HL Deb 10 February 2003 vol 644 cc538-47

8.4 p.m.

Lord Williams of Mostyn

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 20th January be approved.

The noble and learned Lord said: My Lords, the order appoints 26th February 2004 as the date before which the amnesty period identified in a non-statutory decommissioning scheme must end.

The amnesty period, as your Lordships know perfectly well from our discussions in previous years, is the time during which firearms, ammunition and explosives can be decommissioned in accordance with the scheme. It thereby attracts both amnesty and prohibitions on evidential use and forensic testing of decommissioned articles provided by the Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997.

To put the matter at its plainest and simplest, if we wish further acts of decommissioning to continue, which we all do, this is a necessary precondition. I beg to move.

Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 20th January be approved.—(Lord Williams of Mostyn.)

Lord Glentoran

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord for his introduction to the order. This is a very important occasion. It is one of the occasions that we have in your Lordships' House to look at where we are.

At the outset I want to make clear to the House that the Official Opposition does not oppose this order which extends for a further year the decommissioning regime and the amnesty period as set out in both the 1997 and 2002 Acts. We recognise that the amnesty is, in many respects, a necessary evil if we are ever going to achieve what the Belfast agreement describes as, the complete disarmament of all paramilitary organisations". Our concern, which we expressed forcefully when the issue was debated in your Lordships' House last year, stems from the provision in the 2002 Act extending the amnesty period for a further five years—effectively providing for a decommissioning amnesty taking us up to 2007. We believe—and our argument remains valid—that that sent out precisely the wrong signal to the paramilitaries at exactly the time when the maximum pressure should have been exerted upon them at long last to fulfil their obligations.

It formed part of a series of unwarranted and one-sided concessions, principally to Sinn Fein/IRA that has regrettably and damagingly been the trademark of government policy for much of the past 12 months. So I wish to place on record again that our preference would have been for a two or three year extension, rather than the full five years, and that we hope that we will not have to wait until 2007 for decommissioning to happen.

The order gives us the opportunity to step back for a moment and consider where we are in Northern Ireland on the issue of arms decommissioning and what has now entered the Northern Ireland lexicon as "acts of completion". It is not an encouraging picture. Over the past year there has been one act of decommissioning by the provisional IRA, carried out in April and verified by the de Chastelain commission. That built on the earlier act in October 2001.

On the loyalist side, nothing has been decommissioned and the prospect of any movement there seems to be further away than ever. Not only that, the IRA broke off all contact with the decommissioning commission last October in response to the suspension of the institutions. Billy Hutchinson, representing the UVF, followed suit on 17th January this year. In addition to the failure to complete decommissioning, or even to signal the start of a process, there have been serial breaches of the ceasefire and the Belfast agreement by all the main paramilitary organisations.

We have had the IRA's adventures with narco-terrorists in the Colombian jungle. We have had the Castlereagh break-in. There has been evidence of targeting individuals and installations. There have been continual beatings, shootings and some cases of murder carried out by both loyalists and republicans. There was the orchestrated street violence—again on both sides—during the summer. And finally, last October, we had the evidence of the Stormontgate spy ring at the heart of government. That is not a very happy picture.

On the loyalist side we have also had the revolting feud between the various factions in the Ulster Defence Association in and around Belfast's Shankill Road. Obviously we all hope that the events of the past week, distasteful as they might have been, will at last bring that particular episode to a close. There obviously needs to be the closest co-operation between the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Strathclyde police to ensure that the feud does not simply extend to Scotland. God help us all if it does.

What this episode shows, however, is the nature of much loyalist violence today. It is no longer political. As The Times so accurately put it on Friday, 7th February 2003: It is not about devotion to Crown and country. This is gangsterism in its purest sense—an entirely amoral contest for control over drugs, prostitution and protection money. It is rampant criminality occasionally wrapped in a Union Flag of convenience. It is also, unfortunately, now the dominant local industry". Those thugs terrorise the communities they purport to defend, inflicting misery and suffering in areas that already suffer some of the worst unemployment and social deprivation in Northern Ireland. So we welcome the arrests that have been made in loyalist areas and the chief constable's publicly stated determination to crack down on violence. I am sure that he has the full support of all noble Lords in achieving that objective.

Regrettably, all of this presents a picture far removed from the one envisaged in the agreement. It is the failure of certain parties to make the unambiguous transition from terror to what the agreement describes as, exclusively peaceful and democratic means that caused the institutions at Stormont to be suspended and has so undermined confidence.

As we have said on many occasions, we hope the suspension lasts for as short a period as possible. Devolution and the exercise of local power and authority by locally elected and accountable politicians is a far better form of government for Northern Ireland than direct rule will ever be. But those responsible for the current state of affairs should be in no doubt that the obligation rests with them to re-create the conditions in which devolution can be restored and for momentum to be injected back into the political process.

