Constitution, Democracy and Human Rights Commission

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s support for the approach that I have outlined. On her specific question, I cannot give a commitment on that at the Dispatch Box now, but I will repeat what I have said to the House: other workstreams on constitutional review will be announced in due course.

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.

Essential Services: Large-scale Technology

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very important point. Looking at the colour of our hair, he and I should declare an interest in this matter. We need to extend understanding and use of technology, and access to it, but equally I urge all organisations, including banks, to remember that for many people a personal service is not only a matter of choice but a matter of necessity.

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed and we therefore move to the fourth Oral Question.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I very much enjoyed the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, who has been a stalwart and perceptive member of the European Union Committee. I wish him well—and indeed many plates of oysters—in his retirement.

The EU Committee has reported many times in the last four and a half years on the risks associated with not having a wide-ranging agreement with the EU. The 1,256 pages of Christmas Eve are thus very welcome, and I add my congratulations to the Government on achieving a deal, in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and his large and hard-working negotiating team. However, this represents only the start of a long process. Many areas are not covered, as we have already heard, and—for many that are—much detail has yet to be hammered out.

As noble Lords have just heard, the EU family of committees has already begun its work of full scrutiny of the trade and co-operation agreement—the TCA—and will in due course publish detailed analysis on every aspect of the agreement in a series of reports. The TCA sets up a partnership council that will be supported by a partnership committee, 18 specialised committees and four working groups, and it will have the ability to create more committees. This structure will sit alongside the existing joint committee on the withdrawal agreement, its six specialised committees and working group—a total of 32 committees across the two treaties. Like the joint committee on the withdrawal agreement, the partnership council of the TCA has the very major power to alter the TCA itself by decision. Scrutiny of this new and powerful structure will be of great interest to Parliament, so I ask the Minister to confirm that the Government will work with us to put in place a proportionate and transparent scrutiny system.

An important aspect of the TCA is the establishment of a parliamentary partnership assembly—a body that will involve Members of both Houses and of the European Parliament. I much welcome this and will return to it when we have more time. That assembly and the many TCA and withdrawal agreement committees represent a vital set of channels of communication and will offer the opportunity to help to repair the mutual trust that the Brexit process has dented. In the meantime, I acknowledge that legislation is vital to ensure that the TCA comes into force on 1 January to avoid the significant disruption and adverse risks that no deal would represent, so I support the Bill.

UK-EU Withdrawal Agreement

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, the Statement and its associated Command Paper are very welcome, particularly as they are evidence that both sides in the UK-EU joint committee are now working together in a pragmatic and friendly way. I congratulate all involved. However, we still have no satisfactory structures in place for parliamentary scrutiny, either of the joint committee itself or of new EU law applying to Northern Ireland under the protocol. What steps is the Minister taking to facilitate such scrutiny?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am a poor and feeble plant, but by standing here I am seeking to assist scrutiny. I understand the broader thrust of the question from the noble Earl, but he will also understand that arrangements for the scrutiny of government across the board by committees in your Lordships’ House is not a matter for the Executive. It is matter for your Lordships’ House and it is not for me to declare. As far as my ministerial responsibility is concerned, I am ready to appear before whatever committee, and this House, at any time that is requested.

Union Capability: Dunlop Review

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Implementation Proposals

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My noble friend raises an important point and I can certainly reassure him that the Government remain committed to the Belfast/Good Friday agreement in its entirety, including all three strands; east-west is vital, as he says. We are delivering on our unequivocal commitment to deliver unfettered access, and I hope very much that noble Lords will reconsider their obstruction of the legislation on that subject.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the joint letter of 5 November from the First Minister and Deputy First Minister to Commissioner Šefčovič. In view of the significant concerns that they jointly expressed, what is being done to allow supermarkets to continue to service Northern Ireland from Great Britain? Can the Minister confirm reports that the UK and the EU are considering agreeing a grace period to allow supermarkets time to adapt to the protocols approach, which is still under discussion in the Joint Committee?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Earl raises an extremely important point. I cannot go into matters that are, as he implies, under active discussion, but we have certainly committed to an intensified process of engagement with the EU to resolve all outstanding issues such as this, which includes securing flexibilities for trade from GB to NI. That is particularly important for supermarkets, where we have been clear that specific solutions are required. The recent joint letter from the First Minister and Deputy First Minister reflects how important that issue is for Northern Ireland, and we will continue to work closely with the Executive to get a solution to this problem.

Great Britain and Northern Ireland: Access for Goods

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Thursday 12th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (The Earl of Kinnoull) (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.

EU Exit: Negotiations and the Joint Committee

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there is a stark difference between the level of information contained in the statements made by the two sides following the joint committee meeting on Monday. Why is it that this sovereign Parliament gets so much less information than the EU 27 Parliaments and the European Parliament? Will the Minister commit that, going forward, a much greater level of information will be given on meetings of the joint committee and its sub-committees?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, a Written Ministerial Statement was issued. I am sorry if the noble Earl feels that more could and should be said. I always enjoy my engagements with him. The Statement referred to a number of matters discussed in the joint committee on 19 October. In addition to that, if he wants, I can be more helpful: the committee discussed work on the establishment of a list of individuals to sit on an arbitration panel, as required under the WA. Both parties are progressing work to establish a list of suitable arbitrators. As the noble Earl knows, it was agreed to have a further meeting of the committee in November, and other work will continue in the interim. The discussions are obviously ongoing, and I know that he understands, and I respect that, that there are some constraints on what one can share at a time of active talks.

