Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Effect of Renegotiation on Other Trade Negotiations

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Frost

Thursday 21st October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the decision taken, which I think is a good one, is that the UK-EU TCA is so sui generis—in fact, it goes much beyond trade into many wider areas such as law enforcement, road transport and so on—that it is best to handle it in a sui generis way. I do not know whether that decision is for ever, but it is the one that has been taken at the moment. We are ready to talk to the US about an FTA when it is ready. The US is conducting a review of its external trade policy at the moment. Some negotiating rounds have already taken place, but we stand ready to talk when both sides are ready.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened carefully to the Minister’s answers today and rarely have I heard answers so complacent about the concerns raised in your Lordships’ House on our international reputation and future ability to negotiate agreements, whether they be trade agreements or the complex negotiations around COP 26, if there is a lack of faith in us being trusted to keep our word on agreements we have already negotiated. I hope that he will go away and reflect on the comments he has made to your Lordships’ House today. On that issue, I bring him back to his earlier comment about the legal text. He said, “We will publish the legal text if it is useful”. We think it would be very useful and, if there is no difference from what has already been said, can he explain why he will not publish it? I bring him back to the issue of trust and transparency as something on which this Government have to make up for lost ground.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we will publish the legal text if it is useful to the negotiating process between us and the European Union. At the moment, I am not convinced that it would be; circumstances may change, so that is not a decision of principle. To return to the first point of the question, I am of course in no way unmindful—quite the opposite—of our international reputation but, in the end, I cannot do anything about how others perceive us.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Frost

Thursday 24th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

At the time, we faced the need to find pragmatic and proportionate ways to implement the protocol in a balanced way, respecting all the dimensions of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement—east-west, as well as north-south. If we are to find a solution, it will be in re-establishing that balance and making sure that east-west trade is subject to as few difficulties as possible, so that the balance in these arrangements can be re-established.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, in answer to an earlier question, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, said that these were matters of political judgment. Indeed, his political judgment brought us the Northern Ireland protocol which he negotiated in the first place. I want to look forward on the subject of how this will work. Has he yet had the opportunity to read the written evidence to the inquiry that our Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland Sub-Committee is undertaking? If not, I urge him to do so. I particularly refer him to the submissions from the Northern Ireland Business Brexit Working Group and from Queen’s University, Belfast. If he has not read those, he really must do so, because they look at a pragmatic, best-interests way forward. Surely any judgment is best made on the basis of facts, not just of political views.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I have indeed looked at that evidence. It is extremely interesting in all kinds of ways. Obviously, we talk directly to many of the groups which have submitted evidence. When I look at the views expressed by the business group, I am struck that it recommends solutions which we ourselves have put forward. We have put forward a proposal for the veterinary agreement based on equivalence, for a trusted trader scheme, for arrangements for pharmaceuticals, and so on. I think we have a good common understanding of the problems. The difficulty is in developing a constructive negotiation that gets us towards solutions.

Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Frost

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the extension of the grace period is central to managing our practical discussions with the Commission on solving the current protocol arrangements. We have published and discussed a good deal of information about the impact of the protocol. We are leading these discussions in an attempt to mitigate its impact and ensure that it is implemented in a pragmatic and proportionate way.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, when I listen to the Minister talking about the Northern Ireland protocol, I sometimes think he has forgotten that he was part of the negotiating team that gave us it. A lot of these problems were highlighted before. Is not part of the problem the fact that, when the whole Brexit debate was going on, too little attention was paid to the impact on Northern Ireland? It seems that some progress is being made on the outstanding issues, but I want to know more. It seems that we leap from short-term fix to short-term fix when what is really needed is a commitment to making the protocol, as the Minister negotiated it, work for the long-term benefit of Northern Ireland and for all sides of the community. Otherwise, his negotiations amount to nothing.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I indeed have happy memories of negotiating the current protocol, back in 2019, when our primary task was to deal with the unsatisfactory situation that we had been bequeathed; the original backstop would have kept the whole United Kingdom in the customs union and aligned with EU law in many areas. We dealt with that in the 2019 negotiations. Our expectation then was that the protocol would be implemented in a way that supported the Good Friday agreement in all its dimensions—east-west and north-south. That is not quite borne out in the way that it is being implemented at the moment, but we hope that, in discussions with the Commission, we will be able to improve the situation.

