Mr. Jonathan Powell:

I thank the Deputy. He put his finger on the crucial issue, which is trust. Just as we spent a decade building trust, the current Government is spending its time destroying trust, which is catastrophic. I deeply regret the state of bilateral relations, which is terrible and totally unnecessary. The only comfort I take is that I believe they can be restored very quickly. It is ad hominemrather than about the countries concerned. I believe any new British Government, whatever the party, would do its best to rebuild relations because they are so important and rebuild that trust. I hope I am right in saying that.

Regarding trust and the Good Friday Agreement, it is the crucial point in a way. It is true that John Major built a very good relationship with Albert Reynolds and there was a good deal of trust between senior officials on both sides. However, as I said, there was still a little frisson. I remember some British officials talking about how green Irish officials were and the like. Interestingly, once it moved to the Blair Government, as Mr. Blair says and I think he is right, there was a new generation. Both he and Bertie Ahern did not quite have the burden of history that someone from a previous generation, such as Mrs. Thatcher, would have had on Irish questions. For them there was a much more open mind and they saw the need to get to peace, to get Northern Ireland politics working properly and to remove the poison of identity from it. First, building that trust with Bertie Ahern was crucial because Tony Blair was able to work seamlessly with him. Mr. Ahern did not think we were trying to pull something over on him at any stage. We were not, and vice versa. I built my relations with Paddy Teahon in the Taoiseach's office and later with Michael Collins. Of course, it was at every level of government. As the Deputy said, once there are good relations between the principals it is much easier to have good relations all the way down the official chain.

It was also important that we were running this Northern Ireland thing from 10 Downing Street. Sometimes we were criticised for that, but it was a symbol of how important getting to peace in Northern Ireland was to Tony Blair. He wanted it to take up a good deal of time for himself, his chief of staff and 10 Downing Street. One of the problems we have now is that 10 Downing Street has largely backed out of Irish questions, except when it comes to being destructive with the protocol. That is a mistake. It is important for 10 Downing Street to stay involved.

Beyond that, it was then important for trust to be built with the parties. Mo Mowlam, who I pay tribute to, played a very important role in building trust with nationalists, in particular, after the election. She was very different from her predecessors, who were good men but very much in the mould of Guards officers rather than more normal representatives of the British public. She managed to break a lot of ice in opinions in Northern Ireland. I always think of Mo Mowlam as a necessary but not sufficient cause of peace. If we had not had her, it would have been very difficult to build that trust.

It was also important to build trust on the unionist side. Tony Blair devoted a lot of time, as did I, to trying to build a relationship of trust with the unionists. He spent a great deal of time talking to political leaders. There is an investment in building trust. In fact, an anecdote about later on in the negotiations illustrates it. It was when we were trying to get the DUP into a peace agreement after it won the elections in Northern Ireland. We were in Leeds Castle and the whole thing fell apart when we were trying to get the Good Friday Agreement implemented, before we got to the St. Andrews Agreement. I remember Tony Blair and I going up to one of the bedrooms and sitting on a four-poster bed with Peter Robinson and asking how we were going to do this. He said that we had to build trust with Ian Paisley. He said we needed to talk to him, and not just about politics but about religion and other things. Tony Blair then devoted hundreds of hours to sitting with Ian Paisley and talking about faith and matters relating to religion rather than politics. That played an important part in building trust with Rev. Paisley so we were able eventually to get to the St. Andrews Agreement.

The Deputy is right to say that trust was central to what happened then. The destruction of trust, to be honest, is the tragedy of what is happening now.