr. Jack: That, I think, is a hypothetical question—[Interruption.]—for the very simple and straightforward reason that no such proposal as my right hon. Friend describes exists.
    Mr. Mike O'Brien: Will the Minister confirm that the Chancellor has told the House:
    "one of my options must be to extend the VAT base. The main candidates are food, children's clothes, transport, sewerage and newspapers."?
    Furthermore, he said:
    "A powerful case for each of them can be made".—[Official Report, November 1993; Vol. 233, c. 940]
    In 1979 and in 1992 the Tories promised not to extend VAT: whereupon they doubled it and put it on fuel. How can anyone trust the Tories on VAT?
    Mr. Jack: We started the day looking into the gutter and we have just had another example of the kind of gutter, negative politics that the Opposition told us they were not going to indulge in.
    Let us look at the record. My right hon. and learned Friend has never made a secret of the fact that he favours a broad-based taxation system with low marginal rates—possibly an idea that the Opposition do not understand. Today they have completely fabricated a claim that we have some intention of levying VAT on food. Let us nail that right now, and remind the House that my right hon. and learned Friend has said:
    "It has never crossed my mind to put VAT on food and it hasn't crossed my mind now."
    His policy and position are thus quite clear.
    Sir Teddy Taylor: Will the Minister remind the Opposition that the sixth directive, which called for harmonisation of VAT, was agreed in 1977 when there happened to be a Labour Government? Does he agree that the real threat of VAT on food could arise only from a European Court challenge to a legal procedure that the Government have been using since 1 January—and that that could happen whether a Conservative or a Labour Government were in office?
    Will the Minister finally agree that the late and much respected John Smith would never have indulged in the untruths and deviousness that we witnessed this morning?
    Mr. Jack: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's last point. The House will have taken careful note of his other points; but the greatest threat to our position in respect of Europe comes from the Opposition.

    Value Added Tax
    Mr. McAvoy: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the amount of VAT collected in the last year for which figures are available. [9521]
    The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Phillip Oppenheim): The net amount of VAT collected in the financial year 1995–96 was £43,069 million.
    Mr. McAvoy: On the radio this morning the Chancellor, when asked about the Tory record on VAT

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    on fuel, said that the Labour party was using a quotation about VAT on fuel from somebody at the time of the 1992 general election. Clearly, the Chancellor has nothing but contempt for that somebody and regards that somebody as being of no importance or influence and easy to disregard. Can the Minister confirm that the Prime Minister is that somebody?
    Mr. Oppenheim: With regard to that and to the campaign launch this morning—[Interruption.] If hon. Members give me a chance, I shall be delighted to answer the question. I remember that when the Leader of the Opposition got his job, he cast his eyes to heaven and said that he would not indulge in infantile yah-boo politics, yet this morning he signed off his VAT on food campaign, which is so catty and silly that it makes demon eyes look cerebral and spiritual by comparison.
    Sir Sydney Chapman: Does my hon. Friend agree that we have one of the least burdensome VAT regimes of all European Union countries? Will he confirm that 40 per cent. of consumer expenditure in this country is free of VAT, that we want to keep it that way and that the worst prospect for that would come about if we ever agreed to the harmonisation of VAT rates in Europe?
    Mr. Oppenheim: Yes.
    Mr. Beggs: Is the Minister aware that jobs in my constituency and throughout the United Kingdom could be put at risk by the proposed two-tier insurance rate of 17.5 per cent. and 4 per cent., granting special concession and privilege to the retail sector as against the rental sector, which services about 3 million in the less well-off sections of our community? Will he undertake to meet representatives of rental companies and hear from them how he can continue to achieve the same VAT revenue to the Exchequer while maintaining level competition between the two sectors?
    Mr. Oppenheim: The hon. Gentleman makes some valid points. I am meeting representatives of the travel industry and the insurance industry next week. There has been widespread VAT avoidance by those sectors. In the interests of taxpayers in general and of services such as health, education and law and order, which are significantly funded by VAT and on which almost all hon. Members understandably want more to be spent, we must not allow industries to create large VAT loopholes that will put at risk the revenue for those important services. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I will meet the various interests and industries involved to see whether anything can be done to ensure that the system works fairly and to avoid the tax loopholes that have undoubtedly been created.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the vibrant UK economy that we are enjoying results in people having more money to spend, and that the advantage of VAT, rather than direct taxation, as a principal means of raising revenue is that people pay tax
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    as they spend? They make the choice, whereas with direct taxes they do not have a choice. That is a great advantage and it makes our economy what it is today.
    Mr. Oppenheim: My hon. Friend is right. It is important to remember that VAT is not levied on items that form a significant part of the budget of the less well-off.
    Ms Primarolo: Will the Minister tell the House why we should trust his undertaking that VAT will not be imposed on food? The Chancellor said this morning that that had never crossed his mind—those were his words. Will he explain, therefore, why on 30 November 1993 in the Budget statement, at column 940 in Hansard, the right hon. and learned Gentleman described the serious options and the "powerful case" for extending VAT to "food, children's clothes, transport, sewerage and newspapers."—[Official Report, 30 November 1993; Vol. 233 c. 940.]
    Mr. Oppenheim: The hon. Lady should probably have continued the quotation to put it in context. I think that her question is marvellous. I never thought that I would stand at the Dispatch Box—[HON. MEMBERS: "Go, then."]—and listen to a Labour Front Bencher make such a heartfelt plea against tax rises. It shows that 17 years of Tory rule have not been in vain. The deputy leader of new Labour's throwing a temper tantrum at the suggestion that he should give a fiver to a tramp proves that, while new Labour may demonstrate admirable enthusiasm for Tory policies, it might be extrapolating a little too far.

    National Debt
    Mr. Spring: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the ratio of national debt to gross domestic product, relative to those of other EU member states. [9522]
    The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. William Waldegrave): The United Kingdom's ratio of gross debt to gross domestic product at 53.75 per cent at the end of March 1996 is one of the lowest ratios of general Government gross debt to GDP in the European Union.
    Mr. Spring: Does my right hon. Friend agree that his answer simply serves to underline the British economy's stunningly good performance relative to that of the rest of Europe? Will he confirm that our ratio also compares well with those of Japan and the United States?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The country's debt figures represent a main source of pride for the Government. We must consider what has happened during the past 20 years. In 1970, we had the worst debt to GDP ratio of the big countries in Europe. In 1975, we were still the worst performer. We began to catch up in the 1980s and in 1996 we were the best performer. I confirm the accuracy of my hon. Friend's comments about Japan and the United States: we have a lower debt to GDP ratio than both of those countries.
    Mr. Geoffrey Robinson: Will the Chief Secretary confirm that national debt has doubled under the present

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    Prime Minister and now costs every taxpayer about £1,000 a year? Does he agree that that represents a disgraceful mismanagement of the country's finances?
    Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman makes a silly point. The base year of 1990 saw the lowest level of national debt since 1915, when the Liberals joined the national coalition and began to finance the war by borrowing. It was not until 1990 that we had debt under control again. Another way of putting it is that, in 1990, we had by far the lowest debt level of any western country. That enabled us to look after public services during the recession and, at the end of it, still have the lowest debt of any big European country.
    Mr. Yeo: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that if the European countries that are hoping to form the first wave of a single currency were able to meet the debt to income ratio required by the convergence criteria only through a gross fudging of their financial accounts, that would be an unsustainable basis for a single currency and it would be highly desirable for this country to have no part of it?
    Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is entirely right. If countries were to think it wise to try to join a single currency by using accounting devices that counted for one year only, they would join an ultimately unstable single currency. I am sure that that will form part of the judgment that Ministers take in the Council of Ministers at the appropriate time.
    Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Will the Chief Secretary acknowledge that, under the present Prime Minister, British national debt has risen faster than that of any other member state in the European Union except Germany, which is coping with reunification? Against that background, and as the Conservative and Labour parties have pledged to reduce or abolish taxation, there is a natural question in the minds of the electorate about how they will keep debt down without introducing other measures of taxation. We want an exchange, not of insults, but of information regarding exactly which taxes Labour and the Conservatives will put up.
    Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is right to contrast the approaches of the Government and the Opposition. The Government will maintain low tax and debt burdens by controlling expenditure. There is not the slightest chance of the Labour party's doing that.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Is not it remarkable that this country probably nearly meets the convergence criteria for joining the single currency but, according to polling data in The Daily Telegraph, is the country most vehemently opposed in principle ever to joining the single currency? Is not it a fact that good management of the economy, as evidenced by the statistics on national debt, is a good in its own right to be pursued in the interests of the British people, not the interests of creating a single currency in which they have no confidence?
    Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend is exactly right. The policies that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor has been following are right for the economy and are pursued because they are right for the economy. One of the things of which the Government can be proud
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    is the fact that we will have an entirely free choice, thanks to the Prime Minister's opt-out, about whether to go into a single currency. The economic strength of the country will mean that we shall be able to choose on the basis of wider considerations.

    Value Added Tax
    Mrs. Mahon: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what additional sums have been paid as a result of changes in VAT since 1992. [9524]
    Mr. Oppenheim: The net revenue effect of various changes to VAT coverage since 1992 is estimated to be £870 million in the current financial year.
    Mrs. Mahon: Will the Minister confirm that, because of the Government's imposition of VAT on domestic fuel, many pensioners are forced to pay the highest premium to heat their homes? Has he calculated the cost of that in human terms and to the national health service, as many pensioners, especially in my constituency, are forced to cut back on heating in cold weather?
    Mr. Oppenheim: The hon. Lady makes a point, but this could be a good moment gently to remind her and Opposition Members that, for many years, Labour's energy policy was to burn expensive and relatively dirty coal. Labour denigrated our policy of allowing cleaner, cheaper gas, which has resulted in falling energy costs and cleaner air. I am surprised that Labour Members are so shameless that they can come to the House, after pursuing that policy, and declare that they are worried about the cost of energy for the less well-off.
    Mr. Lidington: Surely the impact of extending VAT to domestic fuel has been outweighed by the price cuts arising from the Government's policy of privatisation. Is it not also the case that the parties in the House that voted against privatisation were therefore voting in favour of dearer energy prices for pensioners and others, and that those who support a windfall tax would also bring about dearer fuel prices for pensioners and others?
    Mr. Oppenheim: My hon. Friend is exactly right. Even including VAT, power prices are lower than they were. Gas prices alone have fallen by 19 per cent. in real terms. The less well-off have also been protected by compensating rises in benefits.
    Mr. Darling: The House will have noted that the Chancellor has not answered any questions on VAT today. How can we believe a Chancellor who says that he never contemplated extending VAT to food when he specifically mentioned it in his 1993 Budget? How can we trust a Chancellor who says that somebody promised not to extend VAT in the 1992 election when not only was that somebody the Prime Minister, but we have film of the Chancellor of the Exchequer sitting next to the Prime Minister when he gave that commitment?
    Mr. Oppenheim: How can the House and voters trust a shadow Chief Secretary who, in response to a Scottish nationalist amendment proposing a reduction in VAT on fuel from 8 per cent. to 5 per cent, said that it was a

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    "cynical ploy from a desperate party"—[Official Report, 23 January 1995; Vol. 253, c. 49.]
    yet only three months ago came to the House and proposed just such a cynical ploy—from another desperate party?

    Company Cars
    Mr. Robathan: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he intends to take to deter company car users from driving unnecessary miles to obtain tax advantage. [9527]
    Mr. Jack: It is for employers to ensure that unnecessary business mileage expenses are not incurred. However, the needs of the genuine high-mileage business traveller are recognised in the current company car tax regime.
    Mr. Robathan: I congratulate the Government on their very sensible policies on reducing unnecessary car usage, but is my hon. Friend aware that independent tax advisers tell their clients with company cars to contrive to drive more than 18,000 miles a year, even if that is unnecessary mileage, because they will thereby benefit from the discount at 18,000 miles? Will my hon. Friend reconsider the policy with a view to finding a better way of allowing heavy usage—necessary mileage—while not encouraging unnecessary driving?
    Mr. Jack: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have no plans substantially to change the current taxation regime for company cars. Transport 2000 raised the matter with us, questioning whether unnecessary business mileage was in sum being increased to achieve tax breaks. No evidence of such usage could be found. There is anecdotal evidence, but overall I do not believe that there is widespread abuse.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. William O'Brien: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January. [9545]
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. O'Brien: Will the Prime Minister explain why tens of thousands of my constituents are finding it extremely difficult to pay their energy bills this winter? Why did he impose value added tax on their fuel bills when he promised the nation that there would be no increase in VAT? Will he explain why people should suffer from cold this winter because of his imposition of VAT on their fuel bills?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman should know that, during the past few years, the price of fuel has been steady at the worst. The real price of some fuels has
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    fallen as a result of the privatisation of the energy industries. The hon. Gentleman will recall, when last there was a Labour Government, that the price of fuel was rising at a rate of 30 per cent. a year.
    Mr. Legg: May I thank my right hon. Friend for his support for my private Member's Bill, which is aimed at countering drug abuse in clubs, and is to have its Second Reading tomorrow? Did he manage to make any further progress in the war on drugs during his visit to the Indian sub-continent? What is his reaction to the comments made today by Brian Harvey of East 17, who says that Ecstasy makes people feel better and that he takes up to 12 tablets a day?
    The Prime Minister: I have not read the comments about Ecstasy, but I regard any comments of that sort as wholly wrong. Drug taking, whatever the drug may be, tends to lead on to hard drugs. We have seen often enough the tragedy that then occurs.
    As for my visit to the Indian sub-continent, in Pakistan especially, I looked at one of the most important drug routes along which a very large amount of hard drugs comes from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, to northern Europe. I spent some time discussing with the Pakistan Government and others what measures we may take to assist them to ensure that drugs are caught at source and do not reach either Pakistan or northern Europe.
    Mr. Blair: Does the Prime Minister accept that, before the last general election, he gave a categorical pledge not to extend value added tax, and that after the election, in the first Budget, he did indeed extend VAT? Is that true or false?
    The Prime Minister: I think that we all know what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. The right hon. Gentleman is seeking to justify the crude and untruthful campaign that was launched this morning—a campaign that he knows is simply scaremongering and which will not persuade the British people. We now know very clearly where the negative campaigning comes from and who encourages it.
    Mr. Blair: Perhaps we can return to the question and see whether we can have an answer. I think that we are entitled to draw attention to the Prime Minister's record and to draw an inference from it. Did he stand at that Dispatch Box and promise not to extend VAT—yes or no—and did he then extend it in the first Budget after the general election, yes or no?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken in the imputations he is trying to make. It is the Labour party—not the Government—that has made £30 billion of spending commitments, and it is the Labour party that would need to raise tax or break the promises that it has made to the people. The Government have set out our tax proposals, our expenditure plans and our declining borrowing requirement. It is the right hon. Gentleman—not the Government—who has questions to answer.
    Mr. Blair: If the Prime Minister is so confident in his denials, after 22 Tory tax rises since the general election, and if, as he constantly tells us, he is raring to go in an

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    election campaign, why does he not experience a rare moment of decisiveness, call the general election—call it now—and let us all put our arguments to the verdict of the people?
    The Prime Minister: That campaign will come, and I look forward to it, but if the right hon. Gentleman is so concerned about tax levels and wants to cut them, perhaps he will tell us which of his spending commitments he would cut.
    Mr. Faulds: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
    The Prime Minister: What public expenditure would be reduced under a Labour Government? What expenditure has the Labour party opposed? Which of our tax reductions has it supported? The right hon. Gentleman says one thing, but his entire record shows that he does another.
    Mr. Faulds rose—
    Madam Speaker: Points of order come after Question Time.
    Mr. Clifton-Brown: If my right hon. Friend wanted to raise a substantial amount of money in the next tax year, would he tax savings by restricting personal equity plans and tax-exempt special savings accounts, tax pensions by taxing pension funds and increase pensioners' electricity and gas bills with a windfall tax? Is not the truth that the Chancellor has published his tax proposals in public, whereas the Labour party is considering proposals in private?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend makes his points extremely clearly. We know that the windfall tax would pay, were Labour given the opportunity, for all sorts of goodies—there is a larger number of them every day. We now hear rumours that the windfall tax would be illegal. If, as has been said, the Labour party has legal advice to the contrary, let it publish that legal advice. What did the right hon. Gentleman say when asked about the windfall tax? He stated:
    "Well, we haven't given a figure on that because we said that's something that has to be and should be, I mean this would be … ".
    That is the gobbledegook we heard from the right hon. Gentleman. Labour does not know how it would pay for its programme, but we know—it would put up taxes.
    Mr. Faulds: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
    Madam Speaker: I think that I can anticipate the hon. Gentleman's point of order.
    Mr. Faulds: This is rubbish.
    Madam Speaker: I shall hear the hon. Gentleman after the statement. I ask him to resume his seat.
    Mr. Ashdown: Will the Prime Minister confirm that it is Government policy to be ready to join a single currency on 1 January 1999, and that they are willing to do so if it is in the nation's interest?
    The Prime Minister: We will keep our options open, which is the entire purpose of the opt-out. We will make preparatory plans—which has been our position since, at Maastricht, some time ago, we established the opt-out.
    Mr. Tracey: Is my right hon. Friend aware of widespread support among the British public for more
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    stringent penalties against persistent offenders, as proposed in the Government's Crime (Sentences) Bill? What conclusions does he think that the public will draw from the Labour party's abstention on the Bill and all Liberal Members' voting against it? Is it not a fact that only the party of government is in favour of measures against criminals?
    The Prime Minister: I am shocked by that rare difference between the would-be coalition partners on this subject. Not just on this Bill, but on a series of recent law and order Bills, the Opposition, despite what they have said, have voted against the Government's tougher law and order measures. By their votes they should be judged.
    Mr. McAvoy: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January. [9546]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. McAvoy: The Prime Minister has stoutly refused to own up to his 1992 pledge not to extend VAT to fuel. Conservative Members may not like it, but the Prime Minister is demeaning his office by repeatedly refusing to answer the question. Bearing in mind his shifty performance this afternoon, does he understand that the British people simply do not believe his promises on VAT?
    The Prime Minister: I wonder what makes me suspect a degree of co-ordination in Labour questions. Is it perhaps the guilty look on the hon. Gentleman's face? The Labour party is seeking to smear in a crude campaign about the Government's plans for the next Parliament. It simply will not wash.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Can my right hon. Friend find time today to study the statement by Commissioner van Miert on the proposed alliance between British Airways and American Airlines and the threat—implicit threat perhaps—of fining the United Kingdom Government if they permit that alliance to go ahead? Surely it is a fundamental freedom for a national airline to decide in its commercial interests with whom it may or may not have an alliance anywhere in the world.
    The Prime Minister: I am aware of the Commissioner's comments on the alliance, which were made within the framework of the existing structure of air services. I find them very strange when it has been made clear that the British Airways-American Airlines alliance can go ahead only if airline services are liberalised. The present position is that the Director General of Fair Trading will consider the Commission's views with any other views that he has received when he prepares his

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    advice to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. It will be for my right hon. Friend to decide whether to clear the alliance.
    Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January. [9547]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Cunningham: Can I now have a straight answer from the Prime Minister? Does he recall saying before the last general election that he had no plans to extend the impact of VAT? Why should anyone believe him now?
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to several of my earlier answers.
    Mr. Nigel Evans: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 16 January. [9548]
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Evans: This question is not about VAT. I have not been included in the Opposition's little scheme. I should like the Prime Minister immediately to introduce compulsory homework on basic economics for Labour politicians. They believe that they can spend £30 billion without there being massive tax increases or massive increases in borrowing. Does he agree that the electorate will not want to risk trading an improving economy and shrinking unemployment for the economic paralysis and tax hikes that will certainly come about if the nightmare happens and a Labour Government are elected?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend has hit on an extremely good idea. If Labour Members did their homework—particularly the shadow Chancellor—they would learn that Labour's sums do not add up. They cannot promise £30 billion of expenditure and at the same time say that they will not increase taxation.
    Mr. David Shaw: It will end in tears.
    The Prime Minister: What an excellent expression. It will end in tears. I strongly suspect that it will. The reality is that people will rumble the fact that Labour Members cannot keep those promises without putting up taxes.
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    They cannot promise £30 billion in that fashion. If they ever formed a Government, Labour would be the same old tax raisers that they always have been.
    Mrs. Jane Kennedy: Will the Prime Minister acknowledge the depths of dismay being felt on Merseyside as 1,300 Ford workers face redundancy, despite having won for their plant the company's in-house award for achievement and quality of production just a few months ago? Does he accept that his Chancellor's comments this afternoon that
    "You can't win them all"
    have worsened that sense of dismay and make it look as though the Government do not care? Will he tell the House what action he and his Ministers are taking to secure the future of Ford Halewood and to find work for those who are facing redundancy?
    The Prime Minister: My right hon. and learned Friend said—if the hon. Lady had quoted him fully—how much he regretted that decision, and so do I. It is surprising that Ford has decided to move; it flies in the face of most investment decisions, which are moving to the United Kingdom. That should not hide the fact that Ford's new investment in Jaguar is worth 5,000 jobs and that it plans a further £2.6 billion of investment by 2000 and a lot of other investments.
    I understand entirely that that is no comfort to the workers in Halewood and I hope that it will be possible for them to find alternative employment, for example with other inward investors. The hon. Lady sniggers. When has she ever know inward investment like this coming into England? When has she ever known a time when the output of cars was at such a high level? As usual, the hon. Lady—I do not mean the hon. Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mrs. Kennedy), who asked the question; I mean the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle)—sits there assuming that she would be able to put things right. The policies that she advocates led the British car industry to ruin. The British car industry is more successful today than it has been since the hon. Lady was born.
    Mr. Faulds: On a point of order, Madam Speaker.
    Madam Speaker: I am sorry to repeat for the third time that, under our procedures, I can take points of order only after private notice questions, statements and applications under Standing Order No. 20. There is a statement, and I have to hear a Standing Order No. 20 application. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will wait his time.