Crucially, that means dealing once and for all with the issue of illegal weapons and explosives in a manner, as the IRA itself put it in its statement of 6th May 2000, designed to maximise public confidence". The time has passed when we could take the paramilitaries on trust. What matters now is not what they say, but what they do. There has to be a complete end to all forms of paramilitary activity. There has to be decommissioning. And there has to be clear evidence that the organisations are being stood down.

That is clearly what the Prime Minister had in mind when during the referendum campaign he said on 14th May 1998 that there had to be the, progressive abandonment and dismantling of all paramilitary structures". It is clearly what he had in mind last July when he told the other place that, it is increasingly urgent that it should be clear that paramilitary organisations are not engaged in any preparations for terrorism and that they should be stood down altogether".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/7/02; col. 976) It is clearly what he meant when he said in Belfast on 17th October 2002: The fork in the road has finally come … We cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of this process". And it is clearly what he meant in the same speech when he said: It's time for acts of completion". We on this side of the House agree with all those statements. Nothing less will do. Nearly five years after the Belfast agreement, there can simply be no excuse for political parties maintaining their private armies. It is time for them to go.

That must be the central message of the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, when they meet the parties in Belfast on Wednesday in an at tempt to achieve a breakthrough. They must not allow Sinn Fein, in particular, to muddy the waters by introducing a whole raft of secondary issues, as it has done so often before. Illegal arms and the failure of the paramilitaries to fulfil their obligations to decommission have dogged the process for too long. The paramilitaries know what they have to do. They should get on and do it.

In that context we back this order, which extends for a further year the decommissioning and the amnesty on the forensic testing of weapons. We fervently hope that the commission has a busier time this year than it did last and that devolved government can be restored and the agreement finally implemented in full.

8.15 p.m.

Lord Smith of Clifton

My Lords, we on these Benches agree that the order must be extended. As the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said, it is vital that we have further acts of decommissioning until it is complete. I agree with much of what he said. But at this time one of the biggest dangers to any further decommissioning is the loyalist mayhem occurring in north and west Belfast. Those acts of mayhem—perhaps this is the intention—will inhibit any further developments on the part of the IRA.

The IRA is unlikely to decommission while such lawlessness continues. Although it is largely occurring within the loyalist community, it gives no confidence that any moment things might not erupt across the communities. It is extremely dangerous and very worrying that that problem exists in the ranks of loyalism. The real problem is that there is no political leadership; there is a political vacuum.

There is political leadership in the case of the republicans—we all believe that Sinn Fein has tremendous influence on the IRA—but one looks in vain for some political influence on the loyalist paramilitaries. We desperately need to repair that by offering some real political leadership at the community level rather than simply wringing our hands at its absence.

Has there been even informal contact between the IRA on the one hand and the loyalist groups on the other with the de Chastelain commission? Is there a complete cut-off, or has there been some informal contact?

We believe that the Act must be continued, as the order provides. We must consider it year by year. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said that he wanted it extended beyond that period if necessary. We need to take it year by year in the hope that we can focus attention on it.

Lord Glentoran

My Lords, on a point of factual correction, I hope that I did not say that I wanted the order extended beyond that period.

Lord Smith of Clifton

My Lords., I am grateful for that intervention and apologise if I misinterpreted. We must consider the matter year by year in the hope that a time limit keeps negotiations going—one hopes, progressively—so that we can get art end to the ridiculous mayhem that has blighted Northern Ireland for far too long.

Viscount Brookeborough

My Lords, I support the order. The decommissioning period must continue, sad as that is. As we have heard, that means decommissioning on both sides. Obviously, total decommissioning would be the act of completion for which everyone is looking. The Prime Minister says that he will accept an act of completion. We are aware that he is talking to Sinn Fein/IRA which wants some form of demilitarisation, a reduction in forces, and ultimately a review of the prevention of terrorism legislation. However, if the IRA is on ceasefire—for one moment I shall accept the Government's point of view that it is—the fact is that the threat level in Northern Ireland is higher than it has been for five years.

If the IRA is on ceasefire, and if it and Sinn Fein seriously believe in the process, then quite obviously they do not control the dissident groups, which are the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA. It probably did not appear in the newspapers over here, but there was a coffee jar bomb in a police station the night before last. Two devices were found at a Territorial Army base when it was putting together support for the Gulf war. That happened three or four days ago. We have had numerous bombs, especially in Fermanagh, over the past 24 months. Therefore, the dissidents are there and the threat is there.

If the answer is an act of completion by the IRA, be it full decommissioning or not, it is not going to reduce the threat at all because, according to the Government, the IRA is on ceasefire and it therefore does not control the dissidents. Therefore, the threat does not come from it and therefore an act of completion by the IRA has absolutely nothing to do with the present threat.