EU: Future Relationship

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, in this thought-provoking debate; I thank the noble Lord the Chief Whip for finding such a substantial slot for this important Motion at a critical period in the lead-in to the final tableau of the Brexit drama. I also thank the Minister for his time in recent weeks, both virtually and physically, and for the courteous and frank way in which he engages with my committee.

In the period leading up to Sunday 6 September, I had thought that the two interrelated strands of UK-EU discussions implementing the withdrawal agreement and the negotiations on the future relationship were on some sort of glide path to actual landing rather than crashing, albeit that the rhetoric between the parties had become sharp and the temperature had risen somewhat. It was on that day that the rumours of what was in the internal market Bill surfaced and boiling point was reached instantaneously.

Perhaps I could step back and start with the withdrawal agreement and its Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol. The protocol is a masterly fudge which left much to the joint committee structure to resolve. We reported on that in June this year, but I remind the Committee that the protocol consists of two pages of recitals, 19 articles and more than 40 pages of the seven annexes, which are really just lists of legislation.

The essential problem that it sought to address was to maintain the Good Friday agreement absolutely while protecting the EU and UK single markets. The soft recitals contain a number of very comforting paragraphs for the UK including

“DETERMINED that the application of this protocol should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland”

and later on

“HAVING REGARD to the importance of maintaining the integral place of Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom’s internal market”.

The hard text of the articles suggests, that in the absence of further agreement at the Joint Committee, every EU customs rule and practice will apply on everything moving to or from Great Britain to Northern Ireland or the border in the Irish sea.

We were critical in our June report of what we saw as a lack of early government pace in implementing the withdrawal agreement. It is now our impression that this has been addressed, but still marrying up the aspirations of the recitals with the hard fallback position of the articles has not yet happened. This failure of process, of statecraft, on the part of both parties is also of great concern and will potentially have damaging consequences for all on the island of Ireland.

The withdrawal agreement as a whole contains plenty of dispute resolution mechanisms but, instead of going down this path, the Government now propose to take powers under the internal market Bill to allow them to disapply parts of the protocol. My committee anticipates reporting on these aspects of the internal market Bill in time for its Second Reading in this House, and we have written to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster asking for clarification on various assertions made by the UK since 6 September and why the dispute resolution mechanisms under the withdrawal agreement are not used. We expect a response at the end of this week.

The debacle on the withdrawal agreement has spilled over into the negotiations on the future relationship with the EU, and it could not be otherwise. After all, Michel Barnier is Maroš Šefčovič’s deputy and alternate on the joint committee on the withdrawal agreement and the interrelation is shown by the simple fact that the deeper any future relationship agreement between the UK and the EU goes, the lighter the burden should be on the withdrawal agreement customs administration. We reported in March this year on the material available on the negotiating positions of the EU and the UK and compared them with the political declaration. The Committee will recall that both sides had moved their positions away from the mutually agreed, but admittedly not legally binding, political declaration.

While the gap looked quite wide in March, the British position was that everything that they were now asking for was precedentially to be found in other EU international agreements. The EU has pushed back on this with various arguments, and I do not want to rehearse them here, save for one comment made to me by a senior EU official this month. He said that the UK had selected the best-in-class precedents on each of the difficult topics. It is, however, greatly to the credit of the two negotiating teams that, despite the very short time period, the additional problems posed by Covid-19 and the non-discussion of some issues due to the EU tactic of parallelism, they got to the point at the start of September where the finish line was within sight, just about, albeit with a small number of the most difficult issues to be resolved.

As I said, my strong impression was of progress at the start of the month. Nothing was tied down—the principle of nothing is agreed until everything is agreed applies—but the key differences between the two sides in terms of the future relationship were boiled down to state aid and fish—difficult, but, one would think, manageable. What the internal market Bill has done is place trust at the centre of the debate. It raised the already high temperature but also took these two separate but linked strands, each of which is difficult in its own right, and combined them into a single strand. It has doubled both the stakes and the difficulty, and has done so in the most public and confrontational way possible. The glide path for this single strand is much harder to discern and, without a bit of calm on both sides, I fear the prospects of a mutually beneficial landing are not good.

We heard much on the progress of the talks from the Minister in his opening, and I thank him for that. He covered the Northern Ireland protocol in his speech and the internal market Bill provisions that have caused so much uproar. My only question for the Minister is: will he explain why the dispute resolution mechanisms in the withdrawal agreement were not a sufficient safety net so that this extra safety net was necessary?

In closing, I note that with so many challenges facing us, surely it is time for some old-fashioned diplomacy to bring the two great democratic sides together.

EU Exit: End of Transition Period

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, unfortunately, I could not hear absolutely clearly. I will say, first, that the advertising campaign will certainly be directed to both businesses and individuals. The right reverend Prelate makes the wise point that specialist advisers will be available to help; it will not be simply a question of looking at a website, although I think the government website is to be commended.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, the Statement says that the guidance for Northern Ireland is to be published

“in the coming weeks and on an ongoing basis throughout the transition period”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/7/20; col. 1270.]

We heard a bit from the Minister about “in the coming weeks”, but it is clear that Northern Ireland is far from being in the same position as the rest of the UK. Is it really the case that Northern Ireland business could be receiving vital guidance in December, as the wording of the Statement implies, and will Northern Ireland be able to take full advantage of the phased approach outlined in the Statement, given the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol?

[Lord True]

My Lords, the noble Earl rightly says that Northern Ireland is on a separate track and governed by a separate protocol. Discussions are ongoing, as I think he knows. There will, as I told the House, be further information later this month. I take note of the points he makes about the timescale. The Government are well aware of the need for clarity and proper dispatch in carrying this forward.