Business of the House
3.32 pm
Mr. Jeff Rooker: Will the Leader of the House tell us the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton): The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 20 JANuARY—Remaining stages of the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Bill.
TUESDAY 21 JANUARY—Opposition Day (3rd Allotted Day). There will be a debate on the state of the national health service on an Opposition motion.
Motions relating to the selective cull (Enforcement of Community Compensation Conditions) Regulations and the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy Compensation Order.
WEDNESDAY 22 JANUARY—Until 2 o'clock there will be debates on the motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Consideration in Committee of the Finance Bill.
THURSDAY 23 JANUARY—Until about 7 0' clock, completion of consideration in Committee of the Finance Bill.
Remaining stages of the Local Government and Rating Bill.
FRIDAY 24 JANUARY—Private Members' Bills.
I regret that I am not able to be as helpful as I have usually been in recent times about the second week. I can announce only the following:
MONDAY 27 JANUARY—Second reading of the Sex Offenders Bill.
The House will also wish to know that it will be proposed that, on Wednesday 29 January, there will be a debate on artists' resale rights in European Standing Committee B. Details of the relevant documents will be given in the Official Report.
[Wednesday 29 January:
European Standing Committee B—European Community document: 7050/96 relating to artists' resale rights; relevant European Legislation Committee report: HC51 -xxiii (1995–96).]
Mr. Rooker: I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. We understand, in the present circumstances, the Government's inability to know what they will do with the rest of the legislative programme for the remaining part of this Parliament, so we make no criticism.
Given that tomorrow, 17 January, the consultation finishes that started back in October about proposals to change regulations on early retirement of teachers, could the Secretary of State for Education and Employment make an early statement next week on her intentions? Some urgent issues are involved, as I am sure the Leader of the House appreciates—the supply of teachers, the constant denigration of the profession, and the substantial increase in recent years of early retirement among teachers. The House, of course, has a crucial report from the Public Accounts Committee, but Members are entitled to be able to question the Secretary of State well before
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the changes take place. The matter is urgent for teachers making their plans and, of course, for children in our schools.
The report of the Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee, requested by the Government, on Nirex science will be available next week. It should be published as early as possible—a view, I might add, shared by my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham). Will the Leader of the House arrange it as quickly as possible through the appropriate Minister?
Could we have a statement next week from either a Foreign Office Minister or a Defence Minister on the confusion that they have caused this week? When a concerned mother travels abroad to assist the Red Cross in its mission of highlighting the brutality of anti-personnel land mines, it is demeaning to this House and the British people for senior members of the House and the Government to claim that the issue is too sophisticated or not straightforward. We need a ministerial statement to make it absolutely clear that the United Kingdom Government are doing everything to prohibit the use of those indiscriminate weapons around the world.
Will the Leader of the House clarify what the chairman of the Conservative party meant recently when he referred to the "normal parliamentary conventions" being used over the moving of the writ for the Wirral, South by-election? Do his comments mean that it will be moved within three months or within four months of the death of our colleague Barry Porter?
Mr. Newton: On the consultation on pension arrangements for teachers, I shall, of course, bring the hon. Gentleman's request to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment—although, in doing so, I should make it clear that I reject any suggestion that there has been persistent denigration of teachers. Indeed, quite the reverse is the case.
As the hon. Gentleman says, there has been a lengthy public inquiry into Nirex's application. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will no doubt be giving all those matters appropriate consideration. I will bring the hon. Gentleman's request to his attention.
I frankly thought that the hon. Gentleman's question on land mines could be described as mischievous. It is absolutely clear that the Government are fully committed to working for a worldwide ban on anti-personnel land mines. Indeed, it appears clear from the comments of the Red Cross and the Princess of Wales that they share the Government's position.
The matter of the writ, of course, is not for me. The hon. Gentleman is no doubt familiar with the conventions set out in a letter following the Speaker's Conference of 1973.
Mr. Stephen Day: My right hon. Friend will be aware that, on Wednesday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment announced the go-ahead for the second runway at Manchester International airport. He will also be aware that my constituency resides under the existing flight path of the existing runway, and potentially lies under the new flight paths once a second runway is built. Will he therefore

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organise a proper debate to allow me, as Member of Parliament for a constituency greatly affected by the matter, to represent my constituents' views? I have been denied the right to put their points on their behalf because the Government announced the decision in a written answer. Surely if the matter had concerned Heathrow, there would have been a full debate. Manchester deserves nothing less.
Mr. Newton: Of course I understand why my hon. Friend has put that point to me, and I will bear his request in mind, but I also wish to make two points. First, there are opportunities on Wednesday mornings for debates on matters of importance to regions and constituencies. Secondly, I understand my hon. Friend's concern, but it seems to me that yesterday's announcement is good news in general for Manchester airport, for the north-west and for civil aviation as a whole.
Mr. David Alton: The Leader of the House has just referred to good news for the north-west region. Following the devastating blow to the Merseyside economy of the loss of 1,400 jobs at Halewood, will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement, at the minimum, but preferably a debate, in the House at the earliest opportunity—preferably next week?
Will the right hon. Gentleman reflect that the absence of the social chapter in this country, far from making us a honeypot or Mecca for investment, has not stopped the outward investment of those jobs to Germany? Will he also ask his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to have urgent discussions with Ford UK, not only about the retention of the existing jobs, but about taking up its offer—made to Merseyside Members this morning—on the possibility of new jobs and a new model to be built at Halewood if appropriate assistance is given by the Government?
Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman will have heard what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said only a short time ago on that matter, and I shall not seek to add to it, except in this respect. It is encouraging that Ford considers that Halewood could become the sole European source for an all-new vehicle at the end of this decade, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will bear that in mind in his discussions with the company.
Sir Ivan Lawrence: Since it is clear from Prime Minister's questions that there is much confusion in the Opposition mind about our taxation policy and our achievements—especially as we have reduced taxes more than we have increased them, and we now have a lower level of personal overall taxation and a lower level of business taxation than any of our major competitors in Europe—is it not time we had a debate specifically on taxation, over and above the debate on the Finance Bill?
Mr. Newton: My hon. and learned Friend shot down the answer that I was going to give—that a day and a half of debate on tax matters was provided in the business statement that I have just made. I cannot promise additional time, but I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will make those points in that debate.
Mr. Peter Shore: I am sure that the Leader of the House will recognise that
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Commissioner van Miert's threat to take this country and British Airways to the European Court of Justice is not only a serious threat to an important and prosperous enterprise, but raises questions of the most fundamental constitutional importance. It raises the basic question whether the Commission will override the policies and the decisions of the Government and this Parliament. In those circumstances, will the Leader of the House arrange for the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to make an early statement?
Mr. Newton: As it happens, the President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is due to answer questions on Wednesday next. I cannot make a promise beyond that, but I will bring the right hon. Gentleman's request to his attention.
Mr. John Butcher: Does my right hon. Friend share my concern about recent trends in the way we make legislation? I refer to examples of national tragedies, when emotions can run high and we in this place want to be seen to be doing something quickly. Does he agree that those cases can often result in inadequate legislation?
Will my right hon. Friend, as Leader of the House, introduce a convention under which he could talk to his opposite numbers in the other parties to see whether there should be a one-year cooling-off period, on a case-by-case basis, when such events take place, in the interests only of producing legislation that is workable and for the long-term good of the country?
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend will be aware that there is much exchange through the usual channels about the handling of legislation, but that always leaves plenty of scope for differences of opinion between the Government and the Opposition and between individuals. There is nothing that I can do to prevent that.
Mr. Tony Benn: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to an early-day motion that has been tabled today which expresses the grave anxiety felt across the whole spectrum of opinion about the provisions of the Police Bill? The Bill would allow the police to enter people's houses—including the houses of doctors, journalists, lawyers and others—and tap their telephones without any prior judicial authority. Those affected would be entirely free from any independent judicial opinion. He will have noticed, I hope, the statements made in The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and The Guardian, and the statements by Lord Callaghan, Lord Merlyn-Rees and Lord Browne-Wilkinson. Will he give careful consideration to the early-day motion, which has attracted wide support across the spectrum of opinion?
Mr. Newton: I have not yet seen the early-day motion in question, and the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that these matters are currently under consideration in another place. However, intrusive surveillance has been providing crucial intelligence in the fight against organised crime for many years. The Police Bill seeks to place those operations on a statutory footing, which I think people will regard as proper. In addition, a senior

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judge will be appointed as a commissioner and empowered to investigate complaints about the improper use of the power.
Mr. Bob Dunn: Can my right hon. Friend arrange an urgent early debate on the financial anarchy and mismanagement that currently exist in the Labour and Liberal Democrat-controlled Kent county council, given the failure of that council to grasp the real problems of reducing bureaucracy and its scaremongering in threatening to cut essential services, such as the fire service, old people's homes and libraries? This is an absolute nightmare for which there is no justification, given the generous settlement provided by the Government to that wretched, benighted and wholly loathed local authority.
Mr. Newton: I hope that my hon. Friend will find an opportunity to make such points when we debate the revenue support grant orders, which are not now far away.
Mr. Seamus Mallon: Will the Leader of the House arrange time for a serious ministerial statement on EU decision 96/239 which gave approval for United Kingdom meat processors to export products that are of non-UK origin? However, the French are preventing the entry of those products into their territory despite the fact that the directive exists and has been reinforced by subsequent amendment. Will the Leader of the House ensure that the Minister responsible for agriculture and the Prime Minister try to prevent what is happening, as it is affecting my constituency? Meat processors in my constituency are losing up to 50 per cent. of their revenue and 50 per cent. of their employees as a result of the French Government acting contrary to an EU directive to which they agreed.
Mr. Newton: I am afraid that I cannot undertake to provide time for a debate, but I undertake to draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friends.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: This House is the basis of our democratic situation. May I ask my right hon. Friend a difficult question? Will he provide time for a two-day wide-ranging economic debate, so that all matters relating to taxation can be discussed? Such a debate would give the Opposition an opportunity to explain to the people of this country how they will pay for their £30 billion-worth of promises, so that when we move to an election, the people of this country can make an honest judgment of right hon. and hon. Members in this place, what they stand for and what their parties stand for.
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend described his question as a difficult one, but I do not think that it is difficult at all. His idea was a very good one, and I shall consider it.
Mr. Tony Banks: May I remind the Leader of the House that today the Government received the report on the ethics of xeno-transplantation? Can we have a debate on that crucial issue? Many moral and ethical questions are raised
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by the report, and the House should have an opportunity to debate it. At the same time, we could debate the distribution of organ donor cards, which all hon. Members should carry, because in the unhappy event that any of us should meet an untimely fate, our organs could be donated, saving the animals from having their organs taken from them—although in the case of Conservative Members, looking for their hearts could pose some problems.
Mr. Newton: The kindest thing that I can do to the hon. Gentleman is to ignore the latter part of his remarks. On the first part, he is right to say that the report has been published today. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has been pleased to accept most of its recommendations. The pressures on parliamentary time should be obvious from my previous announcements, but I shall bear in mind the request for a debate.
Mr. Harry Greenway: May I, too, call for a debate on the proposals for the early retirement of teachers? That would enable the House to consider both the proposals and the fact that no Labour authority has given the teachers any assurance that it would take a position any different from the Government's, although, as can be seen from the business question from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), the Labour party is posturing and pretending that it would support the teachers in that respect, when we know perfectly well that it would not. Teachers will not be conned by that.
Mr. Newton: That is another request that I shall bear in mind.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the Leader of the House refer back to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) in relation to the Wirral, South by-election? Does he recall that just before Christmas we lost another of our colleagues, Terry Patchett, and that within a short space of time the Labour party moved the writ and we had the by-election? It seems, according to his reply to my hon. Friend, that he is not prepared to answer the precise question whether the by-election will be held within three or four months, according to past convention.
I have tried this business of moving writs before, and I am only too ready, eager and willing to do it, if the Leader of the House will not tell us whether the Government are prepared to go ahead and hold the by-election, so that the people in Wirral, South can have someone here to represent them.
Mr. Newton: My right hon. Friend the Minister without Portfolio has made it clear that the intention is to hold the by-election. It is not a matter for me to determine the date, and I am not in a position to add to what I have said.
Sir Irvine Patnick: Can we have an urgent debate on education policy, so that we can discuss proposals such as that of Sheffield city council to abolish sixth form colleges in the event of a Labour Government? Can we also discuss the fact that the

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majority of local education authorities are already controlled by the Labour party and have the power to set homework in schools?
Mr. Newton: One of the Bills to which I hope that the House will be able to return in the not too distant future is the current Education Bill, and I hope that that may provide opportunities to discuss those points.
Ms Angela Eagle: Will the Leader of the House recognise the despair on Merseyside at the announcement of 1,300 job losses, the profound worries about the future of the Ford Halewood plant, and the possible knock-on effects on the economy of the disastrous announcement this morning? Will he provide time next week to debate those issues in the House, so that the economy of an entire region, which is already depressed and has unemployment at double the national average, can be properly considered and debated?
Instead of abusing Opposition Members who express some pessimism about the ability of those who will be sacked in the next few months to find alternative work in what is already an extremely depressed region, as the Prime Minister did, perhaps the Government could offer us something positive to give the people of Merseyside hope, rather than merely reinforcing their despair.
Mr. Newton: I did not detect any cynicism in what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said; I detected a clear expression of understanding of the concern that the hon. Lady reasonably expressed on behalf of her constituents. It should be acknowledged that the Government have an impressive record of attracting new investment to this country and creating new jobs—to the point where, as we learned yesterday, unemployment fell last month by 40,000.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: May I support the call for a debate on that shocking example of Labour in government, the shambles that has been made of the finances of Kent county council by the alliance of the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties? Such a debate could highlight the fact that the Government have given an extra 3.6 per cent. for our schools while the Lib-Lab pact proposes to cut the budgets of those schools by 3 per cent.
Mr. Newton: I cannot add to what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Mr. Dunn), but I hope that my hon. Friend will have a chance to make his point when we debate the revenue support grant orders—although I cannot promise that every Kent Member will be able to take part.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: The Leader of the House knows that I have raised on four occasions this week in parliamentary proceedings the question of the Go Ahead Group bid for the north-east rail franchise, the insider trading that took place, the public scandal involved and the public concern in the north of England. I have been able to establish today that the average daily share trading volume transacted during the period of the bid was at least 50 per cent. higher than in the previous period of a similar number of days prior to the bid. Does that not show that something was happening? Is there not now more than ever a requirement
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for Ministers to come to Parliament to answer questions on this highly important case of share speculation in public assets?
Mr. Newton: The bidding process is for the franchising director, as the hon. Gentleman well understands. The Government see no reason to doubt that he is carrying out his duties properly. The stock exchange routinely investigates rises and falls in share prices, but any such inquiry is confidential.
Mr. David Shaw: My right hon. Friend may consider that we should have a debate on the number of Australians entering the country to advise the Labour party on negative campaigning methods. Could we raise in that debate the fact that the evidence of the negative press conference held this morning by Labour on VAT showed that the Australian idea has boomeranged on it?
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend will have heard what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said about negative campaigning. I do not think that I can add to that, although my hon. Friend has made his point in a neat and witty fashion.
Rev. Martin Smyth: May I support the plea of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon)? The Leader of the House may not have read the recent statement by the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary about the security situation in Northern Ireland. May we have a statement in the near future, preferably next week, by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on the deteriorating security situation?
Mr. Newton: I will bring both the hon. Gentleman's support for the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) and his remarks about the security situation to the attention of those of my right hon. Friends who are concerned.
Mr. John Marshall: May we have an urgent debate on unemployment, so that I can point out that unemployment in my constituency has fallen from 3,622 in December 1992 to 2,360 in December 1996? Does that not demonstrate the health of the British economy, which compares with rising unemployment in those countries that follow the policies advanced by the Labour party?
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is striking not only how much unemployment has fallen in Britain—and not only in the past month—but how strongly the trend in Britain is different from that in our major European Union partner countries.
Mr. Harry Barnes: In the run-up to a general election, would it not be timely to have a debate on an aspect of the Representation of the People Act? I refer to the position of homeless people.
Homeless people, by definition, cannot get on to the electoral register, or find it very difficult to do so. A person must be a resident to be included in the register, and a resident would be expected to have a residence. Can we discuss the possibility of "care of addresses, care centres and other places that could serve as substitutes for residences? Would that require a change in the law,

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or would it just be a matter of the Home Office issuing guidance to electoral registration officers? Given that a general election is on the horizon, this would be an appropriate time at which to hold such a debate.
Mr. Newton: I am not in a position to offer the hon. Gentleman instantaneous advice from the Dispatch Box on the technical questions he has asked, but he will no doubt have noted that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is due to answer questions this day week. I shall bring the point to his attention.
Mr. Charles Hendry: Is my right hon. Friend aware that cold weather payments in my constituency are based on temperature measurements taken at Manchester airport, which invariably enjoys temperatures some degrees higher than towns such as Buxton and other communities on top of the Pennines? As a result, my constituents have received only one week's cold weather payments, whereas, if the measurements had been taken at Buxton weather centre, they would have received three. May we have an early debate on the number of weather stations that are used to trigger such payments, and their location, so that the discrepancy that has caused so many problems in my constituency can be brought to an end?
Mr. Newton: As my hon. Friend knows, there is no perfect solution to problems such as that, although the position is a great deal better than it was 10 years ago. I shall, however, ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security pays careful attention to my hon. Friend's remarks.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham: This is not a political question, believe it or not.
In December, the Home Affairs Select Committee reported on a subject that is of interest to the whole electorate: dogs. The report is now in the hands of the Home Office, awaiting reply. Could the Leader of the House persuade his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to give that reply speedily? Perhaps, when it has been delivered, an early debate could be arranged during the current Parliament.
Some members of the Select Committee are leaving the House at the end of this Parliament: some are retiring, for instance. They have great expertise in a subject in which the electorate are very interested. Perhaps I could ask that as my last favour of the present Parliament.
Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman will know of the conventions relating to the period that is allowed for the Government to reply, and I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will note his request. As for his other request, for a debate, he will be aware that suggestions about debates on Select Committee reports and the time made available for them are generally made by the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, on behalf of that Committee.
Mr. Nigel Evans: As my right hon. Friend will know, tomorrow we are to debate a private Member's Bill on nightclubs and their policy on drugs.
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Does he think it appropriate for us to have a general debate on Government policy on drugs, especially in the light of the crass, stupid and highly dangerous remarks made today by Brian Harvey of East 17 about Ecstasy? He said that he thought that taking Ecstasy was fine, and that it could even make someone a better person.
My right hon. Friend will be aware that Brian Harvey and East 17 are idolised by many thousands of youngsters, some as young as 12. All the campaigning that has been done by voluntary bodies and others may now be jeopardised by the fact that Brian Harvey has come up with those stupid remarks.
Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend will have heard what was said by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when a related question was asked during Prime Minister's questions. I certainly associate myself with what my right hon. Friend said. As for a day's debate on drugs, we had one not long ago—as I well know, as chairman of the ministerial committee on drug misuse. I cannot promise another early debate, but I will bear it in mind. This is an important subject.
Mr. Max Madden: May I ask the Foreign Secretary to make a statement next week about the organisation of the visa section in the British high commission in Islamabad? That will enable me to draw attention to the breathtaking incompetence shown by that department towards my constituent, Mr. Ghazahfer Ali, who was released on bail at the end of November after seven years of imprisonment without trial in Azad Kashmir.
Mr. Ghazahfer applied for a visitor's visa so as to see his wife and family in my constituency, with whom he has had no contact for those seven years. He is still awaiting a decision on his application, despite my request to the Prime Minister, who was in Islamabad earlier this week, to intervene and offer him a seat home on his aeroplane. Will the Leader of the House make urgent inquiries into the matter and get a decision made on Mr. Ali's application as soon as possible?
Mr. Newton: Clearly, I am not in a position to comment on a particular case, but I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman has made representations—indeed, he said that he has done so—to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and others. I am sure that those representations will be carefully considered.
Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Does the Leader of the House realise that there will be deep dissatisfaction in Merseyside, Chester and the Wirral with the unsatisfactory answers given to questions this afternoon about the future of the Ford plant at Halewood? Does he realise that we on Merseyside will expect a Minister—preferably the President of the Board of Trade and preferably after he has had discussions with the management of Ford—to come to the House as soon as possible to explain how he squares the Government's claim that Britain is the enterprise centre of Europe with the failure to maintain jobs at Halewood?
Mr. Newton: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's reasons for returning to this matter. He will appreciate that I can add little to what I said earlier, but I understand that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of

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Trade will have discussions with the Ford management and I am sure that he will report in any way that he feels is appropriate, whether to the House or otherwise.
Mr. John Austin-Walker: The Leader of the House will be aware of the widespread concern about the number of deaths in prison custody and about the number of people in prison who ought, more appropriately, to be cared for in psychiatric hospitals. I refer him to early-day motion 404, referring to the death of my constituent, Kenneth Severin, on whom an open verdict was recorded recently.
[That this House believes that it is in the interests of justice for all parties to go into an inquest hearing with the same amount of information; notes that there is no formal procedure for disclosure in inquest cases; draws attention to the Annual Report of the Police Complaints Authority 1995–96 which expressed concern that at some inquests those representing the police may have material not available to the representatives of other interested parties, particularly the family of the deceased, thus giving a strong impression of injustice; notes that the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Judge Tumim has made similar comments expressing the view that it is in the interests of justice for all parties to go into an inquest hearing with the same amount of information; draws attention to the difficulties faced by the family and representatives of Kenneth Severin who died in suspicious circumstances in HM Prison Belmarsh; and calls upon the Home Secretary and the Lord Chancellor to review the rights of the deceased person's family in such cases and to institute rights of disclosure as recommended by the Police Complaints Authority.]
The early-day motion highlights the difficulties that Kenneth Severin's family face and the difficulties that are faced by the families and representatives of the deceased in many inquests. These matters have been drawn to the Government's attention by Judge Tumim, the former chief inspector of prisons, and by the Police Complaints Authority. Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for a early debate on the issue of inquest procedure, so that both the Home Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department can come to the House to answer questions on this serious matter?
Mr. Newton: I cannot promise a debate, but I think that the hon. Gentleman is asking that his concerns should be given careful consideration by the Ministers involved. I shall certainly bring his concerns to their attention.
Mr. Alan Simpson: I know that you, Madam Speaker, are aware that both my hon. Friend
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the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and I have been approached by the family and friends of Paul Wells in the hope that, following the Prime Minister's discussions with the Governments of India and Pakistan, he might be tempted to say something about the progress he was able to make in respect of determining either the current state of health of Paul Wells, Keith Mangan and the other hostages or what negotiations are taking place for their safe release.
In the event of the Prime Minister not commenting on those matters, would it be possible to arrange for a statement to be made to the House about the current state of knowledge about the well-being and whereabouts of the hostages and about any progress—however tentative—in negotiations for their release? Could that be backed up by a letter from the Prime Minister to the families, setting out what limited knowledge we have about the hostages' present safety and well-being?
Mr. Newton: That is a number of requests to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. I will ensure that those requests are conveyed.
Mr. Paul Flynn: When may we have a debate on genetically modified food and the unique and worrying position that we are in, where such food has been imported to this country and in most outlets cannot be differentiated from other food? The problem with that genetically modified food is that those who take it might not be harmed in any way immediately, but it might in time render certain antibiotics ineffective on people.
I wrote to all supermarkets before Christmas, and the replies that I have so far received show that only one chain of supermarkets, Waitrose, will effectively allow its customers to differentiate between the genetically modified food and other food. That is unsatisfactory and deeply worrying.
Today the Government wisely came out against organ transplants from animals because of the risk. Here we have another experiment which benefits only one company commercially—and that a foreign company. Why on earth should we allow that dangerous experiment with human health?
Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman knows that those matters have been given very careful consideration on the basis of considerable scientific advice. However, I am sure that his concern will be examined very carefully by my right hon. Friends.

