Northern Ireland (Monitoring Commission etc.) Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:10 pm on 17 September 2003.

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Photo of Jane Kennedy Jane Kennedy Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office 8:10, 17 September 2003

I am afraid that I cannot confirm that at the moment. I am not aware of the detail to which my hon. Friend referred, so I shall have to examine the matter again. Given that we are under time constraints, I shall try not to be provocative and I hope that there will be few occasions when hon. Members will feel goaded to ask for further clarification of my points.

My hon. Friend and other hon. Members, including my hon. Friend Andrew Mackinlay, who is not in the Chamber, asked about the duty of office. I am not sure whether I understood fully the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newry and Armagh, but I confirm that the pledge of office in the Good Friday agreement and the Northern Ireland Act 1998 contains a requirement to discharge in good faith all duties of office. I hope that that addresses his point but I am happy to respond to his worries further, perhaps after considering them more carefully.

I hesitate to be provocative but every time I hear the hon. Member for Belfast, East speak, it occurs to me that he would do well to listen to a song called "Paint It Black", which was written by some of my favourite musicians. He does not want colours anywhere and where there are colours, he wants them painted black. He describes a world that I simply do not see. The song is by the Rolling Stones and I invite him to listen to it if he would like to hear not only a good song, but something that describes the way in which we in the Chamber hear his outlook.

The hon. Gentleman and Mr. Hunter suggested that the Government equate normalisation and paramilitary activities but that is not the case. The timetable for security normalisation set out in the joint declaration was illustrative, and it was set out on the basis that appropriate acts of completion occurred at the time of its publication. Article 15 of the agreement makes it clear that the programme of security normalisation and the timetable associated with it will be determined once the British Government are satisfied that appropriate commitments have been given on an end to paramilitary activity.

The hon. Member for Belfast, East talked about withholding the salaries of all members of a party and suggested that that might be likely to breach the European convention on human rights. I do not believe that that is the case. We do not believe that withholding, or reducing future income would be a breach of the European convention. However, European case law draws a distinction between rights to future salary that is not protected under the law and pension rights, which are protected under the law. That brings me to one of the points raised by Lembit Öpik in a characteristically good-humoured contribution.