Northern Ireland

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Villiers]

Like the hon. Gentleman, I welcome Labour’s confirmation of its strong support for the consent principle. His point about criminality has been at the heart of many of my discussions with his party colleagues and others over recent days. I am convinced that the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Garda and their security partners are doing a huge amount of good work in tackling such matters, but I am of course open to seeing whether we as a Government can, with others, do anything further or take any further action to provide confidence that no criminality will be tolerated and that we will do everything we can to combat it.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has raised the issue of perhaps creating an independent monitoring commission. What consideration has she given to the terms of reference, the membership and the timetable for the introduction of such a body, and whether any of the political parties in Northern Ireland could veto such an exercise?

[Mrs Villiers]

We would aim to build consensus across the five main parties. I would hope that we can discuss the terms of reference and membership in due course. As always with such matters, there is a trade-off between time and the perfection of the organisation: some structures may be ideal, but would be problematic if they took a long time to get established. We need to look for a compromise or middle way that provides an effective independent institution in which people can have confidence, but does not take forever to set up and to report.