Ford Plant, Halewood
4.10 pm
Madam Speaker: I have an application under Standing Order No. 20.
Mr. George Howarth: The House may be aware that earlier today the Ford Motor Company made a statement in which it announced the following:
"in order to bring Halewood vehicle operations' manned capacity in line with forecast demand, the company announced that it was opening a voluntary separation programme with special enhanced terms for approximately 1,300 employees"—
a series of euphemisms which mean that 1,300 people will lose their jobs on Merseyside.
On behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, South (Mr. O'Hara), who unfortunately is fulfilling a long-standing commitment out of the country but is making strenuous efforts to return, I beg to ask leave to move that the remainder of today's business be suspended so that we may debate that issue.
The issue is specific to Knowsley and Merseyside, for several reasons. On Merseyside, unemployment currently stands at 11.5 per cent. compared to 6.6 per cent. for the country as a whole. However, unemployment is running at just over 13 per cent. in Knowsley and at about 22 per cent. in Halewood. For that reason alone, it is an important matter for Knowsley and the Merseyside region.
The urgency of the position hardly needs stressing. However, the Prime Minister's inadequate response to the question posed to him by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Broadgreen (Mrs. Kennedy) earlier this afternoon does nothing to lessen—in fact, it increases—the urgency of that situation.
I understand that this afternoon the President of the Board of Trade is meeting Mr. Jack Nasser, chief of automotive operations for the Ford Motor Company, and I believe that the House should have the opportunity to debate this matter urgently so that he may give a full report of those discussions and any conclusions that have been reached.
This is a momentous event locally, because of the effect that it will have on the local economy, and nationally, as a commentary on the sorry state of health of our manufacturing industry. I hope that, for those reasons, we may today have the opportunity to debate that devastating news and possibly have the opportunity to question the President of the Board of Trade as to what action he proposes to take, what discussions are being held and what can be done to reverse that disastrous situation.
Madam Speaker: I have listened most carefully to what the hon. Member has said and of course I have to give my decision without giving any reasons. I am afraid that I do not consider that the matter which he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20. I therefore cannot submit the application to the House.

Points of Order
4.13 pm
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I wonder whether you have received a request from the hon. Member for Richmond—to whom I have given notice that I intend to raise this matter—saying that he wishes to apologise to me for the fact that he has circulated his constituency with a statement saying, first, that I sit on the Labour Front Bench, which is manifestly untrue, and secondly, that I have agreed that any number of slots or pathways for aircraft over his constituency should be allowed to expand.
The hon. Gentleman knows both allegations to be totally untrue. I am surprised that a Member of his standing and experience should choose to make the matter public in this way, without coming to the House to apologise for his inaccuracy and lack of responsibility.
Madam Speaker: The hon. Member for Richmond has not approached me about the matter. The hon. Lady is talking about a non-parliamentary document, which is outside my control in any case. I can therefore do nothing about it. I see that the hon. Member for Richmond appears to want to catch my eye, however.
Mr. Toby Jessel: I am the hon. Member for Twickenham, Madam Speaker.
Madam Speaker: Of course.
Mr. Jessel: I hope I will be given at least equal time to reply.
Madam Speaker: Order. This is not a debate. I assume that the hon. Gentleman wants to respond on a point of order.
Mr. Jessel: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. The hon. Lady has suffered a lapse of memory. She has forgotten her letter to The Times of 20 August in which she supported an increase in the allocation of slots for aircraft using Heathrow—
Mrs. Dunwoody: No, no.
Mr. Jessel: That would certainly have led to an increase in the amount of noise. I did not say that the hon. Lady had suggested an unlimited increase in the number of slots. She favoured allocating 10 an hour, which is about 150 or 160 a day.
Madam Speaker: Order. This is a matter that I cannot resolve because it concerns a non-parliamentary document—such as a letter to The Times. I suggest that the two Members concerned go out and have a nice cup of tea.
Mr. Max Madden: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I gave you notice of it a little earlier because I think it is a matter for you. I draw your attention to yesterday's Hansard, and to the fact that the Adjournment debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara)

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started at 10.49 am and finished at 12.15 pm, between columns 257 and 277, and had no separate heading. Indeed, each page of the debate is headed "British Prisoners of War", which was the heading of the previous debate.
As there will be considerable interest in the debate on the part of those previously employed by bus companies who have been defrauded of their pensions, I ask that it be reprinted in full and given its correct heading and page numbers. That would be of great convenience to all, inside and outside the House.
This appears to be another serious error by Hansard since the privatisation of HMSO; you will remember, Madam Speaker, other serious errors that were reported to you before Christmas.
Madam Speaker: I find the publication of Hansard of very high quality, and I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's point. We are fortunate indeed to have the Editor and staff producing Hansard for the House so effectively and efficiently.
I certainly take the substance of the hon. Gentleman's point of order seriously, however. I have had the opportunity to look at Hansard, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for bringing it to my attention. The Editor has apologised to me for the error, which is quite a serious one. A correction will certainly be published tomorrow, and I hope that it will satisfy the hon. Gentleman.

Orders of the Day
  Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Bill
  Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.
  Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Bill
    New clause 1

      COMMENCEMENT
      '.—This Act shall enter into force on a day to be determined by the Secretary of State by order made by statutory instrument, save that no such order shall be made until the Secretary of State is satisfied that 12 months have passed since any act of terrorism connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland has occurred.'.—[Mr. Wilshire.]
      Brought up, and read the First time.
      4.18 pm
      Mr. David Wilshire: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
      The new clause is designed to ensure that before any more one-sided concessions are made to psychopathic murderers, those people are required to do something in return. In this case, the one-sided concessions on offer are: an amnesty, protection from any investigation into the guns and explosives that they have used, and protection from prosecution for their murders and atrocities. As it stands, the Bill demands nothing of the terrorists.
      The new clause would require, first, not just a temporary halt to murder, but a permanent end to all violence. Throughout the sham of the ceasefire, there has not been an end to violence. We kid ourselves if we overlook that point. Secondly, the new clause would provide for a decent period so that the terrorists could prove beyond all doubt—I stress that they must prove, rather than pretend—that the second ceasefire was for real and was not a repeat of the first cynical sham that they pretended was a ceasefire.
      The new clause provides the House with a chance to consider whether the events since the Committee stage of the Bill lead any of us—I hope that it is so—to want to change our mind about allowing the Bill to go through the House unamended. In the period between the Committee and this afternoon's debate, we have reached a situation where even the most optimistic—even those who are so desperate for a peace at any price that they have tried to kid themselves that we are making real progress—must understand that all-party talks including killers simply will not happen, terrorists will not hand over their guns and explosives, and any talk by Sinn Fein-IRA about ceasefires is but a sham.
      In Committee, some hon. Members did not wholly grasp that that was the truth. What has happened since spells it out. I urge everyone to ask himself whether an unamended Bill is a sensible way to make progress.
      When I turned my mind to how I might improve the Bill, I found myself wondering whether it was worth the bother. I imagine that the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler), has wondered whether it was worth the bother of proceeding with the Bill, as it clearly means nothing to the terrorists. Since

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      Committee, the words and the deeds of the terrorists—I include Sinn Fein-IRA and the loyalists in this—have made it crystal clear that they have no intention of decommissioning anything.
      By their words, Sinn Fein-IRA have reaffirmed that they are interested in one thing only: a united Ireland. They have not given an inch. They have again stated that they are not interested in compromise of any sort. By their deeds since Committee, Sinn Fein-IRA have made it clear once again that that simple objective is to be pursued by whatever means come to hand. They will talk if they can—
      Dr. Norman A. Godman: How does the hon. Gentleman define an act of terrorism? Would his definition include a violent act committed by a group that had broken away from the IRA or a loyalist paramilitary organisation?
      Mr. Wilshire: Acts of terrorism are simple to recognise. If someone is nailed to a fence with 6 in nails, or has his legs smashed by a baseball bat, or has to go to the funeral of his child who has been blown up by Semtex, or if people are murdered, those are acts of terrorism. It matters not a jot to me—or, I suspect, to anyone in Northern Ireland—who committed the act or what twisted ideology is concerned. It is an act of terrorism, and that must stop.
      Rev. Ian Paisley: What is more, those who have signed up to the Mitchell principles refuse to condemn such acts of terrorism. They refuse even to say, "We denounce it; we reject and repudiate it." During examination before the body set up by Parliament to consider the matter, the Secretary of State asked them, "If you had been asked to rebuke these people and did it, wouldn't you lose your influence over them?" They said, "Yes," and he replied, "I accept that; it is a good enough reason." Therefore, they do not need to denounce terrorism, even though they have signed up to the Mitchell principles.
      Mr. Wilshire: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Since Committee, we have witnessed more and more atrocities and a return to the sickening ways of the past. There has been not a word of apology or regret. By their words and their deeds, Sinn Fein-IRA and the loyalists set about making a mockery of the peace process. Over the Christmas break, they displayed contempt for democracy and for compromise. They have made it clear once again that they simply despise the decent, law-abiding people of Northern Ireland. The Bill seeks to do some sort of a deal with those groups and I have contended throughout that it cannot happen that way.
      Mr. Seamus Mallon: I understand the hon. Gentleman's difficulty in trying to table amendments or new clauses to a measure that is essentially enabling legislation. If new clause 1 were adopted, would it not have the effect of totally suspending for 12 months any hope, possibility or realisation of decommissioning? Would not that be more damaging to his legitimate case than proceeding with enabling
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      legislation that would allow people to try to take the opportunity to end the holding of unlawful weapons if and when that opportunity presented itself?
      Mr. Wilshire: The hon. Gentleman is a wise parliamentarian and he correctly points to the difficulty of tabling new clauses sometimes. I shall come to the details of my proposals in a moment and, I hope, provide the explanation that he seeks.
      I make it clear that I, too, support decommissioning. I have always done so. I still support the stance adopted by the British Government at the outset before they started to shift their ground. I am happy to try to help decommissioning occur, but the Bill will not achieve it. The Government have long since abandoned their attempt to put decommissioning where it should be: at the beginning. That is the only way in which talks will be able to start. I have said it before and I will say it again: the Government must understand that it is not possible to do deals with evil, which is what we are trying to do this afternoon.
      If I understand the Government's present position correctly—having started with decommissioning and arrived at the Bill—Sinn Fein-IRA must simply stop murdering people for a while. They must then sign up to Mitchell and show that at some stage—we are not sure when—they will use the Bill to decommission something. Ultimately, we shall not know how much they decommission or whether it is everything, as they may claim. If that happens, the earliest possible entry of Sinn Fein-IRA into talks will be sought—some people do not say "as early as possible" but say "immediately". I do not accept those two scenarios.
      The result of not amending the Bill is that we shall end up asking decent democrats to talk to armed terrorists. They will not do that, and it is absolutely right that they should not. Viewed against that scenario, the Bill, if unamended, will make a tragic situation worse rather than improve it, which is what we all want.
      As it currently stands, the Bill provides an amnesty for terrorists. It promises them that no tests will be carried out. It promises them immunity from prosecution and bans the use of evidence, and it does all that without requiring anything in return. If decommissioning were just an exercise, I suppose that we could swallow hard and say that that was something that we could, perhaps, go along with, but it is not; it is an integral part of the route to talks.
      4.30 pm
      Make no mistake, therefore, that once the Bill becomes law, it will be used by the terrorists to demand yet more concessions. They will accept the Bill. They will note the terms within it and say, "Fine, we agree with them, but we are not going to decommission anything now." Therefore, the Bill will not have achieved decommissioning. It will also enable Sinn Fein-IRA to exploit the Unionists in Northern Ireland. It will enable Sinn Fein-IRA to portray Unionists and, indeed, the Social Democratic and Labour party, as intransigent when as democrats they say, "We will not sit down with these people while they are still armed." The Bill will make things a great deal worse.
      The new clause is an attempt to make the Bill less one-sided. I have said some of these things so often that I no longer need to explain that I am opposed to any

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      concessions. I am opposed to trying to do any deals with these people. As a Back Bencher, however, I also have to be a realist, especially when I am up against the Government and the Opposition who agree on something. I am a realist, but that does not prevent me from continuing to try, and the new clause is another attempt to persuade the Government to change their mind.
      I want the Government to accept the new clause, so that we can get concessions from terrorists in return for what we have on offer. I see little to be gained otherwise. If we do not get a concession in return, we portray the terrorists, even though they are armed, as democrats, equal to those who renounce violence in the process of what they believe in.
      Through the new clause, I hope that the Government will take it on board to provide a test for the permanence of any ceasefire. This point was made by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon). It may be the case that a year seems too long, that doing it in exactly this way might put things back, but I believe that we have to find a way through the Bill to test the sincerity of any ceasefire rather than simply taking the terrorists' word for it.
      We know what the previous ceasefire was really about. Taking Sinn Fein-IRA's word for that ceasefire was ridiculous, because the fact of that ceasefire is that there was not one. Torture, intimidation, targeting, training, recruiting and re-equipping continued—all while a so-called ceasefire was in place.
      Mr. Robert McCartney: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that during the putative ceasefire, the number of brutal punishment beatings went up; that in 1994 the total was 70, but in the two years covering the period of the ceasefire, 1995–96, the totals were 217 and 276 respectively? Does the hon. Gentleman agree, therefore, that punishment beatings went up by about 400 per cent. during the period of peace?
      Mr. Wilshire: That is the case. The facts speak for themselves. Here we have proof that those to whom we are supposed to be offering concessions cannot be taken at their word. We know what was happening while there was a ceasefire. We are now being told that we should enact the Bill, make no checks, carry out no tests, offer an amnesty and allow the recipients to say, "Yes, we shall decommission at some stage."
      Mr. Mallon: That is not the point at issue. I am trying to explore with the hon. Gentleman how the new clause would enable the process of decommissioning to proceed if the circumstances allow it to do so. The new clause would postpone the process for 12 months, irrespective of the circumstances. How would the new clause advance potential decommissioning? Would it not simply retard by 12 months the opportunities that may or may not exist in future for getting rid of illegal weaponry?
      Mr. Wilshire: Not at all. A 12-month provision, or any other period that the hon. Gentleman might prefer, would merely require some proof before concessions are made available. There is nothing in the Bill to the effect that it would not be possible to hand over explosives and guns tomorrow. That could be done without the Bill. The message that I keep receiving is that unless concessions are made to terrorists, they will not do anything.
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      We have seen what happens when a ceasefire is called and that is taken at face value. If we give concessions the day after another spurious ceasefire is called, we make fools of ourselves again.
      Mr. Mallon: I am at pains to understand what the hon. Gentleman means by concessions. The new clause is not directed at any of the other elements that are set out in the Bill. It might enlighten or help us all if the hon. Gentleman were to tell us what the concessions are that he sees are covered by the application of the new clause.
      Mr. Wilshire: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point.
      The concessions are clear for all to see. I should dearly love to address them. I did so in Committee, amendments were divided on and were defeated. Any attempt that I might make to remove bits of concessions would be ruled out of order. I cannot do that. Like me, however, the hon. Gentleman can read the Bill. He can see for himself that we are promising not to prosecute those who hand in weapons and explosives. We are promising also not to carry out tests to ascertain whether we can learn anything. Those are the concessions.
      It may be that the hon. Gentleman and others believe that such concessions should be made. I am saying only that if we are to make such concessions, let us get something in return. The previous ceasefire cannot be regarded as sufficient to allow the proposed concessions to be used for the purpose for which they are intended. I am not prepared to take Sinn Fein-IRA at face value. They claimed that their first ceasefire was permanent and genuine and it was not. I fear that the same thing will happen again.
      I understand that the hon. Gentleman is saying that my proposals are counter-productive. If he is not, someone else will be sorely tempted to advance that argument when I resume my place. I respond to that argument by saying that the new clause cannot do any harm to the peace process because it is wrecked already. Other people's ways of doing things have not taken us very far. The clause cannot produce a return to violence because that has happened already. The usual complaints that I receive when I propose something—neither of them on this occasion—do not bear examination.
      I can anticipate only one criticism of my new clause, which is that it might annoy the Dublin Government, who might not find it to their liking. If it achieves that, it will have achieved something, and I should be delighted.
      Mr. Jim Dowd: That is helpful.
      Mr. Wilshire: Of course it is helpful. Until the Dublin Government understand the reality of Sinn Fein-IRA, we shall go nowhere; and all their comments, behaviour and arm-twisting of the British Government demonstrate that they do not understand. Therefore, I am being helpful. I should be very pleased if my point got across to Dublin in the form that I am making it.
      Mr. Robert McCartney: In support of his proposition, will the hon. Gentleman confirm that the Dublin

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      Government gave a wonderful example of co-operation, with their refusal to extradite to Germany one of the suspected perpetrators of the outrage at Osnabrück?
      Mr. Wilshire: If the hon. and learned Gentleman can contain himself, I should like to consider exactly that matter when I speak to my amendment Nos. 2 and 3. We shall return to the issue then.
      I tabled my new clause because I believe that now is the time to stand firm and not to demonstrate further weakness. This is not the time to make concessions, but the time to continue cracking down on Sinn Fein-IRA. In recent weeks, the police and the Army have made real progress, for which I salute them, and we should continue making such progress.
      We should stand firm also because Sinn Fein-IRA have twice warned members of the nationalist community that they will be beaten and tortured should they be caught helping the democrats in Northern Ireland. If I correctly understand Sinn Fein-IRA, that warning suggests that the public are now turning against terrorism in Northern Ireland. If that is so, why should we weaken at precisely the moment we are making progress?
      Mr. Stephen Day: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Northern Ireland public—whether from the loyalist or nationalist tradition—have never in large numbers supported terrorism? Sinn Fein is still what it has always been: representatives of a very small, violent and unacceptable minority within a much larger and law-abiding nationalist community. We give that minority within a minority far more credit than it deserves. It deserves no credit, and it should have no place in the future of Northern Ireland, the island of Ireland or the United Kingdom.
      Mr. Wilshire: That is correct; my hon. Friend makes the point well. No community in Northern Ireland ever has supported terrorism. However, hon. Members should understand that, if people are threatened with torture or with a beating with a baseball bat with 6 in nails in it, they will of course keep their mouths shut—which is not support of evil, but self-preservation. I think that we understand the distinction. The important point is that, in recent weeks, such acquiescence and submission have been ending. Although people are afraid, they have begun to talk to the forces of law and order, and I salute that change. This is the time when we should stand firm.
      I am a realist, and I understand and accept that the Government seem to be determined to pass their Bill and to choose the course that it sets. I am therefore attempting, in tabling my new clause and arguing its merits, to tell my right hon. Friends, "If you are determined to do this, please try to get something in return. Please see whether you can accept the new clause as it is worded, or agree better wording when the Bill goes to the other place." On that basis, I commend my new clause to the House.
      4.45 pm
      Mr. Ken Maginnis: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) for providing a clever means of ensuring that we have an opportunity now, at the Bill's Report
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      stage, to debate all the Bill's facets. He has made the important point, with which I agree, that Sinn Fein-IRA, in particular, are an irredeemable organisation, and that nothing will facilitate their disarmament and movement from violence to democratic practice, because they do not want such movement. He was absolutely right when he said that there is confusion in Northern Ireland between a political process and a peace process, because they have successfully been confused by Sinn Fein-IRA and by those who support or tolerate that organisation.
      The political process should stand alone. One of the difficulties encountered by those of us involved in the current talks process is that politics and peace are so closely connected in people's minds. Politics in Northern Ireland should be purely about political, social, economic and other accommodations between the two traditions. Peace should be about ensuring that the terrorists are totally neutralised and have no ability to wreak havoc, as they have done over the past 25 years and longer.
      Like the hon. Gentleman, I am—or at least I hope that I am—a realist. After living in a culture of violence which has lasted for more than 25 years, I know that no sudden development will cause people to shift overnight from a violent to a democratic outlook. I understand that, irrespective of the intentions of the leadership of various organisations, it will be exceedingly difficult to control everyone who has been part of that culture of violence for so many years.
      We should look to the leadership of those organisations to discover whether they are making the maximum effort to end their forces murdering and inflicting so-called punishment beatings, which are acts of intimidation, to which many of those in what they deem to be their own traditions are subjected. There is a major difference between what is happening with loyalist paramilitary organisations and with Sinn Fein-IRA, because Sinn Fein-IRA continue to espouse the right of people to act against society's democratically expressed will and to use violence when it suits them.
      At least those in the leadership of loyalist paramilitary organisations have constantly pleaded, publicly and privately, for those in possession of guns and other weapons of war to stay their hand and not to embark once again along the road of murder and violence, whether the violence is proactive or retaliatory.
      Mr. Robert McCartney: I assume that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that we should reward not good intentions expressed by political leaders of organisations with violent propensities, but factual and manifest demonstrations of non-violence by their followers. I take it that the hon. Gentleman is not drawing a distinction between acts of violence that are committed by Sinn Fein-IRA and acts of violence committed by loyalist organisations purely on the basis of what their leaders expressly claim for them.
      Mr. Maginnis: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows me better than that. I do not tolerate violence from any source. As a practical individual, I like progress to be genuine. When I contemplate the IRA attacks on Canary wharf, Manchester, Osnabrück and Thiepval and its other attempts to take life and increase terrorism, and then, with some satisfaction, the absence of violent reaction from loyalist paramilitaries, I regard it as progress. Those who

