Saville Inquiry

David Cairns Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman rightly speaks with great power and emotion about how people on all sides in Northern Ireland have suffered, and people in the community that he represents have suffered particularly badly. Some horrific things have happened to people completely unconnected with politics—people who are innocent on every single level—and there is nothing that you can do to explain to someone who lost a loved one in that way that there is any logic, fairness or sense in that loss. The hon. Gentleman asks how we try to achieve closure on such matters. There is no easy way, but we have the Historical Enquiries Team, which goes through case after case, and if it finds the evidence, prosecutions can take place.

I hope that the inquiry report published today will give some closure to those families from Londonderry, but one way for families who have suffered to gain more closure about the past is for terrorists or former terrorists to come forward and give information about those crimes. However, in the end, we have to move forward and we have to accept that dreadful things happened. We do not want to return to those days, and that sometimes means—as he and I know—burying very painful memories about the past so that we can try to build a future.

[David Cairns (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister recall that in the last Stormont elections the single biggest issue by a long way for both sides of the community was water charges and rates? Does not that demonstrate that in many ways the majority of the people of Northern Ireland have already moved on from the troubles that dominated so much of the past? Is it not important that on a day like today, when emotions will understandably run high, we do not lose sight of the fact that the majority of people in Northern Ireland are today concerned about the same issues about which his constituents and my constituents are concerned? That is a good thing and it represents progress.

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. One of the great prizes of the peace process would be for Northern Ireland to experience politics in the same way as the rest of us in the United Kingdom where it is about knocking on doors and talking about the health service, schools and water rates. That is what politics should be about, and there is a chance of that happening. It was great to go to Northern Ireland as Prime Minister without the normal security paraphernalia that previous visits involved, so we are making progress. That is what politics in Northern Ireland should become. The more that happens, the more people will find it unthinkable to go back to the days that came before.