If that is the situation, and if the Government are not responsible for the problems, how can they possibly treat us in Northern Ireland in such a way that they are going to reduce our protection by removing the very defences that we have against the threat? However, if they believe that the IRA is in control of the dissident groups, how can the Government accept that the IRA is on ceasefire?

Lord Kilclooney

My Lords, when the Belfast agreement was signed and supported in a referendum by the people of Northern Ireland, they did so in anticipation that there would be decommissioning of all illegal arms by all paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. Yet five years later the Lord Privy Seal comes forward yet again to renew the order for decommissioning. In doing so in a one-minute speech he underlined his embarrassment that yet again he has to extend the order.

Decommissioning of itself is not the final solution to the problem of paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. One must be careful in stating that if there is total decommissioning peace has arrived. First, how does one know what total decommissioning is? Secondly, even if it occurred, as we well know, further illegal arms can be imported into Northern Ireland.

Here I must criticise and condemn all paramilitaries, not just republican groups, but also the loyalist paramilitaries. The loyalist paramilitaries have been a disgrace to Northern Ireland over the past months and years and in particular, as the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, said, in the past few weeks. They describe themselves as loyalists. They are not. Being a loyalist means that one is loyal to the Crown and country. I am a loyalist. The people who behave in the way they have behaved in the past few weeks have been a disgrace to loyalists. They are not unionists: they are an embarrassment to the unionist community and they weaken the union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. They are certainly not Protestants, because those involved in crime, drugs—as we saw this weekend—and prostitution cannot be so described. I doubt whether many of them have darkened the door of a Protestant church in Northern Ireland for many years. They are an embarrassment to us as the majority community in Northern Ireland.

But we must get decommissioning. For that reason, it is good to extend the process of decommissioning for another year, as the order does. But, for decommissioning to take place, there must be sanctions to ensure that it has been carried out. It must be clear to the community in Northern Ireland that it has happened. With the exception of a few handguns decommissioned by a Loyalist paramilitary organisation, decommissioning has been done secretly, under the auspices of the Independent Commission on Decommissioning. The people of Northern Ireland do not know the amount of firearms decommissioned, where decommissioning has taken place and how many illegal firearms, bombs, et cetera still exist.

Anyone who believes that further decommissioning by the IRA will bring about a restoration of devolution in Northern Ireland is ill advised. Last year I prophesised that the devolved executive and Assembly at Stormont would collapse. The Liberal Democrat spokesman described me as negative. Well, it has happened. But I live in Northern Ireland; and I know what is going on there.

I must warn and advise that, in the present circumstances, there is no chance of devolution being restored simply by an act of decommissioning. To win the confidence of the people of Northern Ireland, which has now been lost, and to regain support for the agreement, which has declined, it is necessary to have not only decommissioning but real sanctions if those who decommission break the peace. By that, I do not mean simply the Prime Minister writing a few words in chalk on a blackboard and then undermining those words before the chalk has even dried.

Lord Eames

My Lords, many words have become the vehicle for other people's thoughts on the Northern Ireland situation. "Reconciliation" has been bandied about as though it were a word of trivial meaning. I fear that the word "decommissioning" is going the same way. Clergy members who speak to me from local areas in which tension is high leave me in no doubt that one of the greatest moves towards convincing the people of Northern Ireland that a new era has come has nothing to do with the so-called decommissioning of Provisional IRA arms. It has to do with the nightly attacks and punishment beatings in both communities across the north. That is what the ordinary people of Northern Ireland see when they wake in the morning and read their papers or watch television.

If I may say so to Her Majesty's Government, there is a real danger that we will run away with the idea that, if there is decommissioning in the traditional sense of the word, all will be well and the new Jerusalem will have arrived. It will be a vital, important part, but people seek the safety of their homes, their streets and their young people. There is a constant harping back to beatings, attacks and shootings. But one of the miracles of the present situation is that there have not been more deaths from that source than there have been. I beg your Lordships to realise that while decommissioning is a vital part of the panorama that we are seeking, at the end of the day, we should not lose sight of what people perceive to be peace, and the lack of it, on their own streets and in their own homes.

8.30 p m.

Baroness Park of Monmouth

My Lords, I hardly like to follow the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. He has said magnificently what other noble Lords and I believe. Nevertheless, I shall reinforce his comments.