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      speak on behalf of loyalist organisations deserve, if not credit, at least my acknowledgment of their success in curbing the activities of their acolytes. Long may it continue.
      I return to the part that the Government expect us to play in the talks process. We entered that process on the understanding that there are two separate and distinct tracks that are never to be joined and have no cross-ties—one dealing with political accommodation and the interests of society and the other intending to lead to the end of all violence, disarmament and the verification of the decommissioning process.
      The Irish Government have shown no good intent to keep the two processes apart, but have tried to draw us into the trap whereby every gun that is decommissioned will attract a political reward for the most evil in society. If I read new clause 1 aright, the hon. Member for Spelthorne was concerned with that specific issue. He perceives that the decommissioning Bill contains concessions for terrorists. If it did, I would repudiate it. It would not be worth the paper it is printed on. If I catch your eye again, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall address the issue again on Third Reading. The Bill has another purpose in addition to the practical issue of decommissioning.
      Under new clause 1, a ceasefire will not be accepted until 12 months have elapsed since any act of terrorism. As the hon. Gentleman might expect, my party does not find that acceptable because IRA-Sinn Fein have never worked to a time scale. Between 1962 and 1969, they were in a virtually non-violent mode, but of course they were planning future action. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, even during the 17 months between August 1994 and February 1996, in addition to planning the bomb at Canary wharf and training, recruiting and targeting, IRA-Sinn Fein were involved in another variety of terrorism—social and economic terrorism—alongside the gunfire and the bombs.
      The hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) was quite right to ask how we defined terrorism. I believe that, when the time is right and when IRA-Sinn Fein consider that enough people are sufficiently naive to believe them, they will be willing to put their guns away for a while. However, they will continue using intimidation and the boycotts to ghettoise Northern Ireland. Only through ghettoisation can IRA-Sinn Fein move towards their ultimate goal—a Bosnia-type situation. I have mentioned that before in the House. They will achieve that by totally controlling significant territories—housing estates or entire districts—within Northern Ireland. That is one reason why my party spoke out about the events at Harriville, saying that they were morally wrong and that such action plays into the hands of those who would ghettoise Northern Ireland.
      Although I appreciate what the hon. Member for Spelthorne has attempted to do and I am grateful for the opportunity to address issues that concern us both, I cannot support new clause 1 as it will not deliver what he requires—a guarantee that the Government will take such steps as are necessary to ensure that not only the words but the actions and the circumstances are right before we accept that the leopard has changed its spots.
      Mr. Mallon: I thank the hon. Member for Spelthorne
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      (Mr. Wilshire) for attempting to clarify new clause 1. So far, however, either through my deficiency in understanding or through his deficiency in explaining, he has not fulfilled that objective.
      It is important that we address any proposed amendments to the legislation. It would be easy to toss new clause 1 away: we could say that we will not vote for it because it is not realistic, but that it provides the opportunity to make certain comments. However, that would be the wrong approach to any serious amendments to a serious measure.
      I ask the hon. Gentleman to accept that, rather than help the situation, the new clause—or any similar measure—would postpone and enlarge the period of opportunity, if one existed. It assumes a peaceful situation for 12 months, after which legislation would have to be introduced to deal with the consequences of that period.
      The Bill is essentially enabling legislation that will enable decisions on some of the crucial matters to be implemented by order of the Secretary of State when and if an opportunity arises. We do not know when an opportunity will arise.
      Forgive me if I do not join the absolute pessimism that has already been expressed. Forgive me also if I do not engage in a beauty contest on who is most opposed to violence. I assume that every hon. Member, as a democrat, is opposed to violence in any form and that we all accept that to be every hon. Member's position.
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      I ask the hon. Member for Spelthorne to accept that there is a fundamental difference between us on the basis on which decommissioning can be dealt with. It has been debated at great length, almost to the stage at which some of us do not like to hear the word any more. That is not because we are afraid of the issues, but because some of us have been dealing with them at close hand for so long and so often that we could make each other's speeches with no difficulty. I have listened at length to members of the Unionist parties in the current talks. I have read their documentation at length. I have listened to the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) at length. They have similarly listened to us.
      The fundamental difference between our approaches to finding a solution will not be dealt with by the new clause. I accept that everyone here wants all arms, ammunition and guns to be things of the past and for them to have no role in the life, political or otherwise, of the north of Ireland. I accept the absolute sincerity of people who put forward views with which I do not agree.
      Taking all that as read, however, there is a fundamental divergence, which was best stated by the Secretary of State on Second Reading. It is worth looking at his comments again. He set out the position clearly, saying that it is the role of the security services in any state to ensure that arms, ammunition, bomb-making equipment and all the paraphernalia of terrorism are not held illegally. He went on to make the crucial point, which I also made in that debate, that if it were possible to deal with decommissioning in the normal security ways, we should not be having this debate. If the police, the Army and the legislation framed to deal with terrorism north and south of the border, as well as here, had been successful, this debate would not be taking place. The reason for the

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      decommissioning Bill and the on-going debate that there will be about it is that there must be another way of dealing with the inability—I am not using the word "failure"—of the security services to resolve the problem of illegally held arms.
      The Secretary of State put his finger on the issue when he said:
      "It gets harder when it is recognised that, illegal though it is to hold them, the yielding up of those armaments will be done either voluntarily or not at all."—[Official Report, 9 December 1996; Vol. 287, c. 22.]
      I agree with the Secretary of State: it will not be possible to put those arms and that ammunition—the elements of terrorism—out of operation unless it is done voluntarily. That is a difficult statement for the Secretary of State or for me to make, and a difficult fact for any hon. Member to accept, but it is the reality—a reality that we must all face up to if we are to solve the problem. We can fool ourselves that there are other ways of doing it. We can convince ourselves that there are contrivances that will lead to the situation that we want. We can somehow postpone everything and live in the hope that, one fine day, those who organise IRA violence and loyalist paramilitary violence will put through a telephone call to the Northern Ireland Office telling the Secretary of State to expect X number of lorry loads of guns and Semtex, but it will not happen.
      The hon. Member for Spelthorne described himself several times as a realist, as did the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis). I accept that they are both realists, but we must also be aware of those elements of realism which hurt and which we do not particularly like. The harsh reality—this is where I differ with the hon. Member for Spelthorne—is that a voluntary decision means a decision taken by those who speak on behalf of the IRA, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, the Red Hand commandos or whoever they all may be, to give up, destroy or decommission their weapons. That will not happen in a void—not in a void of 12 months, not in a political void. It will not happen outside negotiations.
      That brings us to the second harsh reality: the thesis of the Mitchell report—the report of the international commission—which was accepted by the two Governments, was that voluntary decommissioning means decommissioning as a result of negotiations, which means that inclusivity is inevitable. Mitchell decided—we all accepted this, by the way—that decommissioning would be mutual between republican and loyalist paramilitaries. There is a chain of logic in that proposition which cannot be broken, because if it is, there is no validity in the Secretary of State's belief, which I very firmly share, that decommissioning, if it happens, will happen on a voluntary basis.
      Mr. Maginnis: Is not the hon. Gentleman's argument, which is logical, none the less spoiled by the fact that Mitchell assumed that Sinn Fein-IRA were sincere in wanting to move towards peace and to decommission? In so far as they betrayed the judgment that he made, that part of his thesis falls down. Has he seen anything that the ordinary man in the street over the past 10 or 12
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      months could take as an indication that there is sincerity on the part of any member of Sinn Fein-IRA in the desire to move towards a peaceful solution?
      Mr. Mallon: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions, both of which are valid. I shall try to answer them as briefly as I possibly can, but I am not sure that there is a quick way of answering either of them.
      The first question is whether, in effect, Mitchell made his recommendations on the basis of a false premise that there were those in the republican movement who wanted peace. I do not think that such a premise is false. I think that there are those in that organisation who want an end to violence. The ideological gap between their position of being able to fulfil their political objectives through violence, and their present position of the acceptance of the use of tactical violence for political purposes, is very distinct.
      The second question is whether I have seen anything that will convince me of the sincerity of the republican movement's position in relation to the matter to which the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone referred. I, he or anybody else can judge the sincerity of anyone's position in such circumstances only when they are in the position where it will be a matter not of words but of accommodating the political realities that we all face. Let us not forget that, after the bombing of the Thiepval barracks in Lisburn, the IRA stated for the first time an objective as being an inclusive political negotiated settlement: that is a far cry from the 32-county united socialist republic, which was to begin every six months as a result of force.
      I am not saying that that statement convinces me. What will convince me will be seeing, while sitting at the negotiating table, that organisation being able to accommodate the principles laid out by Mitchell and those of democracy and the democratic process, encapsulating the principle of consent; when it accepts that, whatever the outcome of the negotiations, whether it likes them or not, it will not oppose them, except by political means, and will not use violence. It is in that context that I would start believing. I believe that scepticism is healthy in any element of political life. When it degenerates into cynicism, which prevents people looking at some of the realities that we have to consider, it becomes a dangerous and corrosive factor.
      I want to test the IRA, the UDA and the UFF on decommissioning and politically, but I want the circumstances in which that can be done to be right. Those circumstances, in terms of the Secretary of State's position, which I share and which Mitchell has put forward, are that voluntary decision, based on mutuality, can come about only as a result of an inclusive negotiating position.
      Mr. Maginnis: The hon. Gentleman talks about testing the IRA. He and other colleagues who have nationalist aspirations sought with great sincerity—I believe—to test Sinn Fein-IRA over a year during the meetings of the Dublin Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. During that entire time, the hon. Gentleman and his pro-nationalist colleagues were unable to get the fundamental accord from Sinn Fein-IRA that is required if we are to make progress: that they should agree on the word "consent"—that the consent of the people of Northern Ireland at the ballot box is fundamental to all progress.
      5.15 pm
      Mr. Mallon: The hon. Gentleman again makes a valid point, but I think that he misses two crucial elements. He made the case that there would have to be a very dramatic sea change from being involved in violence and the conviction that violence will obtain political objectives to being in the normal political process. The discussions to which the hon. Gentleman referred had two very valuable elements. Whether they liked it or not, Sinn Fein representatives saw across the table that, in effect, there was a nationalist consensus on the island of Ireland. That nationalist consensus was based on two things: an abhorrence of and a refusal to countenance the use of violence for political objectives, and that consent and the principle of consent must underlie any solution to the problem. Yes, they discovered that there was a nationalist consensus; they discovered that they were outside it and that, despite their arguments and bluster, they could not change all the parties.
      One of the difficulties that we all face, especially Sinn Fein, which must start to recognise it, is that there is and will be a nationalist consensus, in just the same way as there is a Unionist consensus. Surely no one is putting a stricture on anybody that they should not fully believe in their own political policy and ideology. There cannot, however, be a set of circumstances in which there will be a special place in anybody's ideology for those who reserve a right to kill, threaten or use violence of any form. That was the real learning curve in the forum, and I want to see it extended and adopted in circumstances in which the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone will be able to see the colour of IRA representatives' eyes when he puts his arguments, when the hon. and learned Member for North Down will be able to see their reaction when he puts his arguments, and when the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) will be able to be there to see and hear the reaction when he describes his position. I make that request, although I know that I am deviating slightly.
      We all take the opportunities that come and we are all there to ensure that the principles of the democratic process are pursued by those who believe in the democratic process. If we can convince others, we would surely look on it as being successful. I can put it even more strongly than that: I reckon that if our generation of politicians in the north of Ireland does nothing else but achieve an end to violence, however tenuous, which enables a political process that begins to engage in dialogue and negotiations, however difficult, and we can leave as a legacy that foundation for the future, it will be no mean achievement. It will not be the fulfilment of my political objectives, because I want to see, create and build a united Ireland by democratic, peaceful means, and it will be not the fulfilment of any Unionist objectives because it will not incorporate all their requirements, but it will be a foundation from which to move forward.
      When we consider new clause 1, and when we consider all the issues, let us all be big enough, strong enough and intellectually rigorous enough not to create whipping boys when we come up against problems that we ourselves find it difficult to accommodate. The whipping boy has readily been identified already this afternoon: it is the Irish Government. That has already been stated—and two amendments have been tabled on the subject—but that is not realistic. The position of the Irish Government on arms and the whole question of terrorism is more
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      unassailable than anyone else's, so much so that even in Committee some parties in the House saw the wisdom of taking parts of the Irish legislation and tabling them as amendments to the British legislation. The Irish had good reasons for the differences in their legislation: it had to be different because there are constitutional and procedural differences and differences in the way in which legislation is introduced in the Dail and the system here.
      Let nobody seek out whipping boys or try to create a scapegoat in the consideration of an issue on which we have to make an accommodation. Before making a case about extradition terms, people should find out exactly what they are talking about. They should find out what opportunities may have existed to take a case in the Republic of Ireland and they should have evidence for their remarks. I assure the hon. and learned Member for North Down, who no doubt will be able to put not just the political but the legal spin on the subject better than I can, that no Irish Government would lightly make their decision if there was a sound legal basis for an extradition. It is not enough to shake the head and say what I have said is rubbish. The issue should be considered carefully before anybody starts to make a whipping boy out of anyone else.
      Many of us have been part of the talks and negotiations in Castle buildings since 10 June and we have been given a poisoned chalice. The question of decommissioning has been dropped in the laps of the political parties in the north of Ireland to get the Government off the hook that they created for themselves at Washington 3. However, that is our problem and we must deal with it if we accept the Mitchell report, which I do, but we must also be able to deal with it. I invoke the Prime Minister's words on this point and I especially refer the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone to those words. Following the Mitchell report, in the joint communiqué of 28 February—after the breakdown of the ceasefire and after the violence had been restarted—the two Governments claimed that a meaningful and inclusive process must be available to those who represent those who are carrying out republican violence if there is to be any hope of achieving decommissioning through the negotiating process. Those are not Mitchell's words or the words of any nationalist party—they are the words of the Prime Minister in a joint statement with another sovereign Government. The Government should remember those words.
      My party, indeed all of us, was promised in this Chamber that the negotiations would be real, that they would be meaningful and that no single issue would stand in the way of progress. We have not even got to the beginning of the negotiations. We have not even got to the ending of the opening plenary session, because the negotiations have not been real or meaningful and one single issue has been allowed to stand in the way of progress. That issue is the one that we are dealing with today.
      We can continue in the same way, but if we do, the political process, as represented by all of us, will be seen to have failed even to start the serious negotiations that we need. It is the duty of the Prime Minister to take all the steps necessary to ensure that he honours the commitment that he made to all the parties that negotiations would be real and meaningful and that no one issue would stand in their way. He has an absolute responsibility to all of us and to peace to honour that

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      commitment and I request him to do so. I know that when the Minister of State winds up, scant reference will be made to what I have said if the precedent of Second Reading is followed, but I ask formally that the Minister refer that matter to the Prime Minister, who made those solemn and binding commitments to us in the Chamber of the House of Commons, because he should have the opportunity to ensure that he enforces them.
      Mr. Maginnis: The hon. Gentleman draws attention to what is happening in the talks process and bemoans the fact that we have not made the progress that many of us would have liked. He has indicated that the stumbling block is decommissioning, the disarming of terrorists and the verification of that process, but he appears to point the finger in the direction of Unionists and perhaps of the United Kingdom Government when he makes that allegation. I cannot go into details, because we are bound by confidentiality, but is it not true that two simple issues—one which could have been resolved by the Irish Government and one which could have been resolved by his party, and which would have been in the spirit of what is intended by the legislation—if accepted, would have allowed Unionists to move forward on the understanding that there was practical, and I emphasise the word "practical," sincerity in the approach to decommissioning?
      Mr. Mallon: Like the hon. Gentleman, I do not wish to break any confidentiality which exists, so I refer him to his party's public statements on the matter. The Ulster Unionist party has gone on record saying, first, that there must be the decommissioning of a tranche of weapons before any paramilitary grouping—by which it means Sinn Fein—could enter talks. That is a matter of record, and not a matter of supposition or interpretation. Secondly, the UUP—in commenting on the committee that is to liaise with the international verification committee—stated that staged factors in relation to decommissioning would have to be to determined prior to any movement into the substantive negotiations. That is the public position of the UUP.
      5.30 pm
      I will put a question to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone which I have no doubt that he will answer in his future contributions: does he even remotely imagine that decommissioning as defined by the Secretary of State—a definition with which I agree—will be possible in spite of the two substantial road blocks laid down by his party in the way of substantial and serious negotiations?
      Mr. Maginnis: I promise that this will be my last intervention, Madame Deputy Speaker. I must state clearly that when we abandoned what was called Washington 3—we abandoned it on the basis of Mitchell, the very basis on which the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) argues his case—we accepted that decommissioning had to begin from the very start of the process. In addition, we accepted that we could not move through the political process—no one knows how far through—without seeing the colour of IRA-Sinn Fein's money. We do not apply that rule or tenet solely to Sinn Fein-IRA, but we apply it to every paramilitary
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      organisation. Those organisations cannot move beyond the introductory stage of talks—according to Mitchell himself, who stated that the process must be parallel—and into the substantive element without an indication of what will happen. We stick by that position, and we shall continue to do so.
      Mr. Mallon: I am delighted to hear that the hon. Gentleman's party is to stick by some positions on this issue. The Ulster Unionist party did not abandon Washington 3—the British Government abandoned it. The Ulster Unionist party reintroduced it when it presented its position on decommissioning publicly during a previous stage of the talks. The hon. Gentleman invokes the Mitchell report, which clearly states that decommissioning would take place not before or after negotiations, but during them.
      The position laid down by the Ulster Unionist party is that decommissioning must take place before negotiations. The position of Sinn Fein-IRA, as I understand it, is that decommissioning will come at the end. Can we not at least agree that the only way in which decommissioning should be used as a precondition is to allow us to get up from the table with a solution, and that it should not prevent us from beginning to try to find a solution?
      Rev. Ian Paisley: Some hon. Members here today may remember a powerful and moving speech made by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) some time ago, in which he castigated the fact that Sinn Fein had sat in a forum in Dublin with fellow members of what we, as Unionists, would call a pan-nationalist front—they were all nationalists, and they all wanted to bring about a united Ireland. They had a debate, and the hon. Gentleman saw the whites of their eyes. If he could not persuade his own kind, if the Dublin Government could not persuade their own kind and if all the diverse groups in the Irish Republic could not do so, why does he say that he is a realist? Why does he say that, if the Unionists looked at the whites of the eyes of the nationalists, a great miracle would happen?
      Tonight, we need to come back to harsh realities. I have heard people say that they are realists, but what are the realities? We have been told by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh that the subject of tonight's debate is a poisoned chalice that is to be handed to the people taking part in the talks, but the subject was raised by the leader of the hon. Gentleman's party, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume), in 1992 when he said in regard to talks that
      "there can be no guns on the table, under the table or outside the door."
      That is my position, and it is the position of any democrat in Northern Ireland.
      I am not in the business of talking to murderers. I am not in the business of talking to those who went to the children's hospital before Christmas to try to murder my colleague and assistant in Europe, and who put a bullet through an incubator in a children's intensive care ward. I neither want to see their eyeballs, nor to do business with them. The basis for talks was to be
      "no guns on the table, under the table or outside the door."
      Moving the new clause, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) said something that I could have said—that he is for decommissioning as originally

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      set out in the statements made by various people. Dick Spring, the Foreign Secretary of the Irish Republic, said after the Downing street declaration was signed—and before the ink was dry on the paper—that
      "we are talking about a permanent cessation of violence, and we are talking about the handing up of arms, with the insistence it would not be the case of 'we are on a temporary cessation to see what the political process offers'."
      It was not some belligerent Unionist who said that, but the Foreign Secretary of the Irish Republic. However, the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh has argued tonight that we must have some political bait to attain decommissioning. Mr. Spring went on to say on 1 June 1994:
      "There will have to be a verification of the handing over of arms … it has to be permanent and there has to be evidence of it."
      Just after that, the Secretary of State said on Radio Telefis Eireann that
      "the IRA will have to give up its guns and explosives to prove violence is over."
      Those conditions were set not by Unionists, but by the Government.
      The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh said that he wanted the Prime Minister to come to the Dispatch Box; I should like the Prime Minister to come here and repeat to the House a statement he made to us. He said that the IRA would hand over a substantial tranche of arms to start with and then, when the talks commenced, hand over a further instalment of arms every month. I said at the time, "Prime Minister, I have one question. How are you going to do that? Say they give you a large tranche of arms, we have a month's discussion, and then they say that they won't give any more. What are you going to do? Throw them out?"
      Once people get into talks, they are in and can do what they like. They can swear that they have renounced violence, as did certain people who will be sitting at the table in a fortnight's time. Now those people say that they will not hand over one weapon. We need to be realists.
      Albert Reynolds, who was still in circulation at that time, said:
      "if all the weapons were decommissioned before a settlement was found … that would be a recipe for disaster."
      He had done a complete somersault. He must have been singing before making that wonderful statement, and on something stronger than buttermilk. Martin McGuinness, the colour of whose eyes the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh wants us to see, said:
      "when we talk to the British Government we will not talk about the decommissioning of IRA arms, we will talk about the dismantling of partition."
      The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh made much tonight of the process of decommissioning, but there is no process whatever on either side.
      Strong statements were made at Washington 3 about arms having to be found out and so forth, and President Clinton said:
      "Paramilitaries on both sides must get rid of their bombs and guns for good and the spectre of violence must be banished",
      and the Prime Minister reiterated:
      "All-party talks are impossible until moves are made on decommissioning."
      That idea was sold to the people of Northern Ireland by the British Government. Unfortunately, some of us believed it. We believed that they would do as they said.
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      I find it rather amusing that the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh can tell the House today about the great obstacles to the talks, when he was the man who moved that there should be no vote when I tried to bring the matter to a head so that we could make a decision. He said that there would never be a vote. Without a vote, how can we bring the matter to a head? Like Pilate, he washed his hands and told us that we were holding the process back. From what? I want a decision on decommissioning, and I want to know what the British Government, the Dublin Government and the hon. Gentleman are up to on decommissioning.
      Mr. Mallon: The Ulster Unionist party?
      Rev. Ian Paisley: I want to know what anyone is up to. I was amazed by the dialogue tonight between the Ulster Unionist party and the Social Democratic and Labour party. I never knew that we all agreed to mutual decommissioning. The official Unionists may have agreed that with the SDLP and vice versa, but I never agreed it, as I have made clear. The hon. Gentleman will have heard long speeches from me without hearing one line in which I said that, because I do not believe in it.
      Today, there are two so-called army councils, the IRA Army Council and the Combined Loyalist Military Command—high-falutin' titles. Those two bodies hold a noose around the neck of Northern Ireland and say, "If you don't give in to us, we'll give you your bellyful of what we've given you in the past," and the two Governments sit and compromise with them.
      I heard the Secretary of State saying that the Combined Loyalist Military Command should be "helped forward" because of its stand, but I do not think that anyone here today knows who its members are. Who could stand up and say that they can name the men? They are faceless people, and if hon. Members are so foolish as to think that Garry McMichael and Councillor Hughie Smith are the generalissimos commanding that body, they are sadly mistaken.
      The dogs on the street in Northern Ireland know what is happening. They know that the IRA is at its work and that the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Ulster Volunteer Force are at their work. What about the man who was shot in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson)? The police admit that the UVF did that. What about the bombs in north Belfast, for which the police in the area said the UFF was responsible?
      5.45 pm
      The Secretary of State seems to think that schoolboys, rather than politicians, are the right audience for his major speeches. He made a major speech to some schoolboys in Londonderry the other day and told them that the Combined Loyalist Military Command ceasefire was holding. I wish that he would come with me to see some of the people who have been beaten up on the orders of that group, the people who have been partially crucified and the homes that have been wrecked.
      Last Sunday, a member of my church went home to be told by the police that he had to shift house, get out, pull up all his chattels, take his family and go—and yet we are told that the ceasefire is intact and all is well. All is not well in Northern Ireland, and the people are getting sick

