BASINGSTOKE MP Andrew Hunter is determined to carry on as normal despite learning that he was a named target on what police believe is an up-to-date IRA death list.

At the weekend, and just two days after the former chairman of the Tory Northern Ireland committee learned that files discovered by police in raids in Belfast showed his name on a hit list, Mr Hunter flew to Ireland to attend a memorial service for victims of IRA attacks.

The service was held in Markethill, Armagh, in the border area dubbed "bandit country" because of the high level of IRA activity there over the years.

"Security was at its normal fairly high level," Mr Hunter told The Basingstoke Extra on his return home. "This was a service held every year for victims of the IRA. Most of those in the congregation are families who have lost someone. It was very moving.

"It alternates each year between a Presbyterian and a Church of Ireland service - this year it was Presbyterian. It has been held for the last four years and I have attended all but one."

The 59-year-old MP, who has represented Basingstoke since 1983, has lived with a constant security shadow because of his outspoken condemnation of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. In 1992, he was the target of an IRA bomb planted at Basingstoke railway station.

The death list was discovered by police investigating the break-in and theft of documents from Special Branch offices at Castleragh in east Belfast - a crime the police are blaming the IRA for. The IRA has denied it is responsible and has said it is not targeting politicians.

Of the discovery of the death list, Mr Hunter said: "There is very little new about it. It was almost entirely old information which we knew they had got any way.

"The only new factor was either a photocopy or computer print-out of the indexes of two books - the autobiographies of John Major and Norman Lamont - and one or two names have been highlighted or marked in some way. Mine is one of those.

"The significance is not so much the contents of the list but the fact that the list appears to be being updated and is current. I knew I was on the list many years ago. Now, I know I am still on the list."