UUP MP voices discomfort over PUP link-up

Eyewitness claims that the Ulster Volunteer Force was involved in extortion and other criminal activities were today cited by Ulster Unionist MP Lady Sylvia Hermon as a reason for her unease over her party’s decision to link up with the Progressive Unionists in the Stormont Assembly.

The North Down MP, a member of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee which today launched in Armagh its report on organised crime in the North, again expressed her discomfort over the UUP’s decision to allow David Ervine, the leader of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionists, into the Ulster Unionist Assembly Group.

She said: “You have to understand this from a number of perspectives.

“If you look at this from the perspective of me being married to a former Chief Constable of the RUC, you can see why I took the position when in September last year there was vicious rioting on the back of the dispute over marching in the Whiterock area of Belfast and live ammunition was fired on police officers who could have died or been injured.

“My view of the UVF was coloured by that.

“But from the perspective of someone who also sits on this committee, we have been looking at considerable evidence over the past six months of UVF involvement in a range of crime.

“All of that has been swilling around over the past six months and I could not simply wipe the slate clean knowing what I know.

“The UVF we all know, is not on ceasefire, is a proscribed terrorist organisation that is not involved in decommissioning and is involved in crime.

“That is why I was most disappointed by Sir Reg Empey’s decision to go and ally the UUP with the PUP in the Assembly on May 15.”

Lady Hermon, the Ulster Unionists’ sole MP, has twice publicly expressed her unhappiness at the party’s decision to join forces with Mr Ervine’s party in the Assembly.

That unhappiness was exacerbated by the shooting of leading loyalist Mark Haddock in Newtownabbey and speculation that that was carried out by the UVF two weeks after the decision to let Mr Ervine join the Ulster Unionist Assembly Group.

The Ulster Unionists initially explained the Assembly move on the grounds that it would ensure a majority of unionist ministers in the next Stormont power-sharing government and would result in their party picking up a ministry at the expense of Sinn Féin.

However UUP leader Sir Reg Empey also explained that by linking up with the PUP leader, he hoped that it would persuade the Ulster Volunteer Force to end all paramilitary and criminal activity, with progress in the autumn.

In today’s organised crime report by the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, MPs claim they had received evidence that a five figure sum was paid to the UVF as well as a six-figure sum to the Provisional IRA over the course of a year by a construction firm in the North.

Lady Hermon dismissed claims from some of her critics that she did not know what she was talking about because she was perceived to represent a more affluent constituency.

“Don’t anybody try and patronise me that I live in the leafy suburbs in Northern Ireland and don’t know what I am talking about,” the North Down MP said.

“We had the experience of the rioting last September around Whiterock - rioting which was not confined to that part of Belfast but which also spilled over into my constituency and other constituencies.”