Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (European Affairs Committee Sub-Committee Report)

Lord Bew Excerpts

Friday 20th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

I rise, as so many other noble Lords have done, to praise the work of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and his committee. I have attended several of the public sessions and have given evidence at a private session. Perhaps most remarkably, last Wednesday’s session from the pharmaceutical industry was really interesting about how we have not actually resolved the problem, as many people believe, of medicines yet for Northern Ireland. It was very important evidence, to which I hope the Government pay attention.

I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said today, but I want to add one thing. He ended by saying that Northern Ireland is part of the EU single market. It is also part of the UK single market, and the protocol commits the EU to respecting the functioning of the UK single market. It is a complicated matter, but it is right there in the protocol. How we do it is rather difficult, but it is there—it is part of the UK single market as well. That is the difficulty in making it work properly. It is not the GB single market but the UK single market.

Briefly, it is clear—and I was struck by the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan—that there are newly revitalised talks. On the day when the Northern Ireland protocol had Second Reading in this House, there was a regret amendment, and it was widely said across this House that the introduction of that Bill would doom those talks and be a most dreadfully provocative thing to happen. It is a matter of fact and an absolute certainty that that was not a correct line of argument. We are not at the point yet where we can say with confidence that there will be a workable deal, but the deal that there already has been on the transfer of data between the UK and the European Union is a sine qua non for a workable deal. Those are positive things, and we meet at a moment of much greater positivity than usual.

I wanted to say something else about my noble friend’s report, which is in many ways a landmark report. I give one reason for that. Every speaker so far has reflected the theme of the report—the democratic deficit. I remember when the May version of the protocol was published; there was not even a mention of the Northern Ireland Assembly, reflecting EU pressure. For six months or so there was an argument behind the scenes but, for a long while, legal officers of the May Government were under inquiry from journalists referring to the Matthews case in Gibraltar, which raises the question about how you can impose things top-down with no democratic assent. That case, which is very important in European law, was dismissed, and for six months there was a solid position—it was not a problem. We are now in a totally different world.

To be fair to the May Government, by about March 2019, in the Statement made by the Brexit Secretary on 12 March and made in this House by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, the position gradually changed. The move began towards accepting that there was a problem with democratic deficit, and there is now total consensus in this place. There were 200 or more MPs who voted for that Bill without worrying one bit about the total absence of democratic deficit. Now there is a new consensus, and I welcome it, but it is important to note that it is part of the development of an argument. As the report of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, says, it is important that the protocol in its eventual working be compliant with the Good Friday agreement. It was very hard to argue that for six months but, eventually, the Brexit Secretary in his Statement in the Commons on 12 March finally acknowledged that it was a reasonable request and a reasonable argument.

This report is a landmark: it represents a transformation of the terms of the debate on this subject as was. We owe it to the Irish officials, who spoke so honestly about the British negotiating defeat in 2017 and expressed their surprise publicly to Politico, and talked about the consequences of that humiliation. That was the function, above all, of the May Government effectively having lost the general election and being desperate to get into talks at any price. We owe it to the Taoiseach—and the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, referred to the fact that he said that the protocol was too strict, when many people in this House and many in the Northern Ireland Assembly were full implementers. The Taoiseach repeated it after the EU’s recent statement, saying that the protocol was still a thing; he repeated again that it was too strict. So we owe a lot to the honesty of Irish politicians and civil servants, but we are now in a new place. The quality of the work and the detail in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Jay, is excellent, and on the substantive matters it has achieved much and reflects much of the new reality.