DEFINITIONS (Hansard, 12 May 1999)

§ Sir Brian Mawhinney (North-West Cambridgeshire)
Before clause 1 becomes part of the Bill, I wish to refer the Committee to subsection (4), which starts with the words, "Victim of violence", and continues with a definition of that term. It had been my intention to be here on Monday to take part in the Second Reading, but for reasons that I conveyed to Madam Speaker, I was unable to be present. However, I read the Minister's speech carefully and with some interest, and he referred repeatedly to "The Disappeared".
It is important, as we pass this nasty little Bill, that at least we are not taken in by our own rhetoric. It was, I believe, Lenin who used to say that the whole point of terrorism was to terrorise people. That was also a favourite phrase of Michael Collins. What we are talking about in the Bill is terrorising people—cold-blooded acts by people who set out to abduct, torture and kill, probably in the most unpleasant ways. They do so not just for the sake of killing, although that was part of the very nature of the IRA, but to terrorise not just families but communities. The Bill will allow some degree of excuse for that terrorism.
I understand the background to the Bill, and the Minister will know that when I held the post that he now holds I was the first Minister who started the peace talks that culminated 10 years later in the Good Friday agreement. He also knows that everything that I have said since the agreement has broadly been in support of the Government and what they seek to do, so we do not have to have a debate about whether I am in favour of the Government's objectives. I shall not sit quietly by, however, and allow the Bill to pass without helping people to understand that the Minister was so generous as to be unbelievable when he said on Second Reading that this is a humanitarian Bill. This is not a humanitarian Bill: it is a piece of cynicism, driven by the IRA, derived from a propaganda need to take some of the pressure off it at the time of the Hillsborough talks. The Bill is deplored by some of those at the heart of the benefit that may accrue from its passage.
We all know that after up to 30 years there are a number of families in Northern Ireland who still sorrow and grieve, and who have not had the opportunity to give to their loved ones the dignity of a proper, Christian burial. That instinct is very strong among hon. Members of all parties in this House, but the IRA does not begin to understand it.
This Bill is a nasty, cynical piece of manipulation which the Governments of Great Britain and of the Irish Republic have felt compelled to introduce to their 325 legislatures for reasons of the greater good. All hon. Members support the families and sympathise with them, but we must proceed honestly and recognise the Bill for what it is. Today, we are recognising the terrorism, awfulness and cynicism of an organisation that still exists to terrorise for its own purposes.

§ The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Adam Ingram)
I well understand what the right hon. Gentleman has said about his past record and his on-going support as we go down the difficult road towards achieving our ultimate objective of a peaceful Northern Ireland. When he held my office, he had to take part in some difficult decisions. However, he said that this was a nasty little Bill. Does he hold the same opinion of the Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997, which he supported? That contained many of the same precepts that appear in this Bill. He said that the Bill is not a humanitarian measure, but how does he address the concerns of the families?
In my speech on Second Reading, which the right hon. Gentleman said that he read in detail, I did not talk about terrorism in any sympathetic way. He will know that I condemned unreservedly terrorism and the barbarism associated with the acts leading up to the disappearance of these people. I said that they were probably beaten and tortured, that they had had no right to a proper trial or to an appeal, and that their fundamental human rights had been taken away. I gave not an inch on that.
On 29 March, the Provisional IRA announced that it was prepared to provide information about some of the people who had been disappeared. The two Governments therefore had to act, or decide not to act. The right hon. Gentleman appears to be saying that we should not have acted, but instead should have put pressure on the Provisional IRA—in ways that he has not defined—and thereby somehow turn up the information that we are seeking to obtain on behalf of the families. However, the pressure exerted over 30 years did not bring one iota of comfort to some of the families involved.

§ Mr. Robert McCartney (North Down)
Will the Minister give way?

