Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Debate between Baroness Wheatcroft and Lord Hannan of Kingsclere

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

I did not plan on speaking in this debate, but I think it is only right that somebody should thank the noble Lord, Lord Frost, for explaining to us how bad things have become in Northern Ireland as a result of the treaty he negotiated. I am very happy to do that. I will, however, keep my speech brief and not make a Second Reading speech.

Of course, I support these two amendments but hope very much that we will not get to vote on them. To echo the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, we have been asked to put lipstick on a pig again. We have been asked to do that many times in the last couple of years, but to my knowledge, this is first time that the pig is not only ugly but illegal. On that basis, we should not get to vote on it. What we should do now, as others have said, is invoke Article 16. If negotiations are not working, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, there is a route open to us but passing an illegal Bill is certainly not it.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I had been planning to speak on the detail of the amendments. It seems to me to be quite unreasonable, as the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Bew, have already said, that the whole essence of the Belfast agreement, which was that important decisions would be made on a cross-community basis—a difficult principle for unionists to accept at the time—is now being abandoned the moment it becomes inconvenient. I say that as someone who was rather opposed, at the time, to the Belfast agreement—not on orange or green grounds but because I thought it was unhealthy to have all the parties in power all the time. I thought it would be healthier for democracy to have a more genuine competition. I lost that argument and we went down this road. It seems a little inconsistent that we should move to majoritarianism only when it suits people pushing one agenda.