What recent discussions he has had with the Parades Commission on parades planned for summer 2009; and if he will make a statement.

I met the chairman of the Parades Commission yesterday when he briefed me on the ongoing work of the commission. I look to all those involved in the 2009 parading season to build on the positive progress made in recent years.

It is now two years since Lord Ashdown was appointed to chair a strategic review of parading in Northern Ireland. Perhaps my hon. Friend would care to update the House about progress in that regard. Does he agree that whatever national recommendations might eventually emerge, the key to peaceful parading is for local organisations and communities to enter dialogue to resolve any difficulties they may have at local level?

The strategic review of parading that is chaired by Lord Ashdown issued an interim report last April. Since then, it has consulted extensively across Northern Ireland and it is still compiling its final report. While I cannot tell the House when I expect to receive it, I hope that it will be soon. My hon. Friend puts his finger on an important issue: in Northern Ireland last year there were some 3,800 parades, most of them uncontentious. Where there is a dispute, it is best resolved when the paraders and the protestors sit down together and work out a practical solution to their disagreement. That has been the key to success in recent years, and I hope that it will be the key to success in 2009 as well.

Does the Minister accept that the issue of parades is inextricably linked to the issue of policing and justice, and that the police expend considerable time and enormous sums of money on dealing with contested parades? There is no faith in Northern Ireland on either side of the community in the Parades Commission. The work of Lord Ashdown is therefore pivotal. I have had the opportunity to speak to Lord Ashdown and real progress is being made with his report. Will the Minister do everything possible to encourage publication of that report and the overcoming of the remaining obstacle that appears to stand in the way of publication?

The right hon. Gentleman is right that the costs of policing contentious parades are unacceptable, and that money could be spent on neighbourhood policing across Northern Ireland. I know that he seeks a resolution to this problem every bit as much as I do. Lord Ashdown and his review body have come up with an alternative to the Parades Commission, which I hope will command support across all sections of the community in Northern Ireland and offer us a way forward. I give the right hon. Gentleman my assurance that I will continue to work with the review body to resolve any disagreements that may still exist, because he is right to say that we need a resolution to this issue within the context of the devolution of policing and justice powers.

In answer to the previous question, the Secretary of State talked about the grip of the past and, in many ways, the parades reinforce the prejudices of the past. If the Minister agrees that Northern Ireland is moving into a new era and needs to move on from its sectarian past, does he also agree that the Labour party should follow the lead of the Conservative party and field candidates in national elections in Northern Ireland?

That is a very interesting way of arriving at the final question. The Labour party has now established a membership in Northern Ireland and that has been agreed within the rules of my party. The hon. Gentleman is quite right—we need to leave the past behind as regards parading as well as all other aspects of the past conflict. Indeed, it is now more than three years since the dreadful events of the Whiterock parade. We have had a number of years of very peaceful parading and the key to that success has been the local dialogue and the local agreement between people who have a fundamental disagreement about parading. It is possible to find solutions and I encourage people to do so this year, too.