§ Mr. Ingram
No.
The difficulty and dilemma with which the Government were faced in dealing with the information from the Provisional IRA lay in how to put it into effect. The Provisional IRA's announcement contained no absolutes or guarantees that the information would be released.
On Second Reading, I asked the House a question to which I hope that the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) will give consideration. If not through this Bill, by what other means does the right hon. Gentleman expect the information to come from the Provisional IRA? We must think all the time of those families, and the trauma with which they have lived for 30 years. Those who argue against this Bill cast them aside and do them no service at all.

§ Sir Brian Mawhinney
Better than most, I understand the dilemma that the Minister faces. I shall not vote against the clause standing part of the Bill: in these circumstances, as I have already said, the Government have to do what they have to do. However, I ask the 326 Minister to recognise that the Bill is a reflection of the terrorising and cynical manipulation practised by the people with whom we are seeking to do business in a bid to bring peace to the 1.5 million decent, law-abiding people in the Province.
I ask that the Minister does not use the sort of language that might be used in other circumstances when there have been unavoidable tragedies. As I said earlier, the hearts of every hon. Member in the Chamber, irrespective of party, go out to the families.
I have had to announce enough bloody deaths in Northern Ireland to be sure that no one can accuse me of having no sensitivity for or sympathy with the bereaved. But I do not want the message to go to Northern Ireland that the House used the civilised language employed for normal tragedies to make rosy a determined and deliberate attempt to terrorise by using this sort of mechanism in the knowledge that the Minister's good instincts and those of the rest of the House would respond to it.
In Ulster terms, let us call a spade—

§ The Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Alan Haselhurst)
Order. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman that he was intervening, not making a second speech?

§ Mr. Ingram
The right hon. Gentleman's intervention was worth while because of its length. He addressed several points that needed to be made, and we shall debate them now and on other parts of the Bill. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is not opposing the Bill, merely highlighting its enormity and the difficulties associated with it. To those who do oppose the Bill, however, I have to ask a question: if not this Bill, what?
One of the jobs with which I am tasked is that of being the Minister for victims. On coming into Government, I was amazed to find out how blank the sheet was on that subject. That was true not only of the previous Administration, and I do not seek to overstress that point, by and large, of the wider community in Northern Ireland no one had begun to address the complexity, enormity and depth of trauma within that society. Many individuals—including politicians—used victims as political footballs. They were brought out when there was a point to be scored, but no one gave support, encouragement or hope.
It was largely left to voluntary organisations to provide that support, although many were supported by public money. No coherent way was developed for dealing with issues connected with victims. We have begun to address the problem, but have begun only to touch on its extent. The more we do, the more we shall expose the deep difficulties in Northern Ireland, and no one—certainly no politician—has all the answers to the problems.
My central point is that the Bill begins to address a fundamental problem, but it is not easy to do so. We have made no apology for the actions of terrorists and paramilitaries, and nothing in the language of my Second Reading speech could be deemed to have given any word of comfort to terrorists. No one who spoke in that debate gave a word of comfort to those who carried out the actions addressed by the Bill.
I hope that the message of that debate has been absorbed in the wider republican and loyalist communities that support the people of violence. Now is the time to stop and to search for new ways forward.
327 It might benefit the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire to read debates on similar legislation in the Dail in which there was strong condemnation of the Provisional IRA and explanation of why the Bill was necessary.
Nothing was given away in our debate, a sombre debate that addressed the issue properly. I commend the clause.

§ Dr. Norman A. Godman (Greenock and Inverclyde)
The right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire (Sir B. Mawhinney) said that the members of the terrorist IRA had no clear understanding of the grief and legitimate expectations of the families of victims. The brutal fact, as he acknowledged in his later intervention, is that the IRA has made a harsh analysis of the expectations of those who grieve, and it seeks to manipulate the people so tragically involved. That sickens me to the stomach. Hon. Members will concede that I have repeatedly said that these people are engaged not in a military campaign or guerrilla warfare, but in the most brutal form of terrorism in a mature parliamentary democracy. I have some sympathy for what the right hon. Gentleman said, but having met some of the families concerned, their interests, concerns and legitimate demands should override all else.

