Ian McCartney MP

I want to make a brief contribution, because it is important to reinforce the message that has come from both sides of the Committee, and from the Conservative spokesman and my colleague the Minister.

Those of us who do not live in Northern Ireland but have an interest in it—some of us still have family there—feel that it is important that from today onwards there is a sign that the decommissioning process is coming to an end. That process has been critical—a silver thread that ran through every phase of the reconstruction of political, social and environmental life in Northern Ireland. However, as hon. Members have said, there comes a point when there needs to be certainty about what is politically difficult and what is criminally unacceptable behaviour.

We have seen a continuation of that behaviour in relation not only to the Shankill road, the death of Robert McCartney and the death of Mr. Quinn, but to the real danger that lies behind all that. That real danger sends a message to the community, not that it is empowered, but that the paramilitaries have control and power over it. Such communities are desperately trying, across political and social divides, to secure a modern, effective, democratic and accountable society in which people make decisions based on their work and worth in that community, not on the threat of the gun or other weapons.

It is critical that, at some point in the next 12 months, we are able to separate the politics of decommissioning from the unacceptable continuation and growth of the activities of paramilitaries who have special arrangements. I do not think that there is anything special in drug dealing or all the other activities that so undermine the long-term opportunities that this phase has provided for the community of Northern Ireland and the UK in general.

I genuinely hope that my colleague the Minister will take seriously the points that have been made about the need to apply further pressure and to do further work. It is dead easy to make a statement of intent and thereby tie the hands of the politicians and the police force so that they have to allow the continuation of certain actions, whether murderous actions or ones that bring slow death to communities by poisoning young people with drugs and other activities.

In some communities, those people try to create a norm not of normality, but of criminality. It is not the rule of law; it is mob rule, and it is unacceptable in all circumstances. The reform of the police force will succeed only if there is a sense that the reason for those reforms is to see those criminals and their activities dealt with within the rule of law.

Therefore, it is important that agreeing to the order, which we all want to do, does not make it a fig leaf for the continuation of those murderous activities. There has to be a point where the community’s voice is heard and people have to be able to get out from under those who are dedicated to what they deem to be their cause. Their one, simple cause, wherever they are, is to protect their criminal, financial and social interests, and the ability to use sweet statements about decommissioning is not acceptable any more.

It has been difficult for many people to come the way that they have come, and many have been brave with regard to where they have come from and where they have reached today. That is why it is important to keep faith with them with regard to the order. Truly to keep faith with them and truly to allow the order an opportunity to enable the politicians to do their work and the communities to regenerate, we need to do something to address the criminal activities that go on each day.

I want to finish on this point. I used to be the Minister for human rights and I spent a great deal of my time talking to Governments in other parts of the world about their failure to protect the human rights of their citizens from paramilitary forces. I will not go into detail, but whether that involved trade unionists being murdered in Colombia or in other countries, the abiding rule from our point of view was to get rid of the paramilitaries and to ensure the rule of law and that criminal activity was punished by the criminal justice system, not by mob rule.

If that is the principled position that we take in international discussions, surely it is vital that it must be the position we take on what we want to do in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. Therefore, I wish my colleagues well with regard to the speeches that they made. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley asked my hon. Friend the Member for South Down to join his party, but may I suggest that they both join little Labour?