Post Brexit: Economic and Political Opportunities

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Frost

Thursday 25th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we obviously regret the situation that has arisen with the difficulties in exporting shellfish to the European Union after 1 January. Clearly, nothing changed in the safety of British shellfish or British waters at midnight on 31 December. We are continuing to work with the Commission and member states to see whether we can resolve this situation.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, I want to return to an issue we touched on last week when the Minister appeared to dismiss concerns about the January fall in exports, saying:

“A unique combination of facts has made it inevitable”.—[Official Report, 18/3/21; col. 445.]


The Food and Drink Federation does not share his complacency, having seen its members’ exports to the EU collapse by 75% in the past year but by only 11% to the rest of the world. It is clear that the Brexit negotiations, which the Minister was part of, had a hugely significant impact, particularly on small businesses, so I have two questions for him. First, if the fall really was inevitable, why did he not tell businesses beforehand? Secondly, will he urgently convene a meeting, not- withstanding his earlier comments, of the partnership council and the special trade committees to try to save British exports?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the economic situation is clearly hugely influenced by many factors including stock building, the implementation of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and the effects of the pandemic, which has dramatically affected markets in Europe, to which many of our smaller companies and food companies export. We are working very closely with all those companies to deal with the difficulties they face, and we will continue to do so in support of our great food and drink industry.

UK-EU Trade

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Frost

Thursday 18th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the Government of course recognise the importance of the UK’s cultural industries. We made proposals during the negotiations last year that would have allowed musicians to travel and perform in the UK and the EU more easily without work permits. They were rejected by the European Union. Now that negotiations are over, we are working with the sector to help it adjust to this new relationship. We have a working group with industry representatives which is feeding into our process. We are of course discussing a range of issues with Maroš Šefčovič as regards the implementation of the TCA.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for agreeing to meet the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on the issues he raised, but in response to my noble friend Lord McNicol, he seemed reluctant to admit that there was a problem and he certainly did not answer the part of the question about what the solutions were, so I shall try again. Your Lordships’ House has been fully engaged in preparing the UK for its new relationship with the EU. There has been an unprecedented number of documents, Bills and statutory instruments that we have all waded our way through to get to the detail, but all behind ensuring support for the Government’s border plans. Yet here we are, less than three months in, and that model is creaking. The Minister is now tearing up plan A in order to push back implementation dates. Can he tell us what he thinks has gone wrong?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, as I say, it is too early to draw conclusions from any figures in January; there are too many other factors influencing the economic situation. We have always made clear and are assiduously implementing our plans to get businesses the support they need to manage the changes to our trading relationship with the EU. There is a new Brexit support fund and a Brexit business taskforce. We are supporting the fisheries industries and many others through the initial difficulties of the change in relationship.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Grace Period

Debate between Baroness Smith of Basildon and Lord Frost

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I thank the noble Earl for his question, and I look forward to appearing before his committee again in the near future. We have been working through the joint committee mechanisms since the beginning of the year and before. The measures taken last week were operational, technical and temporary. We informed the Commission of those through the appropriate channels and at the appropriate level before the decision was made public.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I think we all welcome that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, is now able to answer Questions from the Dispatch Box and we look forward to an ongoing dialogue with him about his Cabinet responsibilities. His role in the negotiations has been credited with getting the agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol over the line. He would have been aware then of all the implications. Given that he supported the creation of, and now co-chairs, the Joint Committees he has referred to, which are designed to resolve such disputes, would not the most mature and pragmatic way to deal with this issue be to continue with that process? Does he understand that the unilateral action he is championing is a double threat? It jeopardises the European Parliament’s ratification of his own agreement and damages our international reputation if we cannot be trusted to keep our word.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I thank the Baroness and I look forward to answering many more Questions from this Dispatch Box about our approach to the relationship with the European Union. We would like to see a constructive relationship with the European Union in future. The difficulty we are faced with this year is that the EU’s decision to invoke Article 16 in Northern Ireland has created a new and very difficult situation that has undermined cross-community confidence and we have been trying to deal with that. We would like to do so in a constructive and consensual way but we also have to have to regard to the situation and the need to maintain confidence and consent across both communities in Northern Ireland.