§ Mr. Ken Maginnis (Fermanagh and South Tyrone)
I do not like being in conflict with the Minister any more than he does, but what he said on Second Reading and reiterated today about no one appearing to care about the victims of violence gives deep offence to ordinary people in Northern Ireland. For 30 years, we have cared for them. They are people among whom we live. They are our friends, people we know. He must recognise that with more than 200 victims of violence in my constituency alone—mostly, but not exclusively, victims of the IRA—there is nothing new in what he says that he wishes to achieve. Rather, what he says that he wishes to achieve is being negated by the way in which he goes about it.
It is not a question of 15 or 16 families for whom we feel tremendous sympathy, but of more than 3,000 people who have died as a result of terrorism in Northern Ireland. For the Minister to say that only the voluntary organisations appear to care is not a condemnation of ordinary, elected Members from Northern Ireland—whatever their political aspirations—but a reflection on the Northern Ireland Office. It channelled 250 million ecu—more than £200 million—that came to Northern Ireland as a peace and reconciliation package to some very undeserving causes.
The money did not exclusively go to such causes; I admit that a large part was employed usefully, although I am not sure that much was of long-term benefit. There is a rather sick joke in Northern Ireland that people have to have served a term in prison as terrorists to become community workers. That generalisation is perhaps unfortunate, but I am afraid that much of the money for peace and reconciliation was channelled through organisations that had a short-sighted approach to what victims of violence needed. The police and the security forces were excluded from any part of the money, although they were at the coal face.

§ Mr. Robert McCartney
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Government's belated sensitivity and 328 concern for victims is the result of the outrage expressed by victims' groups about the amount of money given to ex-prisoners, ex-convicts, ex-gangsters, murderers and extortioners to placate their organisations and make them favour the peace process?

§ Mr. Maginnis
The hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right. Throughout society in Northern Ireland, horror has been expressed at the way in which money has been expended. I do not doubt that there were good intentions. I do not for one moment suggest that what the Government do is always done for perverse reasons. However, it is wrong for the Minister to point the finger at elected Members from Northern Ireland, who live with the problem, and have lived with the problem every day for 30 years. What concerns me most in all the Minister has said is that he continues to point across the Chamber saying, in effect, "What would you do to recover the bodies of 'The Disappeared'?" The reality is that it is not our responsibility because we have not murdered anyone. We cannot and should not undermine the fundamental law on which our whole society depends in order to make an accommodation for those victims, however deserving they are—and I stress that they are deserving. However, we cannot undermine the fundamentals of the law.
I want to put the Minister right on another point. He tried to compare this measure, which undermines the principle of the law, with the legislation on disarmament. The circumstances are entirely different, although some people would agree with him that there is no difference. However, I and many other people do see a difference, in so far as legislation to get rid of the weapons of war—the illegal guns and bombs—is honourable. It holds out hope for the future of the people of Northern Ireland, if the opportunity to disarm is grasped by those to whom it is offered. However, this Bill is different. First and foremost, as the Minister has admitted, it does not guarantee that one body will be delivered up, although I hope that that will happen. More importantly, it does not ensure greater safety for society in Northern Ireland as a whole-as the exclusion of illegal guns and bombs would do. Therein lies the folly of the measure.

§ Mr. William Thompson (West Tyrone)
Anyone with any faith in law and order must regard this as a squalid little Bill. Although we understand the humanitarian concerns and the concerns of those whose relatives were murdered, the fact is that the Bill puts humanitarian issues before the rule of law. That should not happen in any democracy. Furthermore, we can see from clause 1 that the Government of the Republic of Ireland is regarded as the Government of Ireland. In legislation, the Government of the Republic of Ireland used to be called the Government of the Republic of Ireland, but now, as a result of the Anglo-Irish agreement and various other agreements, the Government of the Republic of Ireland is designated the Government of Ireland. That is an insult.

