Justice and Security (Northern Ireland) Bill

This debate is about what is and what is not normal. The hon. Gentleman knows better than I do that this is a matter of trust. People from certain areas of Northern Ireland give the commission the trust that they do not give to other bodies. We may not like it, but they say, ““I’ve got faith in what these people do.”” If it carries out an investigation that backs up the work that other agencies are doing, surely that is in everybody’s interests and is the right way to move forward. Earlier, I intervened on the Secretary of State about the extra powers for the police and the Army. I share some of the grave concerns that have been expressed. I am particularly worried that people may use this as a political ploy, and say, ““You’re moving the goalposts, so we cannot sign up to policing in the way that we believe we should.”” I have said on the record that I believe that members of Sinn Fein and any other people who want to involve themselves in democratic processes in this House or in any other democratic part of our society should support the police and the work that they do. They should work with the police irrespective of whether they like them individually or respect what they have allegedly been involved with in the past. If they want to play a part as democratic representatives, they owe it to the people they represent to be involved. I hope that the Bill does not get in the way of that. The current situation is not normal. If we say to everybody in Northern Ireland, ““We want you to act as normally, in every sense, as people in the rest of Great Britain””, we have to say the same to the police and to the Army. The Secretary of State said— I will read his speech in Hansard with great interest—that there are various areas where the police and the Army are not allowed to go under the existing legislation. I would have thought they could already go to all those areas, so why insert these additional powers? I think that ““pregnant”” was the right term to use. We all know what we end up with when there is pregnancy in an unblessed relationship—I hope that is not so in this case. My final point concerns the private security industry. As the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee said, it is right and proper to work with people in the industry, who work with everybody from the daft to the deadly. They need to be trained and looked after properly so that they are not exploited, but they also need to be capable of doing the job properly. I will look with great interest at what emerges in Committee and on Report. I hope that the Bill’s Third Reading will be the start of a really happy new year for everyone in Northern Ireland, and I express that sentiment to everybody in this House today.