Lord Hain
Main Page: Lord Hain (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hain's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(11 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs Villiers
There has been much discussion of deadlines and timetables. I certainly think that it would be very helpful if the parties felt able to put together a road map towards reaching a full agreement, but I fully appreciate how difficult these issues are. As we have heard this morning, they have probably been made more difficult to resolve by the events of the last 24 hours.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
On the past and the Downey case, I agree with the Secretary of State that there was never any question of an amnesty. May I also say that I make no apology for being part of a process that brought Northern Ireland from the hideous horror and evil of the past to the position where old enemies have now governed together for seven years in a stable, devolved Government—no apology for that at all? Just as we had to do deals with my Democratic Unionist party friends sitting over there to get to this point, so we have had to do deals with Sinn Fein to get to this point, and that was necessary for the negotiations to succeed and for peace to be established.
Mrs Villiers
Clearly, many difficult decisions were made as a result of the peace process. Some aspects of the Good Friday agreement were hard to swallow for many in the House, but I think that it is important that we reflect on the implications of the John Downey case and how a very serious mistake came to be made. Of course, as I have said to the House, we are urgently checking to ensure that similar mistakes were not made in any other cases.