§ Mr. Peter Robinson (Belfast, East)
As the Government have used that terminology in the measure, are they not endorsing a territorial claim? The Government of the Irish Republic are claiming to be the Government of Ireland; that is a claim to the territory of 329 Northern Ireland. It is bad enough that they should claim that, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that the Labour Government should never endorse it?

§ Mr. Thompson
I certainly agree. When a previous Bill went through the House, we were told that "the Government of Ireland" was what the Government of the Republic of Ireland wanted to be known as or had designated themselves as. However, the policy of any United Kingdom Government should be not to refer to the Government of the Republic of Ireland as "the Government of Ireland" or to put that phrase in legislation, but to refer to that Government as it stands in relation to the United Kingdom, which is as the Government of the Republic of Ireland.

§ Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire)
Does not the clause contain a territorial claim in its reference to: Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom"? Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, so the problem the hon. Gentleman raises does not exist.

§ Mr. Thompson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but it is not relevant to my argument. I accept that the United Kingdom, as I understand it, includes Great Britain and Northern Ireland; however, the issue is not the term we use for ourselves, but the term we use for the Government of the Republic of Ireland.

§ Rev. Martin Smyth (Belfast, South)
I understand the point made by the hon. Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) about the term "United Kingdom" implying a territorial claim. However, several years ago at the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Ottawa, the representative from the Dail Eireann moved that the phrase the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should be deleted. Although representatives of this Parliament opposed the motion, it was passed by a weighted majority of the other nations in order to placate the Irish Republic. In other words, we limit the United Kingdom when we use the phrase "the Government of Ireland" to refer to the Government of the Republic of Ireland.

§ Mr. Thompson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Ministers hear Unionist objections, but they do not listen to them or care about them; instead, they ignore them. However, if Members of Parliament representing the nationalists were sitting in the Committee today and making objections, Ministers would be doing everything possible to placate and please them. Ministers do not care what Unionists think.
This squalid little Bill represents an acknowledgement that those who committed the crimes would never be brought to justice. We have been told many times when depredations have occurred that those who have committed the crimes would be brought to justice, but in many cases they never have been. The Bill represents an acknowledgement that the killers in the cases it covers will never be brought to justice. In fact, because of the Bill, it is likely that fewer efforts will be made to investigate those cases and, as a result, the killers will never be brought to justice.

§ Mr. Robert McCartney
When responding to the right hon. Member for North-West Cambridgeshire 330 (Sir B. Mawhinney), the Minister remarked that public representatives in Northern Ireland had taken small cognisance of the fate and condition of victims over the years. That remark should be withdrawn, because the truth is that this Government took scarcely any cognisance at all of the condition of victims, especially those in south Armagh, where, in a relatively small community, over a period of years and in circumstances of the utmost barbarity, more than 70 murders took place, of which 58 currently remain unsolved.
4.15 pm
Because the victims were murdered one by one and were not part of a single outrage—as had happened in other parts of the Province—they were simply ignored. An organisation was formed only recently in south Armagh to redress the balance. Those victims were ignored because, for many years, it was not fashionable or politically expedient for the Government to acknowledge former reservists, ex-members of the UDR or serving soldiers who had been killed.
In pursuit of the peace process and under the terms of the Belfast agreement, however, this Government found themselves committed to spending large amounts of public money on the welfare and rehabilitation of former murderers and criminals. That provoked outrage among victims' families and became a very big issue. It became a moral issue: people contrasted the extraordinarily generous treatment afforded to ex-prisoners, many of whom had committed murders, with the treatment afforded to their victims. The victims, who had suffered for so many years in silence because successive Governments did little for their welfare, were outraged at the insensitivity of this Government. That is what motivates the Government, not any sense of public good.
As in so many other matters, the Government have seized upon an overtly and nakedly emotional, even sentimental, issue: the bodies of "The Disappeared" and the natural grief of their families, who want to give their loved ones a Christian burial. In an attempt to raise public indignation about the victims and to redress the balance regarding their treatment of the prisoners, the Government have converted this into a noble issue involving moral rescue work on behalf of the relatives of "The Disappeared". What is the price of that work? It is not very different from the price that was paid for decommissioning—the terrorists price.

