Oral Answers to Questions

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend’s support for the reforms is hugely welcome, and I know that he follows these issues very closely. It was not just he who welcomed the speech that I set out yesterday: also, I had express support from the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Physicians, the NHS Confederation, Macmillan Cancer Support and Breakthrough Breast Cancer. I think we are seeing a coming together of people who care about the health service, who use the health service, of professional bodies in the health service, who can see that this Government are listening, getting their changes right and will add the money that is required—and that only we are committed to—with the reforms that are necessary to make sure the NHS can go on and thrive in future.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

The Prime Minister will be aware of the dastardly murders of senior police officers Breen and Buchanan, and the subsequent public inquiry, established in consultation between this nation’s Government and the Irish Republic’s Government. Will he make sure that nothing is allowed to impede Anglo-Irish relations by making personal representations to the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, such that they cannot restrict the time, the effort and the money put into that inquiry, so that we can get to the truth and find out how those two brave police officers were murdered in so dastardly a way?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look very carefully at the issue the hon. Gentleman raises. There is still, on all sides in Northern Ireland, and indeed in the Republic, huge concern about things that happened in the past. Often, people ask for an inquiry, a public inquiry or a process. I think in most cases, what people really want is the truth. I found with the issue of the Saville inquiry that what really mattered, actually, was not the £120 million, the five years and all the rest of it. What people wanted was the unvarnished truth, so then they can come to terms with what happened in the past. I have said that I do not want to see further open-ended inquiries; but I do think there is still more that we can do to uncover and be frank about the truth, and that goes for us on all sides of this debate.