Northern Ireland (Stormont Agreement and Implementation Plan) Bill

Jeffrey M Donaldson Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jeffrey M. Donaldson (Lagan Valley) (DUP)]

I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and the Minister for all the work that they and their teams have done to bring forward this Bill. Having been involved in much of the negotiations in the past, I can say in all honesty—we should always give credit when it is due—that the Secretary of State has gone way up in my estimation for the clear stance that she has taken on issues both in the public domain and privately around the negotiating table. She has done so with great clarity and that is something to be welcomed from a Secretary of State. She has also been ably supported by the Minister.

I pay tribute to Mark Calway, who worked for my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson). I had the pleasure of meeting him on several occasions as he took an interest in Northern Ireland. I know that my hon. Friend and his team will feel his loss very deeply, and we extend our sympathy to him and to Mark’s family.

Tackling paramilitarism is an important element of this agreement, and it is long overdue. As a party, we have pressed time and again for the paramilitaries to leave the stage. At times I have heard their spokespersons in the media talk about their big contribution to the peace process, but they have delivered little by way of the necessary steps. For far too long, they have been begrudging about the action that the paramilitary organisations need to take. They have continued to straddle the fence between democracy and the rule of law on the one side, and continued involvement in criminality and at times, sadly, in murder on the other.

One reason for the political crisis in Northern Ireland last year was precisely to do with this continued involvement by members of paramilitary organisations in criminal activity and in carrying out murders. As the hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) reminded us, those murders took place in his constituency. We need to be absolutely clear that there is no room for ambiguity, for grey areas or for straddling the fence between the rule of the law and involvement in criminality and paramilitarism. The people of Northern Ireland deserve better, which is why it is vital that we continue to pursue this agenda, and the Stormont agreement marks a significant step in taking it forward.

[Lady Hermon]

The right hon. Gentleman condemns paramilitarism, whatever shape or form it takes—loyalist paramilitaries as well as republican paramilitaries. In that connection, will he put on record his thanks, and the thanks of many people, to the Police Service of Northern Ireland for completing yet another search for the remains of Lisa Dorrian, who disappeared 11 years ago, and was murdered by those with loyalist paramilitary connections? Her family have never had her returned for a Christian burial, and tragically her mother died broken-hearted earlier this year. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman condemned equally loyalist and republican paramilitaries.

[Mr Donaldson]

The hon. Lady speaks of the individual, personal and family suffering of the victims of paramilitary violence. Let me make it clear that when, as a party, we refer to paramilitarism we mean paramilitarism across the political divide. I had the pleasure of taking the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State to Lisburn to visit a community project in my constituency. We have worked hard with people who were previously involved in paramilitary activity to enable them to complete the transition to what is now purely community development work, and those communities have been transformed as a result. For example, the Old Warren in Lisburn in my constituency has been transformed as a result of the transition of people previously involved in loyalist paramilitarism to purely community development. I commend the Resurgam Trust in Lisburn and its leadership for what they have done to transform that community by enabling those people to make that transition. I assure the hon. Lady that that is precisely the kind of effort that needs to take place in Northern Ireland.

It was one of the tragedies of conflict, and our troubles in Northern Ireland, that families not only suffered the loss of a loved one but were not able to mourn properly, because their loved one’s remains had not been returned to them. The family of Lisa Dorrian are a case in point, and we hope and pray that one day they will at least have the dignity of being able to bury the remains of their loved one. I appeal to those who know where Lisa Dorrian’s remains are to give that information to the police. I appeal to them on the grounds of basic Christian principles: even those involved in such wrongdoing should see that it is the right thing for a family to be able to have some degree of closure and have their loved one’s remains returned to them.

The Bill makes provision for the establishment of the independent reporting commission, which we welcome. The commission will report annually on progress on ending continued paramilitary activity, and we hope that it will shine a spotlight on republican and loyalist paramilitary groups that continue to engage in criminal acts and acts of violence. That will apply in Northern Ireland, but one of the important provisions in the Bill is that it will also apply in Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. In recent times, we have seen the effects of paramilitary gangster-type activity in Dublin, which is unacceptable, and we must all co-operate to ensure that such activity is brought to an end. I hope that the good people of the Republic of Ireland, who go to the polls shortly, will think long and hard about who they elect to their national Parliament and where they stand on questions such as the special criminal court and the need to bring to an end paramilitarism, gangsterism and criminality, wherever they develop and emerge.

We welcome changes to the pledge of office for Ministers in the Northern Ireland Executive and, crucially, a new undertaking to be given by all Members elected to the Assembly after May that will commit them to non-violence and to supporting the rule of law. No such undertaking has been required in the past, even though an undertaking is required of councillors in local government. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is absolutely right: we need to be sure that it is not just a question of a paper exercise but that sanctions are in place so that if Members breach that undertaking they can be held to account. I assure her that we will examine the Standing Orders of the Northern Ireland Assembly to see whether such a sanction exists. If it does not, we are prepared to introduce and support an amendment to the Bill to ensure that provision is made for such a sanction.

The hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell) and others have made reference to things that are not in the Bill, and it is a matter of regret that we cannot yet legislate for the provisions of the Stormont House agreement dealing with legacy matters. The Democratic Unionist party supports full implementation of the Stormont House agreement. We are doing nothing that holds back implementation of the agreement. We are all aware that implementation has not taken place because of a stand-off or impasse on the question of national security. Here I differ from the hon. Gentleman. He talked about victims, but I am interested not just in the victims of the past but in ensuring that we do not have more victims in future. When we take action that compromises the security of our people and brings into the public domain the manner in which the security forces operate to counter terrorism we put people at risk in Northern Ireland. We put lives at risk, and we create the potential for future victims in Northern Ireland, because sadly not everyone has signed up to the peace process. Not all paramilitary organisations are on ceasefire. People out there today are targeting others—in my own constituency, in the past couple of weeks there have been two instances of prison officers having to leave their home because of threats from dissident republican organisations.

Knowledge and intelligence have, thankfully, prevented attacks from going ahead, which tells us that our security services continue to operate to prevent loss of life and prevent further victims from being created. I would say to the hon. Member for Belfast South and the Social Democratic and Labour party that, yes, we want the maximum disclosure that is available, but we also need to ensure that the security of the people we represent is protected. Yes, we want processes to be in place for innocent victims of terrorism to enable them to have access to information and justice and a degree of closure. At the same time, we must not compromise the ability of the security forces to protect the community in Northern Ireland and prevent further victims from being created in future.

On the national security issue, no democratic party should give cover to Sinn Féin on this issue, because we know that what their game is. It is about rewriting the history of the troubles. The reality is that 90% of all the killings that occurred in the troubles were carried out by paramilitary organisations. However, if we look at the media coverage, read the newspapers and look at the amount of money spent on investigations and inquests, proportionately far more of that resource goes on the 10% of deaths attributed to the state. Many of those deaths were the result of the security forces killing people who were engaged in acts of terrorism, but far more emphasis is put on those deaths than on the 90% of innocent victims murdered by paramilitary organisations.

[Mr Gregory Campbell]

I agree with my right hon. Friend on the 90% versus the 10%, but it now appears that in some instances where the Provisional IRA carried out atrocities there is an attempt by Sinn Féin to blame those in the security forces, the police and the Army. The abysmal audacity of some people knows no bounds, beyond even what my right hon. Friend described.

[Mr Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is right. We constantly hear the Sinn Féin mantra that it is not just a case of 90% versus 10% of killings, but that the state was somehow responsible for directing many of the paramilitary-related deaths. No one with any rational thought in their head will fall for that nonsense from the republican movement.

There is now an investigation resourced from outside Northern Ireland into the actions of the agent known as Stakeknife, Freddie Scappaticci from west Belfast, in which the emphasis is on the killings that he allegedly may have been involved in, but the question for me is who was directing Freddie Scappaticci? Who was giving the orders to Freddie Scappaticci to carry out the internal investigations of alleged republican informers? It was the IRA army council, some of whom, as we know, are now senior political figures in Northern Ireland—the very same people who point the finger at the Secretary of State and at the Government. However, as I said recently in a radio interview, far more fingers are pointing back in their direction when it comes to those issues.

[Ian Paisley]

The audacity of Sinn Féin and the IRA in this matter needs to be highlighted. It affects not only Northern Ireland cases—we have the case of Loughgall—but cases involving murders on the mainland, such as the Birmingham case. Now there is an attempt to blame the security services in England for the Birmingham bombing. It is atrocious. We have to nail this one, and nail it true.

[Mr Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is right. We apply the same standard to republican-related murders and loyalist-related murders. The idea that the Ulster Volunteer Force, for example, would be exonerated from the Loughinisland killings in the constituency of the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) because of allegations of collusion is just as perverse and absurd as the idea that the IRA would be exonerated from the massacres and murders that it committed in the past. The same applies on both sides.

In conclusion, we want to see progress in dealing with the legacy issues. We want to see the historical investigations unit established, with full police powers to investigate the unsolved murders. I talk to the innocent victims, and as they look on at what is happening, they feel that they are not being given a fair crack of the whip, an opportunity. We must move matters on. In the interim—I raised this before with the Secretary of State—the First Minister, Arlene Foster, has supported the call for the resources already set aside for historical investigations to be allocated to the legacy investigation unit of the PSNI so that that money does not come out of front-line policing in Northern Ireland.

The PSNI needs to continue to deal with current crime and with the current terrorist threat, so we do not want to see the police budget depleted by the continued drawing down of resource for the investigation of legacy cases. Those need to be investigated, absolutely, but we hope the Secretary of State will listen to what the Chief Constable and the First Minister have said and allow some of that resource to be freed up and transferred to the PSNI to enable it to do more to help the innocent victims of terrorism.