§ The Chairman
Order. I have been generous to the hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney). I appreciate that he was not present for Second Reading, but I am beginning to feel that he is making the speech that he might have made on that occasion. I cannot allow that as we are considering whether clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

§ Mr. McCartney
I accept your remarks, Sir Alan, which are entirely justified. I apologise if I have strained your patience.
It does not lie in the mouth of the Minister to make accusations against representatives from Northern Ireland who not only feel for the victims but, out of long experience and as indigenous people of Northern Ireland, have the capacity to share their grief.

§ Mr. Ingram
This has been a useful debate. If some of those Members who have spoken today had turned up for Second Reading, we might have extended that debate.

§ Mr. Thompson
If the Government had recognised the ability of Northern Ireland Members to travel to Westminster at short notice, the Minister might have been justified in making that remark.

§ Mr. Ingram
I do not know whether that is a demand for home rule for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland Members seem to think that they are no longer part of the United Kingdom. Every other Member of Parliament had the same notice of the debate, and many of them were here to vote. No complication was put in the hon. Gentleman's way. I appreciate that Northern Ireland Members may have had something more important and pressing to do, but that is a matter for them.
I shall deal with what the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) said because he sought to put words into my mouth. I did not say that the people of Northern Ireland do not care; I think they care, but they have been looking for leadership, which they have not had. Only recently have we been able to begin to address some of these issues. I recognise that the Ulster Unionist party made suggestions about how to deal with one aspect of the victims issue. Those suggestions were not comprehensive and did not deal with the whole range of victims, as the hon. Gentleman has just done, but they were none the less helpful. Those suggestions fed into the Good Friday agreement, from which emerged Sir Kenneth Bloomfield's review on victims.
I say to Members who have spoken in this debate that they all had an opportunity to contribute to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield's consultation process, but not one of them did so. No party made its views known to Sir Kenneth. I am not saying that they did not care, but they had an opportunity to try to condition the Government's thinking and they did not avail themselves of it.
The hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone seemed to say, as others do, that this issue is the Government's responsibility and that "The Disappeared" are the responsibility of those who carried out those dreadful murders. The terrorists undoubtedly have a function to perform: they must give information, and we hope that we can bring them to justice. I make no bones about that. The Bill clearly limits our capacity to bring them to justice, but we want to do so, and I am sure that the families of the victims would welcome that, as would society and those involved in the judicial process.
I say to the hon. Gentleman, who said that this issue is the Government's responsibility, that all politicians have a responsibility to try to find answers. If the Government are not getting it right, hon. Members should tell us where we are going wrong.

§ Mr. Maginnis
You have never listened, and you are not listening now.

§ The Chairman
Order. We do not want sedentary interventions, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows.

§ Mr. Ingram
We are dealing with the specific issue of victims, not the panoply of Government policy. Our document was put out for consultation, but there was 332 no response. Well into the implementation of that report, I requested representatives from individual parties to meet me. I did so of my own volition, not because of demands from the parties. It took months to get the parties to provide names of representatives whom they had appointed to talk about the victims issue.
I make that point because when the Government are accused of doing nothing, hon. Members should look to themselves and consider what they have been doing over the years. Wearing one's heart on one's sleeve is no solution to the trauma of deeply troubled people. I have to deal with those people.
I am not from Northern Ireland, but that does not mean that I do not care or that any of those who deal with the issue do not care if they do not come from Northern Ireland. Having dealt with individual cases, we shall carry the hurt for a long time afterwards. Many of my officials must have counselling because they are dealing with cases to an even greater extent than I am. Hon. Members should not diminish what we seek to achieve in the Bill and make out that only the Government and those who carried out the violent acts have a responsibility. We all have a responsibility, not only on this issue, but on wider issues.

