Windsor Framework (Constitutional Status of Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024

Debate between Lord Alderdice and Lord Empey

Tuesday 13th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alderdice (LD)]

My Lords, one of the strengths of your Lordships’ House is that it can look at legislation with a microscope and draw back and look at the larger picture. I want to try to do the latter for a few minutes.

There is not much doubt that the reason that we are addressing these statutory instruments, and indeed the wider question, is as a consequence of Brexit. Without Brexit, none of these issues would have been around. The majority of people in Northern Ireland did not vote for Brexit—they voted to remain—so when we talk about the people of Northern Ireland wanting this, that or the other, one of the things we should remember is that they did not want Brexit.

The consequences of Brexit were all known in advance. They were not all paid attention to in advance—some people did not want to see what the consequences were—but they were there to be seen. Ironically, the idea of Brexit was supposed to be that we would be free in the United Kingdom—whatever exactly that meant. But what do we find so many years later? That we cannot talk about anything at all without paying attention to Brexit and giving off about the fact that we cannot ignore the European Union and we wish we could. That is what I hear, but we cannot ignore it.

The reason for the protocol was not to address problems in Northern Ireland; it was—and I have said this many times—that a consequence of Brexit was to damage the relationship with the European Union and the United States. After a couple of Prime Ministers not making much of a show of things, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak realised that the key thing for him to do was to repair the relationships with Europe and the United States, because, despite all the talk of being able to have lots of agreements, co-operation and all sorts of things, it was not possible at all; you have to have relationships with these two powerful entities.

The idea that the wishes of some of the people of Northern Ireland should drive the interests and decisions of the British Prime Minister and the wider world is not very realistic. We end up having to address the reality and the consequences. We can be cross about it, and I understand that. We can feel let down, even betrayed, and I understand that. But in the real world there are consequences and we have to try to find some way of addressing them.

Another thing I have heard about is inclusivity. Of course, the Good Friday agreement was not inclusive, because the DUP and the UKUP, as it was at that time, walked out. They were not part of the Good Friday agreement; they never supported it. In fact, there was talk about the only thing that ever changed, but actually there were changes under the St Andrews agreement and they turned out to not be a very good idea in the long run for some of the people who wanted to see those changes. For example, it brought about the fact that we have a Sinn Féin First Minister, which is not something that some of the people who demanded changes would have wanted to see. We have to be very careful what we ask for.

It is also the case that the whole structure of the Good Friday agreement and the Assembly was not entirely inclusive. It included unionists and nationalists—and the noble Lord, Lord Bew, was talking about the two communities—but there is an emergent third community, which has a very strong view about things and which is not partisan unionist and not partisan nationalist. It takes a view that what we want to do is to find what is in the best interests of the people of Northern Ireland at the particular point when that generation is making a decision. At the moment, that may well be to stay within the United Kingdom, and in a generation or two generations’ time a different decision may be taken. It is not a partisan view, but the whole structure of the Assembly’s voting arrangements is not inclusive from that point of view.

Some people will not sign up for agreements—and almost all of us at one point or another do not want to sign up for an agreement—but the one thing we must understand is that, when we do not like an agreement or want an arrangement, the solution is not to bring down the whole system of government. If we do not agree with something in Westminster, we vote against it and we argue against it, and we try to persuade people of it, but we do not bring Westminster down, because that would bring chaos. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP have found ways of bringing down the structure of governance in Northern Ireland, and it has not made for a better life for the people of Northern Ireland or for more stability in Northern Ireland. We have to remember that. I say to the Minister, and to any future Minister on the other Benches who may have the responsibility, that we need to end the notion that, if you do not like what is happening, the solution in Northern Ireland is to bring down the whole system of government. Whatever else happens, we have to find a way of making sure that that does not happen.

I have a good deal of sympathy with some of the things that have been said on the other Benches, particularly the presentation by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds. There is a great deal of truth in what he says. Promises have been made, undertakings have been given and a certain spin has been presented about what is said in these documents, what the outcome of them is and so on. He is quite right. But the question is: what is the alternative?

I have said a number of times, in your Lordships’ House and in other places, that in my political judgment—we can all be wrong—the people who need a Northern Ireland Assembly most are the pro-union people of Northern Ireland. That is the only place where they will really have a platform to express their views and have their say. It is absolutely not an unlimited say, but at least it has the possibility of being expressed. That is why I have said, on a number of occasions, that, without an Assembly, there will be a drift towards what I have called de facto joint authority, not de jure—we will not see votes and things like that. What will happen? The people on this side of the water will find themselves wanting to co-operate with others who have a more powerful economy and position in the world than Northern Ireland on its own, and that is where the drift of politics will go.

I understand the protest and the anger, and that things do not look as they were meant to and so on. But there is a sense in which Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has tried to save unionist people from themselves, in a way, and from what some of them were trying to do. There is a limit to where protests can take you, and they can take you to the point of self-destruction. At some cost to his own skin, I suspect, Sir Jeffrey has pulled things back and said, “Look, this is the best I can get. I’ve tried really hard—I honestly have—and this is absolutely the best that I can do. You may not like it and you may be disappointed in it, but I’m trying to do the best for Northern Ireland”. I think he probably has done the best that he can do, and we have to see it in that context and in the wider and longer context: the question of what the relationships will be further down the line with this country, with our other neighbours, with a changing global economy, with a changing demography in Northern Ireland and with a changing set of views among the different groups of people in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is not a homogenous entity, and those people have to find a way of living together with their differences. That is a real challenge. The whole world has not found a way of living with difference, which why we are hurtling into the third global conflict at the moment. Actually, Northern Ireland is finding its way out of a conflict. It is an awful struggle, and it is very difficult and extremely painful, and it will not necessarily bring the outcome that any particular group wants. But now, and in the future, it is a place where people are not being killed, children are not being left fatherless and motherless, and parents are not frightened about their children going out for the evening because they might not come back. That is a change for the better.

For me, it is not the detail of these instruments but the symbolism that has given the possibility of getting stability within Northern Ireland, which is in the interests of all the people of Northern Ireland—albeit that almost every section and group has had to make some sacrifice and compromise in the interests of that better future.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and I will do a bit of both the things he mentioned: look at the detail and, I hope, look at the bigger picture. Northern Ireland has had to endure another two years of rudderless governance at a time of the worst cost of living crisis in living memory and of burgeoning waiting lists—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, will know that I have raised this issue so many times in this House.

I was always opposed to the boycott of the institutions at Stormont. For unionism to adopt Sinn Féin tactics never seemed to be a strategic good idea to me. Of course, I refer to the previous three-year collapse of Stormont brought about by republicans between 2017 and 2020. The big difference between those two periods of collapse has been the outcomes. Sinn Féin got what it wanted with the language legislation, while the DUP failed to shift the border in the Irish Sea, returning to Stormont with the protocol/Windsor Framework unaltered. All this chaos is due to the disastrously negotiated Brexit deal. None of the legislative contrivances before us tonight would have been necessary had we remained in the EU, or had there been a properly prepared and effectively negotiated departure of the UK from the EU.