Tom Elliott
Main Page: Tom Elliott (Ulster Unionist Party - Fermanagh and South Tyrone)Department Debates - View all Tom Elliott's debates with the Northern Ireland Office
(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
Not only can I assure my hon. Friend that there is no amnesty, but in the latest Northern Ireland agreement, which was reached yesterday, there is £160 million more money to fund our police forces and security services in Northern Ireland to pursue people who commit crimes, or who have done so in the past, against the innocent people of Northern Ireland. Yesterday’s agreement also included measures to monitor the paramilitary activity of former paramilitaries or organisations that should be inactive. We are determined not only to deal with the past, but to invest and give our police the support to make sure we bring to justice those terrorists who have been on the run and who have not yet been brought to justice, as well as those dissident republicans who are out there right now targeting colleagues and police officers who are going about their business in Northern Ireland every day.
Tom Elliott (Fermanagh and South Tyrone) (UUP)
The Minister has said that he does not think there is any inequality. How, then, does he explain that more than 20 PSNI officers are investigating Bloody Sunday soldiers, but not one police officer is investigating the 11 murders in Enniskillen on Remembrance Sunday in 1987?
Mr Wallace
I do not know the inner workings through which the Chief Constable and his senior officers decide to investigate each individual case, and nor should I. Suffice it to say that the Chief Constable is determined, as I understand it, to bring to justice any individual who has broken the law in the past. There are plenty of former and current terrorists who need to be brought to justice, and PSNI officers and Security Service officers are out there every day trying to catch the terrorist. It is not, in my view, all focused on former soldiers.