§ Mr. Robert McCartney
On the issue of making contributions and listening, I wrote to the Secretary of State on behalf of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives. Four weeks later, at a meeting with the Secretary of State that was organised by FAIR, she still had not read the letter that had been sent to her and her secretary.

§ Mr. Ingram
I do not know whether that is a fact.

§ Mr. McCartney
It is a fact.

§ Mr. Ingram
The hon. and learned Gentleman may tell me that it is a fact, but it does not relate to the point that I was making about the Bloomfield report. Why did he not respond to that heavyweight document, which endeavoured to deal with a complex issue that has remained forgotten for 30 years? Many people in Northern Ireland fall into the category of victims, and have come forward for help and now work in the various groups, but there are many others—not just those who have seen death in their families, but those who have had to put up with long-term injury in their families—who do not come forward, either as individuals who have suffered or as relatives of those who have been injured. That conveys the enormity of the broader reach of the issue with which we are having to deal.
This measure deals with just one small category of people. In the arguments deployed in this debate, I have yet to hear a suggestion as to how we should deal with the issue, other than to blame someone else. That does not provide an answer.

§ Rev. Martin Smyth
I know that the Minister would not want to mislead the Committee or be inaccurate. He said that none of us had responded to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield. If he consults Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, he will discover that at least one did. I speak for myself in that instance. Were not my hon. Friends the Members for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson) and for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis) appointed to deal with the matter, and did not they seek to do so? I want to put 333 the record straight. Although we recognise the trauma that has affected English and Scots Members and others, some of us have lived and worked with these victims of tenor over the years. As a minister who knew what it was to fight for proper compensation for them, I will not accept the Minister's allegation from the Dispatch Box.

§ Mr. Ingram
If the hon. Gentleman made a submission to Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, I shall go back and look at it. I apologise if I inadvertently said that he did not, although it is interesting that no one else is standing up to say that they did.

§ Mr. Maginnis
rose—

§ Mr. Ingram
May I make this point?

§ Mr. Maginnis
I am standing up.

§ Mr. Ingram
I know that the hon. Gentleman is standing up, but I am not giving way.

§ Mr. Maginnis
You do not want to hear the truth.

§ Mr. Ingram
As I said to the hon. Gentleman on Second Reading, bullying and shouting might be his way forward, but it is not the way in which we try to address the issue.
The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) mentioned his hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Donaldson). I accept that their party has now put forward a group to deal with the issue, for which I am very grateful. It is important that I have points of contact with political parties. That was not the point that I was making. I did not say that there was not anything now, but that when there was a need for something to exist, it did not. Now we are beginning to address the issue. Northern Ireland Members should not accuse the Government of standing back and doing nothing when we have been trying to initiate movement.
The hon. and learned Member for North Down (Mr. McCartney) mentioned his engagement with FAIR. Of course, he is not the only Member who has dealings with that organisation. The Secretary of State has met FAIR twice. I have offered to meet representatives of it since, but they have declined because, as 1 understand it, they are keen to meet the Prime Minister. That is a matter for them. Meetings with representatives of FAIR have not taken place not because the Government have not been prepared to meet them. The Secretary of State has met the organisation twice, and my offer remains open.
The hon. Member for West Tyrone (Mr. Thompson) raised the question of references to the Government of Ireland. Of course, this is not the first time that the term "Government of Ireland" has been used in legislation. It was also used in the Northern Ireland Act 1998. I recognise that the hon. Gentleman is fundamentally opposed to that legislation, but none the less it was passed by this House. It is worthwhile putting on record the fact that the Irish Government now refer to the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in their equivalent legislation. Therefore we are using the terminology that has been agreed between the two sovereign Governments, and which does not conflict with the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom while the majority of people wish it to be so.
334 4.30 pm
I hope that I have dealt with all the points raised in the debate. I did not anticipate such a long debate on clause stand part, but it is good that some hon. Members have now engaged in the process of debate; they may benefit from that engagement during the rest of the Bill's consideration.