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      of politicians telling them that it is. The ceasefire is not holding. The Minister told us today about the startling number of beatings going on in both communities. Action needs to be taken.
      It has been argued today that the military, the police, security and legislation have failed, and that we need another method. Spokesmen for the IRA have been advancing that argument for years. They say that they have won the war and that we have to sit down with them and make peace. In fact, the war has never been fought. There is one reason for that: the people most concerned were not allowed to fight it.
      When Northern Ireland became a state, the same forces that are operating today tried to break and destroy it, and the ordinary people of Northern Ireland fought and won the battle against them. They did it because they were fighting for their hearth-stones, for the land where their fathers lay awaiting resurrection, for their country. We, on the other hand, have not had a battle with the IRA. The IRA has never felt the determination of the Ulster people. We are marginalised and told to keep quiet and let others take care of everything.
      With all due respect to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh, one would have thought that, with all the years that have passed, the Dublin Government would have extradited a person accused of a terrorist bombing in Germany. The extradition would not even have been to the United Kingdom, but would have been to another country in the European Union, yet that man thumbed his nose and walked out of court. If that is how we intend to fight terrorism, we will be defeated all down the line.
      The Government and hon. Members should go to Northern Ireland and talk not to politicians, but to people who are not active in politics. People in the professional and business worlds, trade unionists and others have at long last realised how serious the situation is. People are asking why they are held in a noose by two outlawed councils of thuggery and murder and why we have to deal with them. We cannot run a country by telling criminals that, if they mutually agree something, we will go ahead and do it. That is what the Bill does. It is not worth the paper it is written on because it says that, until those two councils of thugs and outlaws agree to hand in their arms, nothing shall be done.
      I came to the House in 1970. I never thought that I would be here so long or that I would ever discuss a Bill such as this in the United Kingdom, which boasts of its belief in the democratic process. Tonight we are passing a Bill that tells two outlawed so-called military councils of terrorists that nothing will be done until they mutually agree. That is not law; it is capitulation and concession to the men of violence. The tragedy is that not hon. Members, but the people of Ulster, will reap the sad results. The House is sowing the wind but those people will reap the whirlwind. Hon. Members should go to Northern Ireland and talk not to politicians, but to ordinary people, who are becoming alarmed at how far the Government and the talks are seeking to take them.
      Finally, I say to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh that I will be at no talks with this crowd. I do not believe that the people who sit at the talks at the moment have clean hands. There should be one law right across the board: if they do not go by the principles that they
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      swore to uphold, and are not even prepared to condemn acts of violence—let alone dissociate themselves from them—they should not be at the talks because they have violated the Mitchell principles. Those are entirely different from the Mitchell report. I do not accept the report, but I accept the principles.
      Mr. Robert McCartney: There are few hon. Members who do not utterly abhor violence and would not like it to end. Those present probably have no quarrel with the particularities of the Bill. The question is how relevant the legislation is to the state of affairs in Northern Ireland. To see its relevance, one has to look at the general picture.
      In my view, there never was such a creature as the so-called peace process. It was apparent to several political thinkers in Northern Ireland, and in the United Kingdom, that at some time in or about 1988 or 1989, there was a change in direction in British policy away from an attempt to accommodate the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland in a settlement within the United Kingdom to a new policy that involved the appeasement of the violent aspect of Irish nationalism. There was an attempt to discover on what terms an accommodation could be made with violent republicanism in the form of the IRA.
      The philosophy was essentially laid in the initial negotiations that took place between the leader of the SDLP and Mr. Gerry Adams, the titular head of Sinn Fein and some time participant in IRA activity. They laid the foundations for the policy that subsequently emerged, through the Brooke-Mayhew talks, as the peace process. Essentially, the peace process was that an arrangement would be made whereby a meeting of democrats would not be used to settle the political problems of Northern Ireland; instead, a collection of democrats would be got together to give a veneer of democratic responsibility to what was really a peace conference between two sets of combatants: the British state and the representatives of violent republican terrorism.
      The foundations were consolidated by secretive meetings between representatives of the Secretary of State and the IRA in 1992–93. Out of that emerged the Downing street declaration, in which the British Government declared that in respect of part of the territory of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, they no longer had any selfish strategic or economic interest in maintaining that portion of the United Kingdom within the kingdom. They would agree to act, if not as persuaders, as facilitators for a solution of Irish unity. It is true that it was declared that no other solution would be excluded but it is more important to note that no solution other than Irish unity was adumbrated in the Downing street declaration.
      The declaration was careful never to describe the majority of the citizens of Northern Ireland as British citizens. They were described as the people of Ireland north and south, or as those Irish people living in Northern Ireland. Never once were the 1 million British citizens who describe themselves as, and claim to be, British citizens described as such. More interestingly, the phrase about Britain having no selfish economic or strategic interest was not new. It had become an official declaration of policy, but it was not a novel statement. It had been made in 1991 by the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke). However, he got the phrase from the public,

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      agreed statement of the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume) and Gerry Adams on 18 September 1988 in The Irish Times, in which the hon. Member for Foyle declared that he thought that the British Government had no economic or selfish or strategic interest in staying in Northern Ireland.
      A statement made in 1988 by the leader of Northern Ireland's constitutional nationalists and the leader of Sinn Fein was taken up three years later by the then Secretary of State. By 16 December 1993, in the joint declaration, it had become British Government policy. That policy was an open invitation to Sinn Fein-IRA to enter into negotiations and to declare a ceasefire, but the British Government required that the ceasefire had to be permanent. Time passed—a week, let alone two years, is a long time in politics—and everyone forgot about the British Government's insistence that the ceasefire must be permanent. After three months, the Government declared that they had assumed that the ceasefire was permanent.
      Mr. John Hume and Mr. Albert Reynolds had no doubt whatever that "complete" meant permanent, entirely ignoring the fact that, as anyone with any element of logic would know, "complete" is a definition of kind, while "permanent" is a definition of duration. The pro-Union people of Northern Ireland want a cessation of violence that is complete in its nature and permanent in its duration—something that they will never be afforded by Sinn Fein-IRA, and something on which, even after the dastardly breach of their tactical ceasefire on 9 February 1996, the British Government were still not prepared to insist.
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      Indeed, the Command Paper of 16 April 1996 that established the basis for the present talks at Stormont in Belfast requires an unequivocal restoration of the August 1994 ceasefire—not even the restoration of an unequivocal ceasefire, but an unequivocal restoration of something that was wholly flawed and false. That requirement is incorporated in a Command Paper that became one of the central documents of the current talks at Stormont.
      The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) talks of the wrangling and the obstacles introduced by Unionists. What Unionists were saying was quite simple: we were not going to take part in a game whose rules have been set to predetermine the result. Unionists were not prepared to accommodate Sinn Fein by allowing it to restore a tactical ceasefire that was always very impermanent, or to engage in a process whose central objective was a framework document.
      People ask why we object to the framework proposals. I will tell the House exactly why we objected to those proposals as the centrepiece of the negotiations. The framework document wants to employ for the uniting of Ireland exactly the methodology for the unification of Europe to which large sections of the major parties in the House of Commons object. In both cases, the aim is exactly the same. If a process can be undertaken involving joint institutions and organisations, covering everything from natural resources to transport to tourism with a central dynamism, after a time the whole concept of national sovereignty becomes a myth of no value. The Government's hypocrisy in setting up that policy to unify Ireland is based on the fact that they are employing a
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      methodology for the purpose that they find repugnant in relation to any diminution of the national sovereignty of the United Kingdom as a whole, and of the House.
      Far from involving wrangling, the seven months of negotiations and so-called peace talks at Stormont have been about the rejection of—if I may use a slang phrase—a stacked deck of cards. The pro-Union people refuse to engage in a game in which the cards are marked by the British and Irish Governments in accordance with the predestined result that they wish to achieve. That is what the past seven months have been about.
      Let me now deal specifically with the issue of decommissioning. Originally, the British Government said that there must be an absolute and permanent ceasefire, and the Irish Government said exactly the same. The hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) has already quoted extensively from a speech made in the Dail by the Tanaiste—Dick Spring, the Irish Foreign Secretary—the day after the announcement of the joint declaration. What did he say? He said, "This ceasefire must be permanent. We will not tolerate paramilitaries—Sinn Fein—coming into the democratic process, looking about, picking and choosing, deciding whether there is something in it for them and, if there is not, returning to armed violence." He said, "You must come in, and you must come in for good."
      At that time the present Taoiseach, Mr. Bruton, was not in government; he was the Leader of the Opposition. But, on behalf of his party, he made a written submission to the Dublin Forum for Peace and Reconciliation. What did he say in 1994? He said, "Sinn Fein-IRA must hand over their weapons now." "Now" is a very short word, but its meaning is explicit. It does not mean "tomorrow" or "in a little while"; it means immediately, at once, without delay.
      After a while, it became apparent that Mr. Hume and Mr. Reynolds had grossly oversold to Sinn Fein-IRA what the British Government were prepared to deliver, and Sinn Fein-IRA refused to declare their ceasefire permanent. Only, presumably, after being promised something did they declare a ceasefire on 31 August 1994. They were coming in to look around: they were being permitted to do exactly what Mr. Spring had said, the day after the joint declaration, that they would never be allowed to do.
      Sinn Fein-IRA came in and looked around for 18 months. What did they do during that time? They reconnoitred, they monitored, they prepared; they placed in position all the weaponry and all the bombs that they would require for a series of spectaculars on the United Kingdom mainland in case they did not get what they wanted.
      It was plain to the British and Irish Governments that Sinn Fein-IRA were not going to come in and surrender their arms: they had to have a deal. What did the British Government do? They resiled from every position that they had adopted. The only tune on their bugle at any stage was the retreat. Eventually, they reached the stage of Washington 3. Washington 3 was very simple: it said, "If you declare a ceasefire in words and evidence it in action by handing over a significant tranche of weaponry, you can join in." But it became plain that the IRA had never intended to hand over any weapons.
      Mainland politicians appear not to understand that logic is a poor master when it is applied to Sinn Fein-IRA. I heard all sorts of arguments—for instance, that if Sinn Fein-IRA handed in 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. of their

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      weaponry, they could continue to run an effective terrorist campaign—but the reason they will not hand in a single rusty revolver or an ounce of Semtex has nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with the ideological block that places them in the position of legitimate inheritor of the provisional Government of 1918. To hand over anything would be to accept that the remainder of their weapons were held unlawfully and that the authority to which they were handing that rusty revolver or that ounce of Semtex was a lawful authority: that they will never do. When will the Government get it into their heads that Sinn Fein-IRA will never hand over any weapons to anyone, be that directly to the British Government, or to any international commission acting on behalf of the British or Irish Governments?
      The Bill is a nonsense. It is a mechanism—one that might be valid in itself, but is purely a small part of a much larger political policy that is totally false. The idea that the British and Irish Governments could ever do some sort of deal, not with democrats, but with the plenipotentiaries of violence, was totally flawed.
      Not only is that policy flawed, but the policy of expediency without proper political principle has corrupted the very roots of democracy. It has forced the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), to make statements about ceasefires being intact that stretch credulity to the limits. To suggest after the events of the past month that the so-called loyalist ceasefire is still intact is reminiscent of "Alice in Wonderland"—indeed, I am glad to know that the spirit of Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers Grimm has not perished from the Northern Ireland Office. Such statements amount to a fairy tale.
      The Government's logic is: the fact that no bombs are going off can be accredited to the Combined Loyalist Military Command; because no one is being shot with weapons accredited to the CLMC, they can say that there is a peace process and that the loyalist ceasefire is intact. That completely ignores loyalist violence in the form of barbarous punishment beatings, which have increased from about 30 incidents in 1993, before this marvellous peace process, to 118 in the first 11 months of 1996. Any assertion that an increase in those terrible beatings, which are often the cause of orthopaedic and other injuries far worse than would be caused by a bullet, is consistent with an intact ceasefire is absolutely ludicrous.
      I am sure that other hon. Members who speak later will be able to develop this theme and ask: what is an act of terrorism? If a bullet is fired through the fleshy part of someone's thigh, is that an act of terrorism? Is boring a hole through someone's kneecap with a Black and Decker drill an act of terrorism? Nailing someone upside down to a fence and breaking his legs with clubs would not be an act of terrorism amounting to a breach of the ceasefire, but a failed attempt at a mortar bombing, which killed no one, would be a breach. Only those who are pursuing a policy that has no moral, ethical or political credibility can force themselves into the corner of having to ask people to believe that such activity does not amount to a breach of the ceasefire.
      The only difference between the loyalists of August 1994 and those of today is that they have shifted the range and medium of their operations. The vast increase in punishment beatings—by about 400 per cent. in both
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      communities—is evidence that terrorism and violence are being used by terrorists in their own communities for the purpose of enforcing their political will. They are creating an environment in which they can achieve political domination by methods that no democracy should tolerate in the 20th century.
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      Mr. Day: I am interested in what the hon. and learned Gentleman is saying—he is giving us a marvellous analysis of a period of history that has yet to be judged. I am, however, concerned about the effects on the democratic process, to which he alluded earlier. Does he agree that the peace process has not only warped the democratic process, but by legitimising in the eyes of the public—especially the nationalist community—Sinn Fein as a political entity that appeared, through the peace process and the so-called ceasefire, to be genuinely searching for peace, it has increased Sinn Fein's electoral support? The peace process legitimised Sinn Fein in the eyes of the world at the expense of the real democratic forces in the north of Ireland. Is that not yet another way in which the peace process has destroyed the very values that the Governments of Britain and Ireland purport to be trying to uphold?
      Mr. McCartney: I could not agree more. During the period of the peace process, not only has the number of punishment beatings increased by more than 400 per cent.—with all that that entails in the destruction of community values—but those in charge of community relations agencies in Northern Ireland say that, at present, relations between the two communities are the worst that they have ever encountered throughout their existence. The price of a policy that appears to appease terrorism, that has brought, at best, a period of non-use of bombs and bullets and is now over, has been to destroy intercommunity relationships that are the real foundation of peace in any society. Owing to a fraudulent peace process, the intercommunity relationships that should form the basis of any true peace have been diminished and destroyed.
      Unfortunately, representatives like me, who have never been involved, at any stage or in any form, with organizations—
      Dr. Joe Hendron: A few minutes ago the hon. and learned Gentleman referred to punishment beatings. I intend no criticism and I understand what he was saying and why he used those words, but will he accept that "punishment" is the wrong word to use? He is not the only one to use the word—indeed, everybody does—but it implies, first, that the victim has done something wrong and, secondly, that those who carry out the beatings, many of whom are gangsters with dreadful records, are in some way and in the perception of some people justified in their actions.
      Mr. McCartney: I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman's remarks. We have encouraged people who represent a terrorist organisation to assume a place in our society that appears to afford them political and community legitimacy.
      In his radio and television speech to the nation after the Downing street declaration, the Prime Minister said:
      "Only the men of violence can give peace."

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      The import of that statement went unnoticed. He was saying, "In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Government and the forces of law and order can no longer enforce the rule of law. If you want peace, you will have to authorise the Government to adopt a policy of appeasement or accommodation with those who violate the rule of law."
      That brings us back to some of the comments and concepts that were offered as eternal verities by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh, who is unfortunately no longer present. He advanced the idea that decommissioning, as a mode of peace, must be voluntary. That amounts to a suggestion that we must reach some accommodation with violent terrorism that will persuade it to hand over its weapons of its own volition.
      I suggest that the source of that great persuasion, which would make terrorists give up their weapons voluntarily, would be the fulfilment of their political objectives; they have not given the slightest hint that those have been diminished. They remain determined to have Brits out, self-determination on an all-Ireland basis and an Irish united socialist Government—and I use the word "socialist" as one who, with a great deal of reserve, favours some aspects of socialism. There is no suggestion that they will ever give up their guns before, during or after negotiations unless those negotiations produce a settlement that they can endorse.
      When the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh speaks about an inclusive form of negotiations, he means that the Union must be on the table. He avoids the issue raised by the hon. Member for North Antrim. When the pan-nationalist bodies of Ireland met in the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation to discuss the way forward, it was clear that the principle of consent—that there could be no united Ireland without the consent of the majority of the people of Northern Ireland—was put to Sinn Fein-IRA in its most anodyne form. The pan-nationalist bodies sought to produce such a watered-down version of consent that they were astonished that even that anodyne form of consent was unacceptable to Sinn Fein.
      Mr. Andrew Hunter: Is it not the more remarkable that, in those circumstances, some members of the SDLP should have been thinking aloud of an electoral pact with Sinn Fein?
      Mr. McCartney: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because he is right.
      That brings us back to the raison d'être of the so-called peace process. It was essentially the creature of a pan-nationalist front. Sinn Fein was brought in out of the cold by its association with constitutional nationalism in the form of the SDLP and the Irish Government. It was further sanitised and endorsed by Irish America and received the imprimatur of the White house; it was brought back to Europe in that cleansed and resurrected form. Its members were now, in a sense, suitable candidates for the company of democrats—except that they never were democrats. They never ceased to be anything but a bunch of gangsters, thugs and violent terrorists who would kill, maim and destroy as the only means of achieving their objectives.
      The time has come when, instead of pursuing a bipartisan policy that effectively disfranchises the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, the House and
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      both major political parties in it should say, "Enough of these violent men." I do not want my remarks to be confined to the violent men of Irish nationalism. I am equally adamant that we must eschew those who pose as defenders of the Union because the Union cannot be protected by people who ignore the rule of law. It cannot be defended by the principles that, as democrats, we all oppose, and it cannot be maintained by pretending that these folk are not exactly what they are.
      What has reality come to when some credible politicians from the United Kingdom can describe serial murderers and those who have been involved in despicable crimes as unsung heroes of the peace process, on the basis that they should be congratulated on refraining from doing what no civilised human being should ever have done in the first place? That is an example of how crazy this business has become.
      I welcome the purpose of the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire). It has enabled the House to examine a broader spectrum and ambit of the concepts and ideas involved. We must look for a new beginning. This peace process, wrongly so called, has been built on false principles; it has been built on sand, and it is now disappearing into that sand.
      We must all unite as democrats. I appeal to those whose long-term objectives for Ireland I do not share, but whose position as democrats I respect. We must all seek a solution; but that solution is not to be found by pro-Union people incorporating the CLMC into any part of their thinking, or constitutional nationalists having any truck with Sinn Fein-IRA murderers.
      Mr. Tony Worthington: I congratulate the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) on apparently providing the stimulus for a significant number of Members to speak very broadly on this issue. However, I shall be innovative and restrict myself to new clause 1 and the issues arising from it. I trust, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that will be in order.
      Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): It will be welcomed.
      Mr. Worthington: We are here today because of the Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Bill and because of the Mitchell report. After extensive discussion, the Mitchell committee reached the conclusion that appears at paragraph 17 of the report:
      "Everyone with whom we spoke agrees in principle with the need to decommission. There are differences on the timing and context—indeed, those differences led to the creation of this Body—but they should not obscure the nearly universal support which exists for the total and verifiable disarmament of all paramilitary organisations. That must continue to be a principal objective."
      Listening to tonight's debate, I did not pick up a similar feeling of unanimity about people seeking a mechanism for decommissioning. But that is why we are here. We believe that there should be decommissioning, and for that there needs to be a mechanism—hence the need for this Bill.
      The new clause states:
      "This Act shall enter into force on a day to be determined by the Secretary of State by order made by statutory instrument, save that no such order shall be made until the Secretary of State is satisfied that 12 months have passed since any act of terrorism connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland has occurred."

