Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (Northern Ireland Political Parties) Order 2007

My Lords, I offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Bew, on his maiden speech. It was delivered in a characteristically trenchant manner, displaying his considering knowledge and learning. Those Members of the House who had the privilege of hearing that speech will appreciate the extent to which this House will benefit from the noble Lord’s presence and contribution in years to come. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord said about the Minister’s pathetic attempt to say that this in some way can be derived from the Belfast agreement of 1998. It cannot. This flies against the letter and the spirit of the agreement. The noble Lord who made the assertions was unable, of course, to provide any justification for them. The agreement recognises the rights of individual persons to regard themselves as British or Irish but it confers no constitutional rights on them. Instead, in constitutional terms, the agreement explicitly recognises that Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. It recognises the legitimacy of that; it even recognises explicitly the power of this Parliament to legislate and that that power is in no way untrammelled. It is quite wrong to say that that agreement gives Ireland a special place in the domestic affairs of Northern Ireland—it does not. There is a special relationship through the North/South Ministerial Council and those arrangements, and that was the concession that we made to Irish national feeling. It is quite wrong for the Government to go further than that. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, is quite right that the approach taken by the Minister is a repudiation of the principles of the agreement and a regression to the worst things that went before. I feel very strongly about this matter; the House will have to come back to it again. The Government will have to stop being seduced by people offering some notion of the spirit or logic of the agreement. The agreement is clear, it has a text, and it ought to be respected. It is wrong for those who did not make the agreement to rewrite it in this wholly unacceptable way. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, said that he could accept this as somehow part of the peace process. Let me unpack that phrase. What that means is not the agreement and not anything derived from the agreement, but the manoeuvres that have been necessary to persuade paramilitaries to give up violence and enter into the political process. This peace process did so much damage to popular confidence in the agreement. It was because of this other process, quite apart from the political processes set apart in the agreement, that one saw the Government making improper concessions to those who had been involved in violence. I mean ““improper”” in the sense of not being justified by the agreement that we made, which is, or ought to be, the settlement of these things. From 1998, that agreement has been regularly undermined by the Government making concessions not justified by the agreement to those involved in violence as a means of weaning them away from it. In other words, it has been done as a result of a perceived threat from them. We should be long past this; we should not be back in this territory. I recall how a leading member of the Democratic Unionist Party said in 2003 that if one were to vote for that party on Thursday, the concessions would stop on Friday. Here we are in 2007, and yet another concession is being made to the men of violence. I hope that the noble Baroness who represents the DUP will tell us why it has acquiesced in yet another unnecessary concession to the republicans. I will not prolong my comments so as to ensure that she has the opportunity to do that.