Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 21 Mawrth 1979.
The hon. Gentleman must not get cross if someone puts a point of view that is different from that of himself. I accept the words of the Secretary of State, which happen to coincide with my view. The right hon. Gentleman said of the RUC:
It has risen in esteem and credibility throughout the Province. The way that it dealt with the Action Council strike and the Shankill butchers, and the way in which it is dealing with the IRA, must lead everyone who is objective about this matter to the conclusion that the RUC is doing a job as good as any police force in the world can do in the present circumstances. It is doing it magnificently well, and it is gathering the support of the whole Province."—[Official Report, 16 March 1979; Vol. 964, c. 967–77.]
That judgment was correct and those who have criticised the RUC have misread and misinterpreted the Bennett report.
In the past 10 years of terrorism and violence in Northern Ireland, 117 RUC officers and members of the Reserve have been killed and more than 3,000 have been injured. Paragraph 163 of the Shackleton report makes clear that members of the committee have made no final judgment whether any members of the RUC have been guilty of any offence. Indeed, the Secretary of State has told the House that all the evidence presented to the Bennett committee will be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland.
The hon. Members for Belfast, West, Hillsborough and Antrim, North all spoke as though they were members of the RUC who had already been convicted and condemned by this report. Manifestly, that is not so. It is possible—and may very well turn out to be the case—that there is no evidence upon which any member of the RUC could be convicted.
Those who sustained injuries which were not self-inflicted may well have sustained them either at the hands of some other person who was in custody or, more likely, while a police officer was lawfully and properly seeking to prevent that person either from escaping or from perpetrating violence on other members of the RUC.
It is worth reminding the House what is actually stated in paragraph 163. It states:
We are not to be taken as condemning these officers "—