Saville Inquiry

Conor Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at the beginning of his statement that that period of the 1970s was something that people of his generation had learned about. In the period between 1971 and 1975, we lost more members of the British Army than we have during the past four years in Afghanistan, such was the bleakness of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

I was born in the Royal Victoria hospital on the Falls road in Belfast in the latter part of the year that the events unfolded in Derry/Londonderry, and the events in Northern Ireland at that time shaped very many of us. One of the great joys of returning to Northern Ireland today is talking to young people, in their teens, for whom even the most recent events of the troubles themselves are something that they study and do not remember. Does my right hon. Friend agree that if civic leaders and politicians in Northern Ireland take the lead of the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), this could be a cleansing opportunity of historic proportions, whereby the process of normalisation in Northern Ireland can continue and young people will never have to go back to the dark days of the 1970s?

[The Prime Minister]

I hope that my hon. Friend is right. As I said, I think that the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) spoke extremely clearly and passionately, and there should be a chance of working for a shared future. That is what we want in Northern Ireland.

The point that my hon. Friend makes is right. Every year—every month—that goes by with the peace process working and without a return to violence further embeds a culture in which we do things by political means and we get normal politics in Northern Ireland. That is what we should be aiming for, and it is certainly what we shall try to do.