Northern Ireland Arms Decommissioning Act 1997 (Amnesty Period) Order 2007

I thank the Minister for elucidating the main points in this order, which has been a hardy annual now for many years. Every year we hope that we will not have to renew it again and we certainly hope that this will be the final time. I would also like to associate myself with the Minister’s wishes for the speedy recovery of the noble Lord, Lord Laird. As the Minister said, we have come a long way and the most heartening thing has been the decommissioning by the IRA, which is now more or less complete. But it is clear from the latest report from the Independent Monitoring Commission that paramilitary groups are still active in Northern Ireland and therefore there is still a need for a decommissioning scheme if any of these groups are ever to decommission their weapons. The report was very clear on the threat level that still exists from the Continuity IRA, the Real IRA and dissident republican groups in general. If there is an agreement for Stormont to be revived, I fear that we may see some protest activity of a nasty kind by any such groups that are particularly annoyed with Sinn Fein. Equally, we must remain deeply disappointed at the lack of decommissioning there has been from loyalist paramilitary groups. That is very worrying. There has been no progress despite endless discussions, to which the Minister referred. The recent ombudsman report shows just how nasty these loyalist groups have been in the past and they are still a threat. There may be an upsurge of activity from them if there is a revival of Stormont, because they too may be against any power-sharing agreement. Republican and loyalist groups are seriously involved in organised crime and continue to carry out paramilitary assaults in Northern Ireland. The Minister has said that there are ongoing discussions with proxies for the loyalist groups, but can he give us further assurance that greater efforts will be made to get these groups to engage with the international decommissioning commission? We do not believe that, in a democratic society, there is any place for illegality or illegally held weapons and have always called for full decommissioning by both loyalist and dissident republican paramilitary groups. We have been supportive of the progress that has been made on this issue to date. We recognise that decommissioning is a process and that no paramilitary group was going to decommission all its weapons at once, but we urge the Government to put pressure on loyalist paramilitary groups to move away from crime and decommission their weapons. We support the order.