European Union (Withdrawal) Bill - Report (5th Day)

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 5:45 pm on 2 May 2018.

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Photo of Lord Empey Lord Empey UUP 5:45, 2 May 2018

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Patten, introduced the debate with his customary excellence and good humour. However, while I took the points he made very well, I felt concerned about the direction of travel and the linkage between some of the points we were trying to debate. The amendment has a number of issues that concern me, the most obvious one, picked up by the noble Lord, Lord King, being the last line. With so much reference to the Belfast agreement, the four Members currently in the Chamber involved in that negotiation—I am one of them—will know that it is so sensitive because it challenges the fundamental principles of consent, which is one of the reasons why the referendum in 1998 was successful. We actually achieved that point. If we take a power that is currently exercisable only by the Government of the United Kingdom and share it with the Republic of Ireland, that will change the dynamics of the whole situation. Effectively, it would create a form of joint authority.

I have other issues with the amendment. It refers to:

“Continuation of North-South co-operation and the prevention of new border arrangements”.

Perhaps we will need new border arrangements to avoid the pitfalls we have all drawn attention to during the debate. I also feel we are in a unique situation. Everybody agrees with the ultimate objective. Therefore, it should be not a source of division in this House but something on which we can come together to send a clear message not only to the Government, but to our colleagues in the European Union and in the Republic.

During his visit to Northern Ireland and the Republic this week—which, incidentally, was announced to us through the press release of a Sinn Féin MP, not even a Sinn Féin MEPMichel Barnier, according to Sam Coates in the Times, did the following:

“During a visit to Ireland, Michel Barnier urged Theresa May to reconsider introducing a border in the Irish Sea”.

We assume that that matter is resolved; I fear that it is not. Within the document agreed on 8 December and the subsequent agreement referred to by my noble friend Lord Bridges of Headley there is a fundamental conflict. We are saying on the one hand that we want regulatory alignment for Northern Ireland as this backstop and on the other that we do not want any difficulties between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Unless Brexit does not take place and we reverse our decision to leave the European Union, those two things will be mutually exclusive. We have to get our heads around that.

We have talked about the principles and the bigger picture. I worry about linking the Belfast agreement so closely with the discussions we have now because, quite frankly, there are risks attached to that. I will try to put into context the scale of the problem we face.

I believe that the solution lies with the United Kingdom Government, the Irish Government and Michel Barnier and his team sitting down at a table to deal with the details. The Benches opposite are filled with many people with trade union backgrounds. They will know, as everybody else knows from their own experience, that the only way to settle these things is to sit down and talk about them, however embarrassing and difficult it may be. Even if we are dealing with people with whom we would normally have no truck, the fact is that we have learnt that lesson and learnt it very hard; we have to sit down, to talk and to negotiate. We must also remember that we cannot successfully negotiate if the person with whom we are negotiating is flat on the canvas at the end of the negotiations, so it cannot be a 10-0 win; there has to be compromise and movement.

We use the term “the all-Ireland economy”. There is no all-Ireland economy. If we take the figures for the period 2005 to 2015 given to us by the Irish Government in their document on Brexit, which sets out clearly the relationship and the scale of it, we see that of the total exports of the Irish Republic to the rest of the world 1.6% currently goes to Northern Ireland. That has dropped in the period from 2005. It means that 98.4% of the Irish Republic’s goods go elsewhere. Most of them travel via the United Kingdom, because the border is not simply on the island; it is between Dublin and Holyhead and Rosslare and Fishguard—that is where most of the goods are going. Mainland Britain is the land bridge so the Republic can get its goods to the continent and the rest of the world.

Let us take imports to the Irish Republic from the whole of the world. From Northern Ireland, they have dropped in the period from 2005 to 2015 from 2.2% again to 1.6%. So the actual trade on the island is relatively modest. We are talking primarily about goods in transit, going to and from ports in Northern Ireland to and from Scotland and the north-west of England. So the trading relationship on the island is 1.6% of the Republic’s exports and 1.6% of its imports. That is the scale of the trade. It includes live animals and agricultural produce.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said in an earlier debate that he believed that one part of the solution could be a new treaty between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland which would be recognised by the European Union. Part of the solution could lie in the north-south bodies that we set up under a treaty which have certain specific functions. There is no reason why those bodies cannot change and vary over time. One of them, the SEUPB, which looks after special European programmes, will have to be dissolved. We may need to look at the functions that some of those bodies perform and whether the United Kingdom Government and Parliament might devolve to them specific matters where they could negotiate on details, particularly around agriculture, animal health and other issues, and where regulations—because we are one land mass—are better, on the same scale or equivalent. If we are looking at the way ahead, we have to look at solutions. That is one possibility, but the idea of a new treaty is something that we should look at.