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      The new clause thus assumes that decommissioning and the mechanism to enable it to occur will come about. Thereafter, however, it becomes somewhat surreal.
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      The new clause also assumes that there is a ceasefire, because there would otherwise be no impetus to decommission. To extend the logic: there being a ceasefire, the new clause would tell those who wanted to begin decommissioning that they could do so, but not yet. Only in 12 months' time could it be embarked upon. That is certainly flawed.
      The whole idea of decommissioning is that it should be voluntary. That is what Mitchell said; it is what those, including my party, who signed up to Mitchell would say. If people want to begin decommissioning, we should welcome that with open arms, and get the weapons of destruction off the streets as quickly as possible. It is therefore strange to delay the process by 12 months. Hitherto, those who have asked for decommissioning only at the end of the process have been the terrorist organizations—
      Rev. Ian Paisley: The hon. Gentleman said just now that he was one of those who had signed up to Mitchell. What does he mean? Does he mean that he signed up to the Mitchell principles, or to the whole report?
      Mr. Worthington: My party, the Government, and other parties, here and in Northern Ireland, have said that they accept the principles in the Mitchell report, which still stands as a remarkable contribution, given the short time in which it had to be produced. We accept the six principles concerning talks—the hon. Gentleman probably knows them better than I do. They are valuable principles on which to proceed.
      If decommissioning is to go ahead, it must be voluntary. In Committee, the Government were right to resist amendments that would have rendered it less than voluntary—by introducing penalties, and so on.
      Holding up the process once a ceasefire is in place seems to me fundamentally flawed, yet that is what the new clause would do. Furthermore, how is an act of terrorism to be defined? The hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) posed that question. It is not easy to answer; and in any case, who will decide? Who will decide whether such an act of terrorism is connected with the affairs of Northern Ireland? What about an act of terrorism committed in Great Britain and not accredited to any Northern Ireland group?
      For all these reasons, new clause 1 is fatally flawed. As we all know, the whole Bill demands great acts of faith, but the new clause seems to attempt to suspend reality altogether. We do not back it.
      The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Sir John Wheeler): The House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) for constructing the new clause so ingeniously as to enable such a wide-ranging debate to take place, thus allowing us to hear so many expressions of opinion about the affairs of Northern Ireland.
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      Some hon. Members have questioned the very purpose of the Bill in current circumstances, given that we face an escalating campaign of terrorism by the Provisional IRA. Hon. Members on both sides have referred to the statistics of terrorist crime. It is sometimes difficult to define terrorism, but acts against the law are crimes, whether terrorist or otherwise.
      There is a certain irony in debating decommissioning against the backdrop of an increasing number of terrorist crimes in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, but the House must not let terrorists set the agenda. The Mitchell report provides the best way forward. The hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) referred to that report; incidentally, I was grateful to hear him support the Government's position on the Bill.
      The Government accept the recommendations for parallel decommissioning and political negotiations, and this Bill, as a first step, lays down the statutory foundations. Time will tell whether it was futile. We are not talking about a general amnesty for past crimes. Those who have committed crimes under the guise of terrorism will still be liable for the consequences. But the Government will not give up searching through all options at their disposal to bring a genuine and lasting peace to the people of Northern Ireland; just as they will not give up their firm stand against terrorist violence from whatever quarter.
      As the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) said—reinforced by the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie—this is an enabling measure. Its purpose is to facilitate decommissioning, and to help to get that process under way in parallel with the talks, in line with the Mitchell commission compromise. It is for the democratic parties and the democratic process to make demands of the terrorists, requiring them to demonstrate their good faith and their commitment to a genuine political and democratic process. That has been a theme of this debate.
      If there is a new ceasefire by Provisional IRA-Sinn Fein, it must be genuine, and must be seen to be genuine. As the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) said, it must include giving up the other means of violence and intimidation—not just the awful punishment attacks, which, as he rightly said, are intended to keep the nationalist population under control by intimidating them. Any new ceasefire must also mean an end to winkling people out from their homes and farms, and an end to the boycotts. In short, it must be a genuinely inclusive process.
      The hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) went wider, and questioned the Government's purpose. I hope he will accept from me that the Government's purpose is not to appease anyone. The Government's overriding objective in Northern Ireland is to secure a comprehensive and widely acceptable political settlement founded on democracy and based on consent—words that have been employed during this afternoon's debate.
      I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman recognises that, if the process were concluded, it would be for the people of Northern Ireland in a secret vote to indicate whether they accepted the outcome. They would be the sovereign masters of the final stages of the process.
      The hon. and learned Member for North Down raised the spectre of the Government having a secret agenda or secret negotiations. No such objective exists, nor would it

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      be practical. How would it win the support and consent of those in the talks in Stormont Castle buildings, let alone the people of Northern Ireland? If the process succeeds, that will be because it is open and above aboard, not a series of deals behind the scenes.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne wanted to ensure a debate on serious issues affecting the situation in Northern Ireland. I understand his desire for a genuine cessation of all terrorist activity in Northern Ireland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That objective is common to all of us in the House. The Government have said time and again that there must be a credible and permanent end to violence in both words and deeds. We all want that, but, like the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie, I do not believe that the new clause would achieve what my hon. Friend intends.
      Through the Bill, we are trying to achieve a start to the decommissioning process—to lay the statutory foundation that will enable decommissioning to be taken forward in parallel with substantive political negotiations. We all recognise the irony of debating such legislation against the backdrop of the terrorist campaign that is developing in Northern Ireland.
      The clause would have no impact on the entry of IRA-Sinn Fein to the negotiations. The House laid down last year in section 2 of the Northern Ireland (Entry to Negotiations, etc) Act 1996 the circumstances in which, and only in which—I emphasise only in which—that would happen. The Act gave effect to paragraphs 8 and 9 of the ground rules for substantive all-party negotiations, published as a Command Paper, according to which the key requirement for the entry of Sinn Fein to negotiations is the unequivocal restoration of the ceasefire of August 1994. If that requirement is not met, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State has no power to invite Sinn Fein to send a negotiating team to the talks. If the criteria of paragraphs 8 and 9 are met, he must do so.
      The Prime Minister made it clear on 28 November that, if a ceasefire were announced, we would need to be assured that it was genuine and unequivocal. That has been discussed during the debate. It would mean, I suggest, an ending of terrorist violence, a standing down of the means to participate in terrorism, and an ending of punishment attacks and all the other criminal acts to which hon. Members have referred. The ceasefire must be lasting, rather than merely tactical. It would be necessary to assess carefully whether the words, actions and all the circumstances were consistent with a lasting ceasefire.
      Those provisions regulate the entry of Sinn Fein to the talks process. If the conditions were satisfied, Sinn Fein would have to be admitted, but if the new clause took effect, there would be no provision whereby decommissioning could take place until a year had passed since the last act of terrorism, however that may be defined.
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      I do not believe that my hon. Friend was aiming at a talks process in which decommissioning was impossible, but that is what the new clause might achieve. The truest test of the peaceful intent of people who have previously used violence for political ends is whether they are willing to decommission their weapons and stocks of Semtex. As soon as they are willing, we wish to give them the opportunity to do so.
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      My hon. Friend's new clause has the further drawback that it does not specify from where the act of terrorism need come. The consequence is that a single act by a group or individual wholly unconnected with the talks process might prevent decommissioning.
      In summary, the Government believe that the existing provisions on entry to negotiations, approved by Parliament last year, are right. In any event, the new clause does not bear on them. We also believe that arrangements must be made to ensure that it is possible for decommissioning to begin at the earliest opportunity. The new clause would, without good reason, remove that possibility in some circumstances, and might thereby present a needless obstacle to progress in the talks. In the light of what I have said, I hope that my hon. Friend will withdraw the motion.
      Mr. Wilshire: We have had a fascinating two and a half hours—not what the Whips wanted, perhaps, but a necessary and worthwhile debate. I shall respond briefly to some of the comments about me and my new clause.
      The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) said that he was sorry that he could not support me. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the rest of the speech. I note that he thinks that the new clause would not work; the same theme ran through other contributions. The hon. Gentleman put his finger on my key concern: the Bill, if enacted, is only the beginning of a process that will lead us ever further down the slope of one-sided concessions. He said that Sinn Fein-IRA do not work to a timetable. That is fair comment.
      The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) wants the Bill left as it is, so that it can be used when the opportunity arises. That is a noble motive, but the hon. Gentleman failed to go on to explain what he meant by "opportunity". That is the problem that the new clause might address.
      The hon. Gentleman argued that realism means that we must accept uncomfortable situations. I think that he was arguing that we must accept the Bill as it is, but the argument that realism requires us to do something could be used to justify anything. I would argue that realism means that some realities clash, and we must work out how to handle that. I am not sure that the Bill would do so satisfactorily.
      The hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) said that he would speak about harsh realities. What he said needed saying and always needs saying, however uncomfortable it makes us feel. Like it or not, what the hon. Gentleman says is the authentic word of an awful lot of people in Northern Ireland. That voice is one of the realities, and, like all the other realities, it will not go away. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that the war against Sinn Fein-IRA has never been fought. I pray to God that it never will be fought, and that we can find a different solution to Northern Ireland's problems.
      The speech by the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) was one of the best that I have heard him make. I wish that every member of my party had been in the Chamber to listen to his analysis of the real situation. He said that the Bill is nonsense, and initially I thought that my clause might make it less so. I agree with his assertions that there never was a peace process, and that the framework documents equal a united Ireland. I also agree with his claim that decommissioning will never occur.

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      The hon. and learned Gentleman made only one point with which I did not concur. He said that he was telling a fairy story, but those stories have happy endings, and I am afraid that this tragedy will not fall into that category.
      I am sorry that the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) singled me out for attention: I do not think that I deserved all his criticism. He described new clause 1 as surreal. He may find it so, but I assure him that it is in order—I hope that he has noted that fact. He is unhappy about the 12-month delay, but I dealt with the matter as best I could. Although it introduces a delay before the concessions cut in, nothing in my new clause says that decommissioning cannot happen during the 12 months. It states only that there will be no concessions until there is proof that everything is for real.
      My right hon. Friend the Minister described the Bill as a first step. However, I ask, as gently as I can: without my improvements, who knows what direction those steps will take? He said that we need parallel decommissioning. As I have said before, I oppose parallel decommissioning. I have always supported decommissioning at the outset so that people will sit around the table as democrats together. He said that a new ceasefire must be genuine. How will we know that? We were told that the last one was genuine. My new clause tries to provide a means of testing the sincerity of the ceasefire.
      If I understand my right hon. Friend's analysis of my new clause correctly, I suspect that he has rumbled me. In the circumstances, the best I can do is muster as good a grace as possible, and beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
      Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 3

      METHODS OF DECOMMISSIONING
      Mr. Wilshire: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 2, leave out line 10.
      I shall try to be brief. The amendment simply seeks to delete one of the four ways in which decommissioning can occur. I support—as I suspect all hon. Members do—the first three methods. I have no difficulty supporting the contention that weapons can be decommissioned by giving them to the commission. That makes enormous sense; we have been arguing for such a handover for a long time.
      The second method of decommissioning is to put weapons and explosives somewhere that the commission can find them. It achieves the desired result by putting the weapons and explosives in the hands of the commission, and I support it. The third means of decommissioning is for someone to tell the commission where it can find the weapons and explosives. I have no difficulty with that method, because the arms and explosives will end up in the hands of the commission. Those three methods make sense and achieve the desired result: a party removed from this sorry mess will take possession of the arms and explosives.
      However, given the events that have occurred in the interval between the Committee stage and tonight's debate, I am afraid that I cannot support the fourth method
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      of decommissioning, which says that it is acceptable for the terrorists to destroy the weapons and explosives. That cannot be right. Given the lack of faith, the twisting and turning, and the murder and mayhem, how can we swallow the notion that Sinn Fein-IRA may simply ring up and say, "We've got rid of them," and that they will then receive all the protection that the Bill offers? There must be independent verification.
      The fourth method of decommissioning represents an enormous loophole. I am not a lawyer, but I can anticipate the defence that will be offered against criminal prosecution. A terrorist who is being pursued and who knows that he will be caught might dismantle his gun or defuse his explosives and say, "I have just decommissioned them. It says in the Act that I have destroyed them, and so you cannot use the weapons that you have caught me with as evidence. You cannot carry out tests on the gun that I have dismantled because the Act says that you cannot do so. There is no evidence and I am immune from prosecution." That is an appalling loophole and I hope that the Minister will at least reassure me about that point if he cannot fix the serious weakness in the Bill.
      If we are to have decommissioning, the arms and explosives must end up in the hands of the commission. We cannot, and dare not, rely on the claims of Sinn Fein-IRA as to what they have done with the weapons without seeking proof.
      Rev. Ian Paisley: I support the comments of the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire). He has touched on an important point: why should those who unlawfully possess murder weapons have the right to destroy them and then claim amnesty? That is not reasonable. The hon. Gentleman offered a vivid example of a known terrorist, who is about to carry out an act of terrorism or has just committed one, legally destroying his weapons under the Bill. That leaves the door wide open and I believe that the Government should withdraw the paragraph altogether.
      We are talking about an unlawful organisation that has carried out some of the vilest murders in the community and has shown no signs of repenting. Why should it be judge and jury and settle its affairs as it likes? That is what the IRA wants to do. The hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) referred to the blockage in its thinking: the IRA is not prepared to allow a lawful authority to deal with its unlawful possessions and deeds.
      Mr. Maginnis: I wish to add to the comments of the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire). My party also has considerable difficulty with the words of clause 3(1)(d), for the reasons that he outlined. It is not for me to put words into the Minister's mouth, but I urge upon him the hon. Gentleman's interpretation. Even if the word "verifiable" were added to the clause, it would not be good enough.
      Will the Minister give a firm reassurance that a verifiable process means a structured rather than a spontaneous process? If the paragraph is to remain in the Bill—we would support the hon. Gentleman's amendment in a vote—will the Minister assure us that there will be a proper, well-defined, verifiable process, which is structured rather than spontaneous?
      Mr. Robert McCartney: Although I agree entirely with the thrust and intention of the amendment, I am not entirely certain that the amendment and the Government's intention in drafting clause 3(1)(d) are necessarily at odds.

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      The destruction of weapons by the persons in unlawful possession of them is different from the evidence of such destruction. For example, if terrorists were in possession of a number of kalashnikov rifles, and if those weapons were provided to the commission with their barrels completely bored out or twisted beyond recognition, one could say that they were effectively destroyed, and destroyed by the persons in unlawful possession of them. That is completely different from the evidence of such destruction.
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      I say this off the cuff, as it were, but perhaps clause 3(1)(d) should be amended to read, "destruction by persons in unlawful possession, and such destruction to be evidenced to the satisfaction of the commission". Not only would the weapons have to be destroyed, but evidence of their destruction would have to be such as to satisfy the commission that it had taken place. For example, it might be decided—as was done in Russia—to run a steamroller over certain pieces of equipment and thereby totally destroy them. I do not care who destroys them, provided evidence of their destruction is available to the commission.
      I suggest to the Minister that clause 3(1)(d) be amended to read, "destruction by persons in unlawful possession, and such destruction to be evidenced to the satisfaction of the commission or such other verifying body."
      Sir John Wheeler: I am again grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) for raising this issue. Allow me to return to the reason for this part of the Bill.
      Paragraph 44 of the Mitchell commission report, to which my hon. Friend referred, specifies four possible ways of dealing with firearms, explosives and ammunition. It acknowledges that those ways are by no means exhaustive, but in a desire to reflect the report's recommendations, we may have made clause 3 require a decommissioning scheme to make provision for one or more of those specified ways while still allowing the scheme to make provision for other methods, if required. In practice, a variety of methods might be needed, because the circumstances of where the munitions may come from will vary—the location and so on.
      Amendment No. 1, proposed by my hon. Friend, and commented on and supported by others, would remove from the list of methods of decommissioning the one whereby those unlawfully in possession of weapons may destroy them. That method is, the Government believe, the one most likely to encourage terrorist groups to decommission. It is important for the House to remember that for that method not to be included when it was included in the Mitchell report itself would send the wrong signal to those whose confidence we wish to build in the direction of decommissioning.
      I sense that the House is really asking me to give an assurance that it is not the Government's intention that that method should be carried out unsupervised. I can give the House that assurance. There would be no point in sending a note to the Northern Ireland Office to say that the Semtex has gone, it has been buried deep in the
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      ground, lost at sea, or anything of that kind. That would not do. There is no question of any disposal under this method being unsupervised.
      Mr. Wilshire: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
      Sir John Wheeler: I shall develop my point a little more, and then see whether my hon. Friend still wants me to give way.
      The Government envisage that a member, or members, of the commission to be appointed will be present to verify the destruction of weapons, Semtex and other munitions. It is through that verification process that public confidence in the decommissioning process can be built. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) made the point that the verification must be credible.
      Mr. David Trimble: We are greatly encouraged by what the Minister has just said, but will he go just a little further and give the House an assurance that any decommissioning scheme that the Government introduce will contain clear, comprehensive provisions for the sort of verification that he has just mentioned, and that it will be clear in the terms of the scheme that such verification will take place?
      Sir John Wheeler: I understand what the hon. Gentleman is seeking. I remind the House that, in the event of the decommissioning process succeeding, it will involve the Government of the Republic of Ireland, who are enacting similar legislation to that before the House this evening. Their proposed legislation has had its Second Reading, and I understand that they will continue with the scrutiny of their Bill before the end of this month.
      The commission to be appointed must command the support and confidence of both jurisdictions, but I can go so far as to say, to satisfy the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), that there can be no point in this process unless there can be verification. The purpose of establishing the commission, which will operate in two separate jurisdictions—within the territory of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom—must be to ensure that the decommissioning is genuine, and that it can be publicly ensured.
      I am confident that when the commission is established, part of the requirements of its work, to be agreed by the two Governments and no doubt approved by the House, and the talks process, must be that it has firm instructions as to how it will carry out supervision, and report to the public and others with an interest how it has verified the destruction and disposal of the weapons and munitions. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman and the House as a whole, because it is an important point.
      I make one other point. Disposal by that method, if it should occur, would have to be undertaken in a way that was safe to the public interest in either jurisdiction. That burden would also fall to the commission, so it would have a serious task to perform if we were to be at the happy stage of expecting decommissioning to take place.
      I hope that I have been able to satisfy the House and that my hon. Friend will feel able to seek the leave of the House to withdraw his amendment.
      Mr. Wilshire: It occurs to me that the argument advanced for not deleting the fourth requirement is powerful. If the requirement is in the Mitchell report, its presence in our legislation makes some sense to me.

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      I listened with some interest to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis), who offered me one word—"verifiable". I suspect that that is the schoolteacher in him. He wishes to keep it simple. Then I heard the lawyer, the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney), offer me more words than I could write, because of my lack of shorthand. He offered me those words to achieve the same result, that of qualifying the fourth requirement and guarding against the very thing that worries me.
      Would my right hon. Friend the Minister be willing to think further about the wording that has been suggested by the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone and that suggested by the hon. and learned Member for North Down before the Bill goes to another place?
      Sir John Wheeler: Yes, of course. I shall take from the debate my hon. Friend's urgings and the sense of the House as I perceive it to be. I shall do my best to ensure that the concepts that have been discussed are built into the process that we shall have to contemplate when and if a commission is established to supervise and verify the destruction of weapons and munitions.
      Mr. Wilshire: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I judge from hon. Members' nods that his response has probably satisfied the House. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 7

      THE COMMISSION
      Mr. Wilshire: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 4, line 10, leave out from 'State' to 'may' in line 11.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): With this, it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 3, in page 4, line 13, leave out from 'State' to 'may' in line 14.
      Mr. Wilshire: The amendments leave out the phrase:
      "after consulting the Minister for Justice of the Republic of Ireland".
      I cannot believe that I am alone in the House in being amazed that a sovereign Parliament is being asked to enact legislation relating to an integral part of its sovereign territory that requires one of the Queen's Ministers to go cap in hand to a member of a foreign Government before we do something. I know that we have had problems with our sovereignty in relation to Brussels, but whatever we might think about that, the issue has not become so bad that we should write into legislation a commitment to go cap in hand to the Dublin Government before we take certain actions in our own country.
      If that were not bad enough, the Minister in the Dublin Government to whom we must go is the very Minister who has let out of prison this week someone whom the German authorities want to interview for terrorist activities. I am against the principle of going to a Minister in the Dublin Government, and I am against the Minister who has been selected to have something of a say in our affairs.
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      It may seem that I am raising a small point. It may seem also that I am being unhelpful, as the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Dowd) implied a while ago. I see, however, the start of a slippery slope. First, the Secretary of State must consult. When we next have to legislate, he will have to seek permission. After that, we shall have to seek the permission of the Dublin Government and the involvement of a supervisory joint body. I am raising more than a small point. Indeed, we are facing the thin end of a wedge.
      Mr. Worthington: Everyone seems to assume that the great majority of the armaments that we are discussing are within the Republic, and that we should be seeking to get the full co-operation of the Republic for there to be decommissioning. How can that occur if there is not consultation, which should be built upon so that we might get rid of weaponry throughout the island of Ireland?
      7.15 pm
      Mr. Wilshire: The purpose behind the amendments is not to forbid consultation. My objection to the Bill is that it fetters the sovereignty of this Parliament by placing a requirement on the Secretary of State to go cap in hand to a foreign Government. Any Secretary of State worth his or her salt will consult, but to introduce a statutory requirement to consult is to begin to concede that Northern Ireland is somehow not a proper part of the United Kingdom. I cannot go along with that. I am sure that the requirement is not necessary, and on that basis I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell me that common sense will break out, discussions will take place and the requirement will not have to be set out in the Bill.
      Mr. Trimble: I support the amendment. If the Bill, when enacted, is to be effective, that will require co-operation. Indeed, it will require an agreement to be made between Her Majesty's Government and the Government of the Republic of Ireland even to establish the commission. No one wishes to exclude co-operation that will bring about the decommissioning of terrorist weapons. We want, of course, to see all such weapons removed.
      I am concerned about the references to consultation with the Minister for Justice of the Republic of Ireland because we are in danger of bringing about a situation in which the Secretary of State will not be able to act. He will not be able to bring legislation into force if there is not that consultation or if the consultation is not effective. It might be possible for a future Minister for Justice of the Irish Republic to stultify the operation of the proposed legislation that is before us.
      We must—especially as there are elections pending in the Republic of Ireland—take into account the possibility that we might find ourselves with a Government who will not be co-operative in the way that we now expect.
      Rev. Ian Paisley: The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) has raised an important issue. Has the Minister been consulted about the Bill that is now before the Dail Eireann? Is there a reference to consultation in that Bill? Does that Bill refer to the Secretary of State for Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Is that term used in the Bill?

