Sinn Féin MPs lose Commons funding

SINN FÉIN’S Westminster MPs were yesterday stripped of around €640,000 in House of Commons allowances in the wake of the Northern bank robbery.

However, a cross-party bid to permanently kick the party’s four members out of their Westminster offices and bar them from using parliamentary facilities as well was rejected.

MPs agreed without a vote to a year-long suspension of the taxpayer-funded benefits, such as staff salaries and travel costs.

It came after they threw out a bid to up the punishment by 170 votes to 358, and to make it permanent by 171 to 357.

Commons leader Peter Hain said the move reflected the “profound disapproval of this House” at the IRA’s recent activities and Sinn Féin’s share of the blame for them.

This week’s “extraordinary and abhorrent” IRA offer to shoot those responsible for the pub murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney underlined the need for it, he said.

The suspension of allowances - which can be renewed in a year if the situation has not improved - followed a damning report on the Belfast Northern Bank robbery by the Independent Monitoring Commission, which recommended imposing penalties.

It concluded the Provisional IRA had “planned and undertaken” the raid as well as three other major robberies last year and that Sinn Féin must “bear its share of the responsibility”.

Northern Secretary Paul Murphy said that all possible sanctions were “deeply inadequate” in dealing with the criminality of the last few weeks, which, he said, was “poisoning the political process.”

The onus must now be on Sinn Féin, he said.

“For them to be able to prove to the people of Northern Ireland, to the political leaders of Northern Ireland, to this House of Commons and to both governments that in fact Sinn Féin is going down the non-violent, democratic political road that lay at the heart of the Good Friday Agreement.

“Robbing banks and murdering people and so-called punishment beatings and racketeering, none of it is what people voted (for) in 1998. Over two million people voted for a peaceful future.”

Earlier he said: “To all intents and purposes we are not talking to Sinn Féin about political negotiations at the moment other than to say to them that in order to solve this, the ball’s in their court.

“They have to come to us and tell us how on earth can they end criminality. If they can do that, then the political process is back on track,” Mr Murphy said

Tories, with some cross-party support, urged the government to impose heavier sanctions by stripping the MPs of all privileges controversially granted to them in December 2001. That decision caused uproar as the MPs refuse to swear the oath of allegiance to the queen, meaning they cannot take their seats, speak in debates or vote.

Shadow Commons leader Oliver Heald said: “In effect what we are granting them are rent-free, taxpayer-funded, fully-staffed offices which seem to be used for propaganda purposes.”

He added that the party “at the same time as claiming taxpayers’ money here... has remained linked to an armed and active terrorist organisation.”

But Mr Hain rejected extending the punishment - insisting the MPs had been elected and had a duty to work for their constituents.