Northern Ireland: Recent Events

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement made in another place. I would like to add our appreciation on these Benches for the dangerous and courageous work of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. We add our support for Naomi Long, whose life has been threatened as an elected representative, and for other elected representatives whose homes and offices have been attacked and whose families have been terrified and frightened by mobs that have been roaming about. Not only have elected representatives suffered, but many other people have been discomfited as well. A doctor told me today that cancer patients were not able to get to hospital because of what was going on.

There is the question of the violence, but it did not come about just with this issue of flags. It has been developing over the last number of months, with issues about Catholic churches and parades. This is clearly a mounting process with paramilitary organisations. What is most concerning is that instead of some political leaders trying not just to condemn but to contain this, it is actually being spread out to other circumstances. While the Assembly in Stormont has flown the flag only on designated days, now the whole question of the flag being flown on all sorts of other days is being raised and creating difficulties which were never there before in more than a decade of the Assembly functioning.

I am disappointed that it has taken some time for any clear guidance to come out of 10 Downing Street and the Prime Minister. I ask my noble friend why that is so. There have been no clear statements saying not just how wrong this is but how important it is for politicians not to spread the problem but to seize the problem and control it. I ask my noble friend if she could give me some reassurance that the Prime Minister and his colleagues will not merely sit at Number 10 Downing Street and be concerned, but that they will start putting pressure on political colleagues in Belfast, who are picking up on this and spreading the problem rather than containing it and closing it down. Of course, there are other issues that need to be dealt with, including difficulties for Protestant young men and their educational status in some loyalist areas. But this is not the way to deal with them. I plead with my noble friend to make a case to the Prime Minister to be more engaged.

There have recently been complaints by the Deputy First Minister that he can see the President of the United States more easily than he can see the Prime Minister of our United Kingdom. This is not a help in a situation which is beginning to spin out of control.