It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who in every debate is optimistic and positive, and it is especially welcome that in what is, effectively, another stage of the Stormont House agreement and the fresh start agreement, we find ourselves in this Second Reading with the full support of Her Majesty’s Opposition. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) and all those on the Opposition Front Bench for their continued support for making sure that we move Northern Ireland onwards to normalisation and ensure any bumps in the road that we have experienced are sorted out to allow the Northern Ireland political settlement to bed in and move forward so that the people there can take hold of the opportunities on offer.
With the leave of the House, I would like to respond to some of the points raised in the debate. I reiterate the importance of this Bill in the implementation of November’s fresh start agreement as a whole, as well as of the specific provisions, including those that give effect to the independent reporting commission and increase fiscal transparency in the Executive’s budget-setting process.
Paramilitary activity has been a blight on Northern Ireland society and is an issue which the UK Government, the Irish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive will tackle together. The measures in this Bill will create an independent body that will report on the progress made towards ending paramilitary activity connected with Northern Ireland once and for all.
The draft budget measure achieves what was set out in the fresh start agreement, and it will ensure that the Executive cannot consider spending plans that exceed the block grant allocated from the Treasury.
Let me respond to some points raised by hon. Members. I join others in sending condolences to the family of Mark Calway, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) understands that we are here to support him and the family of Mark Calway in their loss. We are also incredibly grateful for the forensic support—if I can put it that way—that his Committee gives to Northern Ireland politics and Government policy. We know that pragmatic, forensic examination of our policies, and those of other people, will help build that trust in Northern Ireland.
I say to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) that as a former Member of the Scottish Parliament I know the internal workings of devolution, and some measures in the Bill that the SNP supports would not necessarily have been right for it in Scotland. However, I know that the SNP supports such measures for the reasons that the hon. Lady eloquently articulated, which are to try to move Northern Ireland forward and achieve a settlement that will allow people to put the troubles behind them.
I pay tribute to the DUP. The right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) articulated his tribute to the former First Minister, without whose actions we would not be discussing this Bill today, or indeed the previous Bill. I am grateful for the support that the DUP has given to the Government throughout this process, to try to resolve some of the issues that led to that impasse last year.
I am also grateful for the positive attitude and speeches by DUP Members, and the support that they have provided to allow an LCM to be put in place swiftly. Such determination by the Executive and the First Minister to deal with those issues in Stormont means that I am incredibly optimistic about Northern Ireland and how it will progress, and I hope that the bumps that appeared in the road when I was first appointed to this post are put behind us so that we move forward, deal with the paramilitary past, and hopefully stop such things in the future. We must also grasp with both hands the opportunities and economic challenges that are presented.
I hear the issues about legacy raised by the hon. Member for Belfast South (Dr McDonnell), and we all want to solve them. In the past few weeks and months my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, the Minister for the Armed Forces and I met the Lord Chief Justice, and the Minister of Justice, the Deputy First Minister and the First Minister of Northern Ireland. Everyone is united in trying to get to a position where we can deal with the legacy of the past and move forward, and the Treasury has agreed to a package of funding—£150 million —to do that. However, we cannot just impose that £150 million on an unreformed system. We are all trying to work together to produce a long-term solution, not a short-term solution.
The phrase “national security” is often bandied about as if somehow it is being used as an unreasonable block on progress. Throughout the troubles, informers, neighbours, workmates, and ordinary members of the public helped the security forces against people who intimidated their own communities. It was not just informers; it was everybody. It was people who did not agree with violence. They might not have been Unionists; they might have been nationalists. Not only do those people deserve our protection, but we have a duty to protect them. Without their information and helpful tip-offs, without the confidentiality hotline being used, and without people in the heart of those communities saying, “We don’t stand for violence and we want an end to paramilitary bullying”, we would not have reached the end of the troubles. When people bandy around the phrase “national security” as some throwaway line, we should remember that at the heart of this is the need to protect those people and provide the duty of protection that we owe them. Without them, more blood would have been shed on the streets of Northern Ireland, and we should not forget the role that they played.