Brexit: UK-Irish Relations

Lord Bew Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Jay for his speech introducing this debate today. It was very skilful and very important. I cannot stop myself saying that I am not sure how often we hear David Davis supported in his view, that the border issues cannot be sorted out in absence of the trade issues being sorted out, by my noble friend Lord Jay and the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, in the same debate in the House of Lords. I think that is definitely a first: David Davis is not used to quite that range and quality of support on European issues. What they both said is, by the way, absolutely true. I also add my good wishes for the recovery of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell.

I voted yes in the referendum, even though I was very sympathetic to my English family’s arguments for leaving the European Union and thought they had many good arguments. I wanted to stay within the European Union, I was a remainer, simply because I thought it would be very destabilising for the island of Ireland. In fact, Brexit has been indisputably destabilising for the island of Ireland. For Sinn Fein it has been a marvellous thing: the days are long gone, but I am old enough to remember, as I think is the noble Lord, Lord Empey, when the slogan of the previous leader of Sinn Fein, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, was, “Don’t replace the British jack-boot with the EU cheque-book”. That principle, for what it is worth, has been entirely lost now in modern Irish politics.

Mind you, I am also old enough to remember when the defining principle for Irish life was, “We are the largest English-speaking Catholic country in the world. We may not be the largest Catholic country, but we are the largest English-speaking Catholic country—that is our mission”. Today I discovered that the mission really is, “We are the largest English-speaking country in the European Union”. That is another transformation over the generations.

However, it has been a marvellous thing for Sinn Fein, whose vote has gone up, and even the most modern Irish nationalist tends to see Brexit as an irrational act of self-harm by Britain. All over the island, that will be held. What is hidden from that discussion is that it is also a deep, deep threat, especially with the way the European Union is handling it, to the future of the Irish economy. It is therefore a fear as well. I wanted to stress the point that I was a remainer in order to put in context my great unease about the way the European Union is handling the Irish issue at the moment.

Turning to our own paper, the suggestion seems to be perfectly reasonable that the British and Irish Governments should get together and work out an appropriate solution with the European Union. We all know why that is not happening. We all know why so many things are not happening. It is because they do not fit with the framework of European law and are not being supported by the European Union. Here, I also have to say something very important. The great strength of the document that my noble friend Lord Jay introduced today is its insistence on the depth of the British-Irish relationship and how profound it is. That is not understood in Europe. It is therefore creating a consequence in the way they are handling or talking about these issues. Then they are surprised, in the last two weeks, when something that they thought they could use as a stick to twig the British with does not work quite like that; it is a bit more complicated than that. That is because they have not thought about what that relationship really is.

The crucial thing here—let us take a simple figure—is that there are 600,000 Irish citizens living in Britain. The number of Irish citizens living in another European country, one with which it has great associations, France, is fewer than 10,000. This is the crucial place for Ireland. Ireland has all kinds of political reasons not to talk too much about that, but that is the simple reality. If we had said, in the document that has been much criticised, that the common travel area is something we are not going to defend, the consequences for Ireland would have been disastrous. We received no credit for taking a liberal and decent position on this, but it is worth saying that it was important that we took that position.

We have to be aware of a difficulty here, which is that Ireland is now between a rock and a hard place, in that the European Union is not being particularly sympathetic to many of its real concerns but is being sympathetic about something which is not that important: the border. To be absolutely honest, this matter of individuals and the border will be sorted. I am delighted to discover that some people who regarded smuggling as morally not an easy matter but something you had to live with, when it was for the peace process, now discover that, when it is a consequence of Brexit, it is the worst thing that could ever possibly happen in the world; these moral developments are all part of the rich tapestry of modern life. None the less, the crucial thing is the impact on the full Irish economy. If I see another television report of a farmer saying, “Here’s my farm, here’s my bit of land; this is in the UK and that bit is in the Republic”, I am going to be ill. Television reporters love it because it is a dramatic image, a simple image, but the real issue is what is happening to the Irish economy as a consequence of Brexit.

Increasingly, by the way, Irish commentators say, “We are talking far too much about the border; let us face up to the real issue”. The real issue is the agri-food industry, which is mentioned in the Lords report. Since the report came out, three major authorities in Dublin—the Central Bank of Ireland, the much-respected Economic and Social Research Institute and the Irish Department of Finance—have all said there will be a major contraction in that sector if there is anything approaching a hard Brexit. It will be particularly hard also on Irish SMEs, which are locked into the UK. It is as simple as that. They are talking about 40,000 job losses. This is the real Ireland. This is the heart of Irish society we are talking about here.

The Irish Government are taking a gamble on their foreign direct investment sector. They are going to gamble that the European Union is never going to deliver on what it is trying to do. We have seen a €9 billion fine already, on one particular tax deal, coming from the European Union. They are going to gamble that Mr Trump, who was talking last month about getting thousands of jobs back from Ireland, is not going to deliver on that either. That may well be true. They might win both gambles. They need to be lucky, but they have a good chance. They have made a decision that foreign direct investment is the sector. It has created 13,000 jobs in recent months. There are some problems, such as big pharma firms. Ireland is the main exporter into the US of pharmaceutical products—made by American firms in Ireland and reimported. This is what Mr Trump says he does not like and some of these firms are holding back. But by and large, the decision is made, and it is a decision which makes Dublin even more the city-state that it is becoming. That is the modern Ireland, against a more traditional Ireland where the social life of much of Ireland is.

No wonder the Irish Government resent us for forcing this decision upon them, but we should not treat statements from them, which are frequently cries of pain, as if they are always considered statesmanlike compared with the absurdities of our own Ministers; nor the way they talk about their relationship with the European Union, where they are in a very difficult position—they want to stay in but have to go along with what the European Union says about these matters. For example, Mr Flanagan, the Foreign Minister, said recently that Ireland is part of the EU family and the British are our colleagues. But by any definition of family, any definition of DNA, we are the family; by any definition at all—including that we quarrel, including that there is money involved. We are up against the deep texture of our relationship with Ireland and a European Union which does not quite understand it; it does not understand why the Irish Chief Whip is now saying that Ireland will need extra support from Europe if there is a hard Brexit. Its view is that it wants to get more money out of Ireland to replace the British money.

These are the sorts of things we should be talking about, not a farmer’s bit of land one side of the border or the other. These are the real difficulties that we now face. If the European Union strategy pushes us into a hard Brexit—if there is no civilised compromise—the consequences for Ireland and then for the European Union will be very unpleasant indeed.