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

I had not intended to speak on this order, but I have been encouraged to do so largely in support of what my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has said, but also because it has again been brought to my attention that while we talk about decommissioning of loyalist arms, the Government—this is not peculiar to the present Secretary of State; his predecessor and the Secretary of State before that did the same—have indulged in a fairly overt ““hug-a-provo”” tactic, whereas no similar encouragement has been given to others. The noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, has cautioned the House about that previously. This is not the first time he has indicated that while the Government currently repudiate any effort by loyalists to move forward, however slowly, they are sticking to the tactic of, ““Let’s hug a provo””. It disgusted me, as it did similarly many others, to see certain people at the funeral of David Ervine. When I came into politics, I knew David Ervine. I had some regard for him in so far as I believed that, whatever his associations, he was a changed man from the young man who served a prison sentence, and that he could see prospects for bringing Northern Ireland forward. Everything the Government did, however, was to discourage what he was attempting to do. When, quite recently, he wanted to form an alliance with the leader of my own party to move things forward, the Government and every other party sitting in that Assembly, without exception, jumped up and shouted, ““Foul! We can’t allow that to happen””. The reality is that for those same people, including the Secretary of State, to turn out to say kind things when the poor man had died is nothing short of hypocrisy. I am not going to ameliorate what I have to say on this. We must get rid of the hypocrisy that emanates from the Northern Ireland Office. There are some very evil people in loyalist paramilitary organisations. I am totally opposed to them, and I would like to see every last one brought to justice. But when I see an orchestrated event like I have seen over the past couple of days, when I see a report coming forward from the police ombudsman—who is qualified in neither an investigative nor a judicial sense—to blacken the names of those who worked at huge personal cost, I cannot believe, bluntly, that we do not have more guts and more principle coming from those who govern us at the moment. They should not allow the name of the RUC GC to be blackened. The Ministers can smirk if they like, but the double standards and hypocrisy that I have witnessed over the past few weeks lead me to ask whether they would be encouraged to give up their guns if they were loyalist paramilitaries. Thank God, I grew up in a different environment. I do not want to gainsay noble Lords from Belfast but urban terrorism will continue until we get fair play from the Government. So, along with this Order in Council, I implore the Government to let us have fair play. Let us not have an exclusive ““hug-a-provo”” tactic for the next year because, if we do, there will not be a single solitary gun decommissioned. I know that is what will happen. It is not what I want, but I know it.