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      Let us get things straight. We had the southern Republic refusing at the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement to give the United Kingdom its proper term. I have had to fight the issue in Europe. The Eire Government want to refer only to the United Kingdom and not the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. What is the reference in their Bill? If a reference to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is not in their Bill, why should we have the requirement to consult in the Bill that is before us? If the Eire Government are not prepared to recognise our proper jurisdiction and description, we should not have to consult them.
      Mr. Robert McCartney: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recollect that when the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 was signed, there were two forms, one signed by the United Kingdom Government, which was an agreement between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of the Republic, and one signed by Dublin, which was between the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the Republic. I take it that that is the point to which the hon. Gentleman alludes.
      Rev. Ian Paisley: That is the point, and it is an extremely important one. In Europe, a subtle change was introduced under the Irish presidency on one occasion. It was only after representations were made to the President that it was reversed. We joined the European Union as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Thereafter, there was a reference to Great Britain only, followed by a reference to the UK. The final part of the UK's description was omitted. As I have said, the hon. Member for Spelthorne has raised an important point.
      Is it not the first time in British history that a Minister of another regime is written into our legislation—a reference that has the effect that our Minister can do nothing until he first consults that foreign Minister? Who will prove that we have consulted him? Will the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ireland have a right to tell a British court, "I am supposed to be consulted, but I was not"?
      Such a scenario is where this provision—which was formulated by Irish civil servants—will lead us. We have seen posters showing people with demon eyes. I have sat at the talks and looked at the whites of those boys' eyes, and they have demon eyes. Some of them would do Loyola and the Jesuits credit, because they know every way in which to try to put a dagger in the back of the Ulster people and of the United Kingdom. The Minister needs to tell us what we are trying to do.
      Mr. Robert McCartney: The suggestion seems to be that consultations with Ministers of the Republic of Ireland, and particularly with their Minister for Justice, are necessarily beneficial. Earlier in the debate, the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) alluded to the recent matter of the extradition of Mr. Lowry, who is wanted by the German Government in connection with the post-Canary wharf, post-ceasefire outrage at the British base in Osnabrück. Although somewhat belatedly, the Irish Government signed the European convention on the suppression of terrorism, and they did so knowing that the convention's function was to ensure that terrorists are provided with no hiding place in the territory of European
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      Community member states—each of which, to achieve membership, must have been defined as a democracy, not a police state, which operates under the rule of law.
      Dr. Godman: What does the hon. and learned Gentleman make of the claim made by the Minister for Justice that no extradition treaty exists between those two member states of the European Union? Are not the Government of Germany as responsible for the situation as the Government of the Irish Republic?
      Mr. McCartney: I take that point on board. However, if the purpose of the convention was to ensure that terrorists should find no hiding place in the Community, all the signatories must have realised that their domestic law would have to be modified by agreeing a treaty, or by agreeing that the convention itself provided sufficient legal authority to achieve the convention's intent. Is it not passing strange that the Irish Government, since 1987, after signing the convention and realising its purpose, have failed to make any modification of their internal law or to alter their relations with Germany to effect the purpose of the convention?
      Rev. Ian Paisley: Will the hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. As far as I can tell, the amendment is not about extradition arrangements between the Republic of Ireland and Germany.
      Mr. McCartney: I am dealing with the broad principle of consultation and the issue of whether it is a good idea to consult someone about whose bona fides one has an element of doubt. However, I take on board entirely your suggestion, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I may have strayed beyond the bounds of strict relevance.
      It is curious that it should be necessary to consult the Republic's Minister for Justice on a decommissioning scheme for arms found in Northern Ireland. Clause 8, which provides for arms in England, Wales and Scotland, does not require a similar consultative process. Is that because—as I said earlier in the debate—Northern Ireland is not considered a bona fide, real and first-class member of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, thereby making consultation with the Irish Government necessary? Is consultation necessary on arms in Northern Ireland, but entirely unnecessary on arms in a first-rate member of the United Kingdom, such as England, Scotland and Wales?
      Mr. Maginnis: I am anxious not to contravene your reminder to stay close to the subject, Mr. Deputy Speaker. However, as we are discussing the role of the Irish Republic's Minister for Justice, I should say that—irrespective of which treaty or arrangement the Irish Republic willingly enters into—primacy rests in that state's constitution.
      In 1985, that fact was demonstrated in the Anglo-Irish Agreement. I was party to a challenge, in their own supreme court, to the Government of the Irish Republic. The senior judge in that court ruled that the status of Northern Ireland—which the Irish Republic stated that it would respect—was not defined, and carefully not defined. When we have to deal with wordsmiths who can concoct language, which is always secondary to the

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      constitution of the Irish Republic, we have to be aware and wary of what is intended. Before you remind me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall sit down.
      Mr. McCartney: I do not want to incur your wrath, Mr. Deputy Speaker. However, on the issue of consultation with the Irish Government, my experience has been that virtually no extradition warrant on which they have been consulted has ever been successful—the papers have been lost or the name or address of the wanted person has been wrong. Inevitably, a technicality has been found to refuse the warrant, which is why I have reservations about the value of consultation.
      Sir John Wheeler: I am again grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) for enabling the House to have such an ingenious and interesting debate. I hope that I shall be able to satisfy hon. Members who have spoken in the brief debate on the amendments.
      The Bill's provisions have been carefully constructed in co-operation and consultation with the Government of the Republic of Ireland because we realise—as I am sure that the House does—that, to achieve success, decommissioning must take place in both the north and south of the island of Ireland. We also realise that, on 28 November, when the two Governments announced that they had agreed in parallel to establish an international body to facilitate decommissioning—
      Mr. Roy Beggs: May I ask the Minister, to satisfy those of us within the Unionist community, to use the term "Northern Ireland" instead of "north and south of Ireland", which contains many incorrect connotations?
      Sir John Wheeler: I acknowledge, of course, that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom; that is beyond dispute. I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman that assurance.
      As currently drafted, clauses 5, 6 and 7 do no more than provide for a continuing and essential joint approach to the problem of decommissioning. The Bill provides for the two Governments to consult on the timing of commencement of clause 7.
      The equivalent provision of the Government of the Republic of Ireland's decommissioning Bill requires consultation with the Secretary of State before it comes into operation. I have a copy of that Bill and I quote from clause 3(1):
      "The subsequent provisions of this section shall come into operation on such day as the Minister"—
      meaning the Minister for Justice in the Republic—
      "after consultation with the Secretary of State, may for the purpose of enabling the agreement to have full effect, by order appoint."
      I can further assure the House that in the Republic's Bill
      "'Secretary of State' means a Secretary of State in the Government of the United Kingdom".
      Several hon. Members rose—
      7.30 pm
      Mr. Maginnis: That illustrates better than I could have hoped my point about ambivalent language. There is no such thing as "the Secretary of State". There is a Secretary
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      of State for Defence, a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and a Secretary of State for Scotland, but there is no such thing as "the Secretary of State". That is an example of the disingenuous language of Dublin's wordsmiths. I need say no more.
      Sir John Wheeler: There is, at least in the lifetime of this Parliament, a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. What there will be in any future Parliament depends on the will of any future Prime Minister and the structure that the House chooses.
      Rev. Ian Paisley: The measure refers to the United Kingdom and not the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is the legal term. Our coinage depicts the Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Let us get the matter straight. It is an example of the evil skulduggery of Dublin and we are right to raise the issue. Dublin is always after the same thing. The Irish Government would not allow us to describe their country as the Irish Republic. It would be impossible to get that on to a document. It has to be the Republic of Ireland, but it is not; it is the Irish Republic. The Irish Government certainly do not govern all Ireland, but if we described their country as the Irish Republic, they certainly would not put that title in their law, but by hook or by crook they will get their knife into the Union.
      Sir John Wheeler: I am not sure how to respond to that intervention. However, as far as I am concerned, we are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and I refer to the Republic of Ireland when I refer to that country.
      I have explained what is in the measure to be laid before the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland, the provision for consultation and what it means. The consultation is just that. It does not give one Government a veto over the affairs of the other or constrain their actions, but joint action is the only sensible approach. Unless we proceed together as two countries, we shall not achieve our aim of establishing a joint strategy basis for decommissioning terrorist arms wherever they may be. That is the purpose of the clause, and I hope that, having heard my remarks, my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment.
      Mr. Wilshire: At the start of the debate I assumed automatically that there would be no question but that I would withdraw the amendment. However, the debate has taken on a slightly different complexion.
      First, let me address the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) about the value of consultation. In all fairness, having heard the debate, I should put it on record that I was attacking the office of Minister for Justice in the Republic. I have known Nora Owen, the current postholder, for a long time and I should make it clear that I was not casting any slur on her, but was criticising the office of the Minister for Justice in the Republic. As the hon. and learned Gentleman said, when people take on that role, something seems to happen to them, and they take strange decisions.
      I am not impressed by the argument that, because the Republic's Bill referred to us, it must be right. If the Government of the Republic want to get involved, let them rejoin the Union. That would be one way in which they could talk to the rest of us. I certainly do not buy the notion that somehow two wrongs make a right.

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      My right hon. Friend the Minister sought to reassure us by reading out those words from the Republic's Bill, but that turned an otherwise pleasant, brief debate into a fundamental issue. The reaction of the House spoke volumes. We did not need to hear what was said; we could see the rightful anger that was generated at that moment.
      Rev. Martin Smyth: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that anger has existed for a long time, but it has intensified because there is no evidence that our Government are arguing that very point? Some years ago, at the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Ottawa, delegates from the Irish Republic did what they have tried to do in Europe. By majority voting, they changed the title of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the United Kingdom because they had a political axe to grind. Does the hon. Gentleman share our concern that representatives of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland do not appear to have the same determination to maintain our integrity?
      Mr. Wilshire: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. I hope that, over the past few years, I have made it quite clear, at least to him, that I understand his concerns and I am prepared to speak up for them.
      My right hon. Friend sought to reassure us by quoting those words, but he did the exact opposite. They were weasel words. If anyone had any doubt, they laid bare exactly what the Dublin Government get up to whenever they get involved in the subject.
      If I am being asked whether I will withdraw the amendment because I am reassured, I can say that I am not reassured and I will not withdraw on those grounds. However, I am prepared to consider withdrawing it because I am a realist. On the basis that there is not the slightest chance of the amendment being carried by the House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Order for Third Reading read.
      Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. Ottaway.]
      7.37 pm
      Dr. Hendron: I had not intended to make this point, but I found the last 10 minutes of the previous debate rather amusing. Occasionally, I spend a weekend in Donegal, which is in northern Ireland. I realise that it is not in the state of Northern Ireland, but it is definitely in the north of Ireland. No member of my family feels that we are visiting a foreign country. I shall not bore the House by explaining that there are two traditions in Northern Ireland as hon. Members know what I mean.
      I listened carefully to the debate in Committee and on Report, and I am sure that I shall say nothing new. I have listened carefully to all the arguments and I shall make only a couple of points.
      All hon. Members, and 98 per cent. of people in Northern Ireland, want peace and want the gun out of Irish politics permanently. The hon. Members for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) and for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis), and the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney), spoke about the role of the Irish Republic. I remind hon. Members that, when the
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      Irish Government had the presidency of the European Union, they were present daily at Stormont castle to participate in the peace process.
      A Bill similar to this is going through the Dail Eireann. I do not know whether it has become law yet, but as an act of good will the Irish Government showed the Ulster Unionist party the proposed legislation, at that party's request. The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone accepted that it was a stronger Bill than this one. Aspects of it have been used in this Bill, but I shall not pursue that point because I am not sure of the details.
      The Bill would not be before the House if we had not had the Mitchell report. The same applies to the Bill going through Dail Eireann. The purpose of both Bills is to implement that report. As other hon. Members have said, decommissioning is a voluntary exercise. When peace comes to Northern Ireland—I believe that it will come—it will not be at the end of a gun. Perhaps those of us who hope for peace are naive. I accept the point made by several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for North Antrim (Rev. Ian Paisley) that the more we give, the more those people want. Those are not his words, but that is the implication of what he said. Somewhere along the road, a line has to be drawn in the sand to say that enough is enough. However, it can only be right to try to draw in those involved in violence, who are part of a tradition going back centuries—that historical fact is an important point.
      I have spent a lifetime in west Belfast, which has seen more violence than any other part of these islands, Britain or Ireland—I do not care how anyone wants to define the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland. I have seen more than most of the violence and, wearing my medical hat, the suffering of families. The Catholic, nationalist people of the Falls road and the Protestant, Unionist people of the Shankhill road hope for peace. I link myself with them when I say that we cannot afford to stand on some sort of moral high ground, saying that we shall not speak to A, B or C. We want peace. It can only be right to try to involve the people who are involved in violence, as part of a tradition that goes back centuries.
      There is no excuse for violence, even though it is a tradition in the island of Ireland. The despicable recent attack on the children's hospital in the Falls road—the main regional hospital for Northern Ireland—happened in my constituency. The IRA attempted to murder the colleague of the hon. Member for North Antrim, or bodyguards, or both. That was a despicable act and did not seem like the behaviour of an organisation that was supposed to be talking peace. I certainly have a problem with that. Then, the other evening—I think that it was the evening before yesterday—there was a mortar attack in Andersonstown. An elderly couple were held hostage and an attempt was made to murder members of the security forces.
      The strange fact is that the people who talk peace—I refer to the paramilitaries and their representatives—in addition to attempting to take life, are bringing soldiers on to the streets of my constituency. In so doing, they are ensuring that there will be many house searches. It is ironic that the organisation carrying out the violence thereby brings security forces on to the streets, causing more searches. The people in many housing estates resent those searches, but they do not seem to appreciate that the fault lies with the Provisional IRA.

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      The Minister referred to a settlement and to democracy. I have nothing new to say on the subject, but I should like stress that that is what the talks in Castle buildings are all about. That is why we had an election last May. Some of those who wanted that election are now saying that we can postpone the talks until after the next election. The people of the island of Ireland—including the Irish Government—especially the people of Belfast, want those talks to succeed, but for them to be total and inclusive, Sinn Fein must be present.
      No hon. Member is better qualified than I am to put a question mark against the credibility of an IRA ceasefire, should one come about. We cannot judge the IRA by its words, but we judge it by its deeds. No one else—not this Government or the Irish Government—will know whether a ceasefire is credible. I accept that several murders took place during the last ceasefire. They were so-called drug-related murders—a term that I would not normally use. They were committed by the IRA. The Northern Ireland Office was slow to put the blame where it rightly lay, as were the Irish Government. I assume that they were hoping that the IRA and the republican movement would go down the road of democracy. I understand that, but it was the IRA that carried out those murders. Recently, in the heart of my constituency, a young man was tied upside down and had his legs broken, again for some so-called crime.
      If a ceasefire is called, I, perhaps more than most, shall certainly put a question mark against it, but I still want the IRA to call one. Only time will tell whether it is serious. A ceasefire relates not just to soldiers and police. It concerns the communities of west Belfast and far beyond. It is to do with community control—a subject that others referred to earlier and which I could go on about for hours. It is to do with beating young people and with vigilante groups. When a ceasefire is called—it may be called before the election—instead of standing on some sort of moral high ground and saying, "We will not talk to them," people should say, "Let's see what is going to happen." Only time will tell. We shall have to judge the IRA by its actions, not by its words.
      7.46 pm
      Mr. Maginnis: As we come to the conclusion of the debate, we are, I suspect and hope, considering the Bill in the certain knowledge that IRA-Sinn Fein form an irredeemable organisation, inexorably wedded to a strategy of violence that is intended to take them through to the next millennium. On that basis, many will wonder whether the Bill is a waste of time. During the past quarter of a century, normal society has had to endure not just violence, but the propaganda and the justification of that violence nationally and internationally.
      Throughout the world, the constant barrage of such propaganda has unfortunately fixed in the minds of some the concept of freedom fighter versus occupying force. We must constantly grapple with how best to show that that is not the case. It is essential that the Government and society have formal legislative measures in place to demonstrate effectively that we are a democratic society and that, as President Clinton said when he visited Belfast late in 1995:
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      "Violence has no place at the table of democracy and no role in the future of this land."
      If we use it to press home that point, the decommissioning legislation can convey the message that Northern Ireland is an integral part of a sophisticated democracy that has in place the means whereby men and women of violence can recant and come in from the cold. To protect innocent members of society, it will of course be necessary for the Government to continue to meet force with force. Let there be no doubt or equivocation about that. Terrorists must never be in doubt that they will face the full and unrelenting rigours of the law. At the same time, however, we must be able to show that there is prepared and ready a safe and privileged path along which today's terrorist can pass with impunity into the democratic mode. That will help to refute his assertion that he is in any way denied an alternative to the course that he has previously chosen in defiance of the expressed will of the greater number in Northern Ireland.
      Whatever the response, what we are in the process of enacting today must not be seen as the property of the terrorist—something to be pigeonholed until he decides to respond. Instead, it must be employed as another weapon in the arsenal of democracy to be used unrelentingly to diminish the propaganda of the terrorist.
      Like many in this House, I am jealous of the integrity of what I call my Britishness. I do not believe that other nations have any right to interfere in our internal affairs, but on the other hand I hold the view that our international friends have an obligation to us—and we to them—in times of trouble and distress. I wish that I could be convinced that those who live to the south of me were my international friends.
      On such a basis, we have considered a Bill that allows the Government to invite people of international reputation and such technical skills as will be required to participate in the disarmament of the terrorist process, and we must use our openness to involvement by others to our best advantage.
      Like others here, I do not believe in deals with terrorists. I hope that the Government learnt a salutary lesson between 31 August 1994 and 9 February 1996. They should now know that working assumptions that fly in the face of reality and ignore informed advice can only end in tears. That must never happen again. Since our society accommodates each individual on the basis of their willingness to abide by its norms, neither I nor anyone else has the right to preclude someone from either making that choice or making a positive adjustment. Disarmament must be a prerequisite of such a metamorphosis.
      The issue of retribution must of course arise, for heinous crimes have been committed. Where the perpetrators can be brought to justice through the courts, that must be done and be seen to be done. We must never equivocate on that. Where that is not possible, and if the alternative to be accepted is the orderly and verifiable disarmament of terrorists, so be it. In the practical interests of the law abiding and the vulnerable in society, whom we represent in this place, every viable and justifiable avenue towards peace must be open. That, it must be understood, is the purpose of what we are attempting to enact today, and every aspect of what my party deems to be the Bill's purpose must be understood and implemented if we are not to make a mockery of this place.

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      The Bill must never be seen as a sop or an accommodation to the evil men of violence. It has to be the property, a bulwark and a defence of the most vulnerable in society. It must be what decent people can expect and hope to achieve—never what the terrorist, or indeed any inherently disingenuous Dublin Government, will permit.
      7.54 pm
      Mr. Worthington: I should like to raise a particular point and make some general remarks. The particular point is that, in Committee, we tabled an amendment and I should like to invite the Government to respond to it. As I said in a previous debate, the issue involves some imagination—that a decommissioning scheme was in place, that there was therefore a ceasefire, and that what we have been talking about today went forward satisfactorily.
      I am sure that the great majority of people would be very unhappy if the police and security forces were about to make an arrest, or detect somebody for the commission of a crime, and the person's get-out was the decommissioning of their weapon. That scenario need not necessarily concern a terrorist offence; it could concern a criminal offence involving the use of guns or weaponry. The person might sense that the police were about to move in and that the evidence of the weapon would be crucial to detection. It would not be satisfactory for the person simply to say, "I wish to decommission that weapon." I would like the Government's response to that point.
      I should like to follow along the lines of the speech of the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis). Since we debated these matters in Committee, there have been no grounds for optimism. When we debated these issues on 17 December, there was a sense of unreality, which has certainly increased since. I am sure that images of events over the recess have stayed in hon. Members' minds, as they have in mine. The realisation that there are thugs around who are willing, even eager, to let loose automatic fire in the vicinity of an intensive care ward for newly born children has been referred to. No political goal can justify such behaviour. We were similarly appalled by the 1,000 lb bomb in the grounds of Belfast castle near a wedding reception, where the destruction would have been random.
      It is clear that the IRA has been trying to provoke a full-scale resumption of hostilities. It must not succeed. I commend all those who have used their influence to stop the decline into a full-scale onslaught. The crucial point, of which we must not lose sight, is that, at the moment, a framework is in place on which a genuine peace process and a negotiating process can be built. It includes an independent chair, the backing of the two Governments, and negotiating teams who represent a great majority of the people in Northern Ireland. It has taken a great deal of effort to reach that position, and it must not be thrown away. It takes no effort whatever to go downhill to mayhem but, as the Minister knows, it has taken immense effort to crawl upwards to something near peace.
      One of the most memorable parts of the Mitchell report was where Mitchell said that what was most needed was the decommissioning of mindsets. Unfortunately,
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      in recent times, the dominant sound has been of the recommissioning of mindsets. Indeed, what Mitchell called
      "the vast inventories of historical recrimination"
      are reasserting themselves.
      We ought to congratulate the police—I do not think that anyone else has—on their recent successes. It is clear that the IRA is disturbed by the improved information getting through to the police. We must give the security forces all the support that we can muster. No hope can come from the gunman: the only hope can come from the politicians. As the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone said earlier, that means that the onus on the politicians is as strong as ever to show that they can make progress through negotiation. When I hear the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) debating in the House, I am convinced that they can find an agreement—I hope that that does not destroy their political careers—and that there is a solution that could command the support of the great majority of people. Efforts have to be redoubled to find points of agreement and obtain movement and progress.
      It was clear that all members of the Committee felt uneasy about some aspects of the procedure. It is impossible to feel sanguine about the fact that the person who fired the bullets in the intensive child care ward would be able to decommission that weapon and that the evidence of that weapon could not be used against that person. No one could feel content about that, but we are pursuing a greater good in an attempt to take the gun out of Northern Ireland politics and to remove hideous weapons of destruction. There is a compromise, which the Bill embraces; giving up the evidence that the weapons would provide in return, for the knowledge that they will not be used for destruction, and for the contribution that decommissioning would make to the building of trust.
      The Government were right to resist the amendments tabled by Unionists and Conservative Members that would have destroyed the idea of decommissioning as a voluntary step. It could not work if evidence from the weapons was to be collected and used. Mitchell concluded, and we agree, that arms decommissioning should not expose individuals to prosecution. Either we have voluntary decommissioning without the threat of prosecution or we do not have decommissioning. At the moment, decommissioning seems a long way away, but at least the Bill will put a framework in place if it ever becomes reality, and that is why we have supported it.
      8.1 pm
      Sir John Wheeler: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie (Mr. Worthington) for his words and I shall come at once to the point to which I undertook to respond on Third Reading when we considered the Bill in Committee. Of course I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the use of terrorist arms in evidence and the relationship between a decommissioning scheme and criminal proceedings. The way in which decommissioning will fit in with criminal proceedings when they have been instituted, or when the investigations of the police are well advanced, is indeed an important issue.
      We cannot permit someone who is caught red-handed committing a crime to plead that any weapon in their

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      possession cannot be tested or used in evidence because when they pulled the trigger they declared they were engaged in the process of decommissioning. I undertook in Committee to seek to address that point when we come, in conjunction with the participants in the talks process, to draw up the details of the decommissioning scheme. There must be no room for criminals to abuse the scheme. Any such scheme will set out as clearly as possible the circumstances in which a person will be held to be acting in accordance with the scheme. Everything possible will therefore be done to minimise the possible mischief to which the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie referred in Committee. I hope, therefore, that I have been able to give him that assurance: it is of course dependent on the future.
      I am grateful to the hon. Members for Belfast, West (Dr. Hendron) and for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) for their contributions. I listened with great care to what they had to say. As has been said, this decommissioning measure is being considered against the backdrop of increasing tension in Northern Ireland and further and continuing terrorist acts by the Provisional IRA and others. They are to be deplored; there is no excuse for them. However, I share the satisfaction of the hon. Member for Clydebank and Milngavie at the success of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and others in the prevention of terrorist crimes. People are being arrested, people will be processed through the criminal justice system and terrorism will not win, but I apprehend that Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom will go through difficult times.
      The Bill will provide a statutory basis for enabling detailed decommissioning arrangements to be put in place and ensure that there can be no delay or prevarication. The Irish Government share the determination of the United Kingdom to attain agreement on this most difficult and complex issue and to that end they have worked closely with us in preparing similar legislation, which will be put before their Parliament before the month is out and which will mirror clauses in the Bill.
      Agreement on decommissioning would transform the prospects for political progress and I am in no doubt that it is achievable. The opportunity is there: I hope that in due course it will be taken. I commend the Bill to the House.
      Question put and agreed to.
      Bill read the Third time, and passed.