I recognise that the period of amnesty needs to be extended. But for how many years are we to wait for full decommissioning, without which Sinn Fein/IRA cannot be regarded as a normal political party? I hope with all my heart that the Government will cease to rest every bargain on formal acts of decommissioning of arms held by the IRA as a body and, instead, relate the assessment of true disarmament and true decommissioning to the total disarming of the paramilitaries on the streets of Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein/IRA, which has the power, must promise the end of the iniquitous exiling of whole families to the mainland, the end of punishment beatings and the freeing of the people to speak out to both the press and the police if and when they are unlawfully injured and terrorised by people who rely on the support of the IRA to rule their communities. Who are they to claim that they are policing their society and to accuse people, who have done no wrong, of being paedophiles or drug dealers? Who are they to engage in restorative justice?

The loyalist thugs—I use that word as a shorthand; I recognise that it is a cruel perversion of loyalist as a word—who terrorise their own people must equally be disarmed. However, the issue is what in particular Sinn Fein/IRA must deliver—because they are the people with whom the bargains are being conducted—before any continuing amnesty in the context of demilitarisation can continue to be on offer.

Every Sinn Fein/IRA paramilitary on the streets should be required to hand in his arms as the condition of the continuation of the amnesty. It should not be related solely to the acts of decommissioning involving arms held by the IRA as part of its arsenal to use, one assumes, against the forces of law and order in any potential conflict—although it is difficult to imagine how such a war could be justified after nearly five years of the peace process.

Incidentally, I should like to say here that, sadly, I do not believe that dissident groups are beyond the control of the IRA. In my view, the IRA does not tolerate dissidents; dissidents get killed, but they are very convenient alibis. I read in the Irish Times of a monitoring plan to validate that the IRA is no longer engaged in paramilitary activities in the event of a major initiative by the IRA.

Forget the grand and imponderable gestures. Let us begin with visible, real housekeeping on the streets of Northern Ireland. Nothing else will convince the people, whether Catholic or Protestant, that there is a real hope of peace. The cleansing of the streets must precede any possible concession by Her Majesty's Government in terms of the reduction of our military presence in what is British territory—a presence without which the hard-pressed police will not be able to enforce peace on the streets, where it is so sorely needed.

As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, states in his report on the Terrorism Act: The paramilitaries exercise a very significant social and economic influence over communities … on both sides of the divide there is a clear danger of intimidation within living and working neighbourhoods". Quite apart from humanitarian consideration and consideration for sheer justice, it does not make sense to allow these people to destroy any prospect of a prosperous because peaceful country. It is a waste.

Lord Williams of Mostyn

My Lords, I am grateful for the contributions made. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, said that I was embarrassed because I made a short speech—quite the opposite. I try to avoid ceaseless repetition of the obvious, which I regard as not particularly useful and certainly as rather disrespectful of this House.

I said that if we wish decommissioning to be an option, which we do, the passage of the order is a necessary pre-condition. No one who has spoken today denies the obvious nature of that proposition. So I am not embarrassed. I am perfectly capable, as my friends at the Bar will remind your Lordships, of going on for several hours, but I never think that going on has an intrinsic human or philosophic virtue.

I turn to the contributions that have been made. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Park, and the noble and right reverend Lord. Lord Eames. He is quite right. The theme that I take from him—the text that I accept—is that decommissioning is one dimension only. All noble Lords who have spoken have made that point, with which I entirely agree, but we are focused today on this one dimension because that is the nature of parliamentary proceedings.

The noble Baroness referred to Sinn Fein/IRA punishment beatings and the driving of people into exile. She frequently refers to that issue, and she is right. But my understanding of the events of last week-end and the week-end before is that Sinn Fein/IRA played very little part in them.

The question is whether we want to move forward in admittedly difficult circumstances—for those who live in Northern Ireland they are terrifying circumstances—and the answer must be that we do. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, quite rightly said that amnesty is a necessary evil. It is required as an unusual remedy for evil, and we do not need to overlook the evil to recognise the necessary nature of the remedy. He said—I remember his words plainly—that he does not want to see this go as far as 2007. Nor do any of us. That is why, as the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Clifton, said, it is better to deal with this year by year.

The noble Lord asked specifically about contacts with General de Chastelain and his colleagues. There has been no report from the de Chastelain commission of any contact with either the IRA or the UVF since those organisations publicly suspended contact, with the commission.

The noble Lord, Lord Smith, spoke about a vacuum and a gap in the paramilitary, allegedly loyalist, partisans. Significantly, that may be true. There is something to be said for listening occasionally to David Irvine, who still remains part of the parliamentary process. Certainly when I have had conversations with him—I do not pretend that we agree—many of the things that he says are worth listening to and considering.

The noble Viscount asked about the IRA's control over dissidents. The noble Baroness gave her view on that issue; I do not necessarily share it. But I can reassure the noble Viscount and your Lordships' House that we shall not take any steps—the Secretary of State and his predecessors have said this—without paying keenest attention to the advice of the security services and the Chief Constable, who has the prime responsibility.

In an ideal world, which I have never found myself inhabiting, we would not need such an order.

On Question, Motion agreed to.