Drug dealers and paramilitary gangsters are operating "with complete immunity" in Northern Ireland, Tory frontbencher Lord Glentoran claimed today.
The party's Northern Ireland spokesman, who also lives there, said at Question Time: "Morale in the police force is at an all-time low, especially those out in the streets and on the ground. Within the province, drug dealers and paramilitary gangsters are operating with complete immunity. As a result the whole population is losing confidence in their police force."
Lord Glentoran demanded: "How and when is the government proposing to address this very dangerous issue?"
Former Ulster Unionist Party chairman Lord Rogan spoke of "continuing violence" in his home area of South Belfast, citing a recent attack on an 86-year-old woman in her home. But he welcomed 16 arrests made today.
Lords Leader and Northern Ireland spokesman Lord Williams of Mostyn, who was due to visit the North tonight, replied that the level of lawlessness was the legacy of its violent past.
He told peers: "I don't accept that drug dealers and armed criminals are operating with impunity."
Lord Williams gave his support to tomorrow's community demonstration and Ulster workers' strike in protest at Saturday's murder of 20-year-old postal worker Daniel McColgan by Protestant paramilitaries.
But a former TUC general secretary, Labour's Lord Murray of Epping Forest, warned that the strike could "set a very dangerous precedent in the industrial life of Northern Ireland".
PA