LIAISON COMMITTEE
Ordered,
That Mr. Matthew Carrington be discharged from the Liaison Committee and Mr. Barry Legg be added to the Committee.—[Mr. Ottaway.]

PETITION

  Pontefract and Pinderfields NHS Trusts
  8.6 pm
  Mr. Jon Trickett: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to introduce this petition. I am delighted to be able to introduce the petition, a part of which is being presented before the Table. It is a very large petition. The project manager for the trust merger accepted three months ago that more than 62,000 signatures had already been presented and three further months have now elapsed. It is a singular petition and has been signed by more than one in three adult citizens of the district of Wakefield. It also has the full support of the four hon. Members representing the Wakefield district.
  I shall read out the petition:
  The petitioners of the Campaign Group against the Merger of the Pontefract and Pinderfields NHS Trusts declare that the proposed merger of these trusts would have a detrimental effect on local health services. The petitioners, therefore, request that the House of Commons call upon the Secretary of State to reject any recommendation seeking approval of the merger of the two hospital trusts. The petitioners remain, etc.
  I beg leave to present the petition.
  To lie upon the Table.

North Korea
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ottaway.]
8.7 pm
Mr. Harold Elletson: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the subject of the Government's policy towards North Korea and to my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for agreeing to reply to the debate. It is appropriate that we should discuss Korea tonight, 200 years since the first contact between Britain and Korea and less than two weeks before the scheduled tripartite meeting between the two Korean Governments and the United States, at a time when uncertainty shrouds the intention of the North Korean leadership and unrest in South Korea attracts the world's attention.
Over the past six months, events on the Korean peninsula have thrown into sharp focus the very different destinies and prospects of the peoples of North and South Korea. They have shown the nervousness and instability that exists in much of south-east Asia because of the Korean situation and they have demonstrated the shock waves of destruction that might accompany the death throes of the North Korean regime.
North Korea is the world's last remaining Stalinistic dictatorship. It sits uneasily on the Pacific rim among tiger economies and emerging super-powers, frightened of their intentions and envious of their achievements. It glowers menacingly at its southern neighbour across the demilitarised zone, and at its old enemy to the east across the sea of Japan. To the north and west lie its former comrades, whose embrace of capitalism it watches with the bitterness of betrayal.
In the years that followed the Korean war, and with the development of a quasi-religious personality cult around the so-called "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung and a state ideology known as chuche—which means self-reliance, but is in fact a form of isolationism based around Stalinist command economics—North Korea isolated itself from the non-communist world, confident in its self-proclaimed position as the eastern forward outpost of socialism.
The shock of perestroika and an end to preferential trade relations with Russia and China—followed more recently by the death of Kim Il Sung—have left it more isolated, uncertain, unpredictable and uncontrollable than before. On 15 September, a North Korean submarine infiltrated a team of commandos into South Korea near the city of Kangnung. Their aim was to destroy military targets and to shatter the confidence of South Koreans in their Government's ability to deter threats from the north. It was a calculated act of aggression against a sovereign state that is one of Great Britain's major trading partners. Last year, South Korea accounted for more than £1 billion of our exports. The incident caused widespread concern about the true nature and intentions of the North Korean regime.
As a result of international pressure—including representations from my right hon. Friend the Minister of State—the North Korean Government agreed to apologise and to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. As my right hon. Friend said in reply to me on 13 January:
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"the statement of apology … has led to a welcome easing of tension on the peninsula."—[Official Report, 13 January 1997; Vol. 288, c. 29.]
The Minister is right that the situation is now less tense.
There have been welcome developments in other areas, including attempts since the death of Kim Il Sung to persuade the leadership in Pyongyang to co-operate. The Korean Energy Development Organisation managed to sign a protocol with North Korea about its nuclear installations, and the United States signed a bilateral agreement freezing the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea. The fundamental problem has not gone away, however, and I cannot help thinking that in the very near future we face some serious challenges. Indeed, the very fact that North Korean Radio's version of the leadership's apology for the submarine incident was that South Korea had been made to apologise by the Americans shows Pyongyang's contempt for the concerns of the international community.
There are two issues that worry me most about the current situation. The first is North Korea's military strength and its political psychology; the second is its dire economic predicament and the threat of a sudden political implosion in Pyongyang. North Korea possesses an abundance of weapons of mass destruction. Its Scud B and C missile units deployed in hardened facilities 50 km from the demilitarised zone could reach Seoul and other targets in the southern half of the peninsula. It also took delivery recently of a Soviet-made SS21 missile from Syria and has been trying to reverse-engineer the missile's guidance package. Its No-Dong 1 ballistic missile has a projected range of 1,000 km and is now ready for deployment, giving North Korea the ability to hit targets throughout the south and also in most of Japan. Work is continuing on the Taep'o-Dong 1 and 2 missile programmes, with ranges of 1,500 km and 4,000 km, respectively. Despite the agreement with the United States to freeze its nuclear weapon programme, the Governments of Japan and of South Korea continue to be concerned about the ability of North Korea to field nuclear-tipped weapons or to attach chemical or biological warheads.
North Korea's conventional military capability is also substantial. It has more than 1 million active members of the armed services and 4.5 million reservists. Although South Korea's armed forces are better trained and equipped—and are also backed by United States military and air power—a sudden attack by the north could quickly inflict severe damage. There are still grounds for serious concern about the possibility of conflict. North Korea's unpredictability, isolationism and paranoia, and the unreality brought about by the diet of lies with which the regime has sustained itself, could make a military adventure seem an attractive way of obtaining concessions from South Korea and the United States. As the danger grows in North Korea of internal dissent—with a leadership aware that the necessary programme of reforms will only hasten its downfall—an attack on the south, perhaps of a limited nature, could be used to divert the attention of North Koreans from their hardships and rally them to the patriotic cause.
Even assuming that the military threat does not materialise, North Korea still represents a major problem. Its economy is spiralling downwards. GDP has fallen for the past six years and, according to South Korea's central bank, it fell by 4.6 per cent. last year. Trade dropped to a mere $2 billion last year—less than a week's-worth of

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South Korean exports—and most of North Korea's sources of foreign exchange are now accounted for by the proceeds of occasional arms sales to other isolated regimes and remittances sent by Japanese of Korean descent.
Grain output of 3.5 million tonnes last year was less than half the demand, and grain shortages are now so bad that there are fights in food queues. There is not enough warm clothing in the bitterly cold winter and energy shortages have plunged major cities into darkness. As a result, the leadership—which, despite early indications to the contrary, appears to be in the hands of Kim Jong I1, the son of Kim I1 Sung—is now faced with the classic dilemma that confronts ailing dictatorships: the necessity of reform inevitably bringing with it, sooner or later, an irresistible pressure for political change.
The danger is of total economic collapse and political implosion in Pyongyang, together with an exodus of starving refugees and a demand for massive assistance from South Korea and the international community. Neither of those concerns—the military or the economic—is one from which we can afford to distance ourselves.
There has been no peace treaty since the armistice which ended the Korean war in 1953, and South Korea has a defence agreement with the 16 countries—including the United Kingdom—which took part in the hostilities on the side of the United Nations. That agreement states that if aggression from the north occurs, the former contributing states will again resist it. We have a clear national interest in seeking to bring about a reconciliation between north and south.
Equally, the threat that North Korea poses to some of our most important trading partners in the region cannot be ignored. However, it is the threat of economic destabilisation that should be of most immediate concern to us. The fall of communism in the north of Korea will create an immediate demand for reintegration with the south. That will present a bigger challenge and create a greater strain on the world economy than the reunification of Germany, an event from which European economies are still recovering. The North Korean economy is in much worse shape than East Germany's was. The population ratio between West and East Germany was 4:1, whereas between North and South Korea it is only 2:1. That places a much greater burden on the shoulders of the South Korean worker.
When change comes in North Korea, it will come quickly and the shock of it will send more than just ripples across south-east Asia. The international community must ensure that it is ready for the change and is capable of responding with initiatives that are both effective and sustainable. We must not allow ourselves to be caught off guard, or to be overwhelmed by the sudden but foreseeable collapse of a communist dictatorship. The world needs a clear plan for managing change in Korea, and Great Britain—with all its experience, contacts and commitments—has an important role to play in developing it.
The United States is, of course, the driving force behind attempts to engage North Korea in dialogue. It deserves our full encouragement and support in its efforts, but it must be wary of North Korea's attempts to use
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improvements in bilateral relations with it, and a limited engagement with the wider international community, as a full substitute for seeking rapprochement with the south.
The Americans are crucial to the strategic balance of south-east Asia and it is worth remembering that events in Korea, among others, will ensure that the region remains a priority for US foreign policy makers, with the possible corollary of a decreasing willingness to maintain a wider role as a global policeman and, perhaps more specifically, to become involved on Europe's periphery. That must give us pause for thought.
The United States is the most significant foreign power on the Korean peninsula, but China, Russia and Japan also have important interests, and their concerns, together with their potential influence over Pyongyang, should not be forgotten. There may be merit, when the time is right, in expanding the present tentative tripartite arrangements to include other such powers with an interest in the area. Every opportunity must be taken to open North Korea to international influence and pressure. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will help to do that and will make available the experience and resources of the United Kingdom.
I hope that there will be further detailed planning to assist South Korea and north-eastern China to deal with the enormous refugee problem that may follow the collapse of the North Korean regime. It would be inexcusable if we failed to assist in planning for that entirely foreseeable event. Equally, the international community must plan now to play its part in the eventual reconstruction of North Korea. That will help to stem the flood tide of refugees and mitigate the potentially disastrous effects of Korean reintegration on the economies of south-east Asia.
Our task is to assist in bringing about the peaceful, stable and orderly transition to normality of an unpredictable, unstable and dangerous dictatorship which constitutes a serious threat to some of our closest allies. It is neither an insignificant nor an easy task, but it is a matter, as I hope that my right hon. Friend will agree, of the greatest importance for the peace and stability of a region where Britain continues to have major interests.
8.21 pm
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Jeremy Hanley): I warmly commend my hon. Friend the Minister for Blackpool, North (Mr. Elletson) for raising this subject in the House today. United Kingdom policy towards North Korea is an extremely important subject that is rarely mentioned in the Chamber, so we are truly grateful to him. The tense situation on the Korean peninsula is a matter of concern to us and to the international community as a whole. As my hon. Friend graphically described, the threats are very great.
After the second world war, when Koreans hoped to resume their unity and independence, the peninsula was divided and two separate states were established. The invasion of the south by North Korea in 1950 resulted in a bitter and tragic conflict that cost more than 2 million lives. The results of the Korean war are starkly visible today in the continued division of the peninsula at the demilitarised zone, with its many miles of barbed wire, its minefields, and hundreds of thousands of heavily armed combatants facing each other, as I have seen for myself.

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Britain was quick to pledge support for the United Nations action to defend the Republic of Korea in 1950, and our forces fought alongside the South Koreans in all the major campaigns of the war. More than 1,000 of our young men died, and more than 2,000 were wounded. We remember them still today.
The armistice agreement, signed on 27 July 1953, brought an end to hostilities, but, while the fighting stopped, the tension remained and continues to this day. North Korea has carried out regular breaches of the armistice, and has been involved in terrorist activities against the south. The recent submarine incident that my hon. Friend graphically described is the latest in a long line of such events.
After the armistice was signed, Britain continued to play an important role in preserving peace on the peninsula. Our forces remained there until 1957, and the British defence attaché in Seoul is still a member of the UN Command delegation to the military armistice commission. We have played an important role in South Korea's post-war reconstruction and, later, in the early stages of its economic take-off. South Korea is now the 11th largest economy in the world. Although its population is only twice as great as that of the north, its gross domestic product is well over 20 times greater.
Today, South Korea is one of our major trading partners, and we have succeeded in attracting more than 50 per cent. of all Korean manufacturing investment in Europe, with existing and planned projects valued at more than £4 billion and providing more than 11,000 jobs, mostly in large plants in regions vulnerable to unemployment. South Korea is a close and valued friend, with which our relations are expanding at an extremely rapid pace. I pay tribute to the work of the Korean ambassador here at the Court of St. James, Mr. Choi, and of our ambassador at Seoul, Mr. Tom Harris, both of whom work tirelessly to improve our mutual relations.
For obvious reasons, our links with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north have been more tenuous. Its role in the Korean War, and its continued hostility to South Korea, made that inevitable. Britain has not, however, ignored North Korea. In the hope that wider contacts would lead to a modification of its hard-line policies, successive British Governments encouraged trade links and sporting and cultural contacts with North Korea, but sustained contact foundered in the face of North Korea's continued pursuit of unacceptable means to achieve its ends.
At the moment, we impose no sanctions against North Korea, and British companies are free to do business there. However, we make it clear to those exporters considering visiting Pyongyang that, in the absence of diplomatic relations, we cannot offer them any commercial assistance or consular protection.
One reason for the relatively low level of commercial contact is that North Korea's poor record of paying debts remains a major impediment to any suggested expansion of trade or investment. The North Koreans are, however, welcome to come here on legitimate business, and indeed, more than 40 visas were issued to North Koreans to visit the United Kingdom in 1996. We hope that those contacts will increase.
Because of the problems to which I have alluded, relations between Britain and the DPRK have never been normalised. In that, of course, we are not alone. However,
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we remain willing to help North Korea out of its isolation. When it joined the United Nations in 1991, we formally recognised its existence as a state. We allowed the establishment in London of a North Korean mission accredited to the International Maritime Organisation, and there are currently two North Korean officials and their families here on IMO business. There has also been a series of exploratory talks between British and North Korean officials to determine whether any further improvement in our relations is possible.
Like other countries, we are concerned at the reports of food shortages in the north. In contrast with the south, the DPRK is a rigidly centrally planned economy that relied upon preferential trading arrangements with the Soviet Union and China for its survival. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, the North Korean economy has nose-dived, and since 1990 its GDP has contracted by about 5 per cent. per annum.
Recent floods and serious droughts have exacerbated the problem of a systemic failure of the state-run agriculture to feed its people. The floods have been terrible, and the result has been increasingly widespread malnutrition. In 1995 and 1996, North Korea appealed to the international community for food aid. Britain responded: we have donated, on humanitarian grounds, through the United Nations and the Red Cross, a total of nearly £0.5 million for food aid and flood relief in North Korea.
The harvest in the north last year was again far short of the needs, but we stand ready to consider further appeals for assistance. Such palliatives, however, can do little to solve the underlying problem of a system in long-term structural decline.
There is great uncertainty about the intentions of the DPRK Government, and the attitude of the people. The Government exercise totalitarian control over the population, who have virtually no access to outside information. North-south contacts are strictly controlled by both sides, and North Korea maintains armed forces of more than 1 million and huge stocks of conventional weapons. It also has a missile development programme that, as my hon. Friend again accurately described, ranges from Scuds—with a range of several hundred miles—to development of an advanced derivative of Scud with a range of thousands of miles.
A crisis on the Korean peninsula would damage regional, and possibly global, stability. There is a risk that economic decline in the north might lead to a mass exodus of refugees. My hon. Friend set out those problems clearly. In the first instance, it would be for the countries on North Korea's borders to react as best they could, but they would be hard pressed to cope, and the international community would need to consider how best to respond. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and given our previous involvement in Korea, it is important that we should do what we can to reduce the risk of such a crisis.
In recent years, there has been widespread concern about North Korea's apparent nuclear weapons programme, because it has prevented International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from gaining the full access to certain nuclear sites that would reassure the world. After long negotiations, there was a breakthrough in October 1994, when the US and North Korea signed a framework agreement whereby the north agreed to freeze, and

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eventually dismantle, its existing nuclear reactors in exchange for the construction of two light water reactors and the provision of interim energy supplies.
South Korea agreed to provide the majority of the $4 billion required to fund the programme, and the Japanese Government are expected to provide most of the balance. Those two countries and the US formed an international consortium, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation—or KEDO—to finance and administer that exciting project.
We have strongly supported the agreement, and KEDO, as a way of countering the threat that the DPRK posed to the integrity of the non-proliferation treaty. We contributed $1 million to its start-up costs—the first European country to do so. We worked hard to achieve the recent agreement under which the European Union will contribute 15 million ecu annually until 2000 and become a member of KEDO. The Government are also considering national membership. We will maintain our support for KEDO and continue to encourage the DPRK to implement fully the framework agreement.
To ensure peace and stability on the Korean peninsula is an important task, inseparable from the peace and stability of the entire Asia-Pacific region—an area of extreme importance to us both politically and economically. We believe that lasting peace can be achieved only through meaningful dialogue between the north and the south and we take every opportunity to encourage such dialogue. For many years after the Korean war, both sides made frequent proposals on reunification, but there were no formal contacts.
In 1991, the world's hopes were raised following a series of meetings at prime ministerial level, and the signature of a set of potentially far-reaching agreements on matters such as non-aggression and mutual co-operation. However, the North Koreans moved away from the agreements almost as soon as they were signed, and they have remained a dead letter ever since.
Another moment of hope came in 1994, at the height of the nuclear crisis, when a summit meeting was planned between Presidents Kim Young Sam of the south and Kim I1 Sung of the north. However, Kim I1 Sung's death in July 1994 led to the postponement of the summit, and it has not proved possible to arrange one with his de facto successor.
North Korea has strongly opposed dialogue with the south, ostensibly because it was not a signatory to the armistice agreement. The DPRK has insisted that it should talk exclusively to the US, which signed on behalf of the UN. To end the impasse, we welcomed the proposal announced by President Clinton and President Kim Young Sam on 16 April 1996 that talks should take place involving North and South Korea, the US, and China as North Korea's main neighbour. Known as the four-party talks, the proposal was designed to initiate a process aimed at achieving a permanent peace agreement to replace the armistice.
Unusually, North Korea did not reject the proposal out of hand, and agreed to consider it, but it has yet to give a formal response. After some months during which North Korea showed little interest in participating in the talks, claiming that it needed more information on their purpose, US officials suggested a briefing meeting to explain the proposal.
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However, those efforts came to a standstill when a North Korean submarine was discovered grounded on the east coast of South Korea, apparently on an infiltration mission. In the ensuing manhunt, 24 North Koreans were killed, one was captured and one is still at large. Twelve South Koreans died, including five civilians.
The incident raised tension on the peninsula to a very high pitch. South Korea, understandably angry about the flagrant violation of the armistice agreement and the loss of civilian life—indeed, of any life—demanded that North Korea take responsibility by apologising. Together with our European partners, we condemned the North Korean action as a serious violation of the armistice, and urged the authorities in Pyongyang to cease all activities that could result in a further increase in the tension.
After much difficult negotiation, the US managed to persuade the DPRK to issue a statement on 29 December that expressed deep regret over the incident, and undertook to make efforts to ensure that such an incident would not recur. The North Koreans also agreed to take part in a briefing on the four-party talks proposal. We are encouraged by that development, and urge the North Koreans to approach the briefing positively and constructively.
I mentioned that we have had recent contacts with the North Koreans. They were limited to three meetings at official level, the first taking place in 1995. Our aim is to reinforce the efforts of our partners on the nuclear issue and north-south dialogue, and to do what we can to improve North Korean contact with the outside world. We have made it clear to them that continuation of the process and any moves towards expanding our relations will depend upon their compliance with the nuclear agreement and willingness to enter into dialogue with the south.
We have kept the Government of the Republic of Korea fully informed of our contacts. The influence that we can bring to bear is, naturally, limited, but through our support for the Republic of Korea and the United States, our willingness to engage North Korea in dialogue and to provide humanitarian aid when needed, I believe that we have made—and will continue to make a—real contribution. I assure the House that those efforts will not slacken.
We should not forget that, if the North Korean regime remains on its present path, it will continue to be isolated. It is a threat to its neighbours and to the region. It is said that it abuses the human rights of its populace, and it cannot feed its people. We therefore believe that dialogue with the south is essential.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for raising the subject. I am sorry that there are not more hon. Members, especially Opposition Members, here to show an interest in this vital subject. He has graphically described the dangers; I hope that the efforts of the world community will mean that we will not see the impact of those dangers. I particularly hope that the north and south can enter into dialogue, because that is the way to peace.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes to Nine o'clock.