Brexit: UK-Irish Relations

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Jay, for leading this important debate and in wishing the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, a speedy recovery. Like many people in Britain, I have a part-Irish heritage. I have not yet pursued an application for an Irish passport, to which I believe my mother’s birth in Dublin in principle entitles me, but I have not ruled it out. Therefore, even for me, let alone for people in Ireland and Northern Ireland, there is a personal dimension to the sundering of our common membership of the EU. That common membership reflected at a political level the cultural and personal family links that we in these islands enjoy.

The Government’s position paper rightly says that issues of identity go to the heart of divisions in Northern Ireland but, as the report points out, the loss of EU membership undermines the sense of an all-Ireland identity. It also undermines the enjoyment of multiple identities by many British and/or Irish and/or European people that many of us have been enabled to hold. As the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said, Brexit is indisputably disruptive for the island of Ireland. Indeed, it is arguably the most disruptive consequence of Brexit and, as other noble Lords have observed, it was shockingly neglected in the referendum. As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said, we are at best engaged in a damage limitation exercise. The advantage of shared EU engagement has been to allow a certain blurring of identities and allegiances in the supportive framework of a bigger European whole. It undoubtedly facilitated the Good Friday agreement, as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, and it helped to achieve that delicate equilibrium, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Jay. The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, spoke movingly of the achievement of peace and of the continuing divisions in Northern Ireland.

When I first went to work in Brussels 40 years ago this month as a stagiere in the jargon—an intern—I had a lot of Irish friends, and there was sometimes a slightly chippy, although cheerful, attitude to Brits. The ensuing decades have enabled the relationship to relax and mature so that, as the outgoing Irish ambassador Dan Mulhall said, it is the best ever. I was puzzled by the confirmation by the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, of something that my noble friend Lady Suttie mentioned: that some people are seriously suggesting that Ireland should follow the UK in exiting the EU. I find that really quite arrogant as well as totally unrealistic. The Republic of Ireland no longer clings to the UK’s coat-tails, and the idea suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, of a customs union between the UK and Ireland suffers from the same delusion that Ireland wants to sever itself from the EU. As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, said, the UK does itself no favours by failing to recognise and respect the integrity of the EU.

There are many cart-and-horse problems on the movement of people and goods. For instance, the Government want an agreement on protecting and upholding the common travel area to be concluded at an early stage, while wider questions on the future operation of UK border and immigration controls on EEA nationals can be addressed only as part of the future relationship, and indeed once UK immigration policy, on which the Guardian appears to have obtained a leaked document today, is settled—so which comes first, the cart or the horse? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, that issue is probably more soluble than the movement of goods.

The Government want to avoid a hard border, as we all do, but their dogmatic insistence on ruling out the customs union and the single market in the long term means that proposals that could charitably be described as innovative, less charitably as fantasy or pie in the sky, and by the Secretary of State himself—as we have had occasion to observe already today—as “blue-sky thinking” show no practical reality. As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, they were “breathtakingly short” on detail. My noble friend Lady Suttie said there is a lot of “wishful thinking” and “crossed” fingers. We are no more enlightened, nine months after the report, on the concrete solution on the free movement of goods outside the customs union and the single market.

The Government expect, in regard to goods,

“waivers from security and safety declarations, and ensuring there is no requirement for product standards checks or intellectual property rights checks at the border”.

I have not worked out how that is meant to work outside a single market. The Government propose regulatory equivalence in the agri-food area and cite the Swiss example. But my understanding is that Switzerland simply adopts and applies the EU sanitary and phytosanitary regime. That would mean, presumably, having to keep up with it as it evolves, not statically adopting it on day one. Is that what the Government intend to do?

As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, stressed, continued access to justice and home affairs co-operation, such as through the EU databases—the SIS II database particularly—and the ability to make use of the European arrest warrant, is vital to avoid undermining the fight against terrorism and crime. How will the Government avoid going back to government decisions as opposed to judicial decisions on extradition, which caused so many problems in the past? I think everyone has been glad it is judges who decide these things—it takes a lot of heat out of the situation. How are we going to manage in that area?

To conclude, all speakers in this debate—I am no exception—want to avoid rolling the clock back in Ireland. But the Government have so far not adequately supplied answers to how that can be done, certainly outside the customs union and the single market.