Withdrawal Agreement (Windsor Framework and Governance) (Amendment) Regulations 2026

Debate between Lord Bew and Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick

Monday 14th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome this SI and am grateful to the Minister for introducing it so effectively and carefully. It is part of a process in which the Windsor Framework becomes more centre stage and the withdrawal agreement takes a step back. This is a vital process: the core of the Windsor Framework is to introduce more suppleness in facing up to the difficult question of Brexit. It is not perfect and there are many, many imperfections, but I think—this might not be a bad day to say it, following the meeting of the First Minister of Northern Ireland and the First Ministers of Wales and Scotland in Cardiff—that there is a danger, within Northern Ireland, of not coming to terms with the fact that the Windsor Framework has actually effected positive changes, and that this is part of the process.

A long time ago, there was a taskforce report following the 1985 Hillsborough agreement, signed by Margaret Thatcher—the noble Lord, Lord McCrea, will remember this. That was far more threatening and destabilising in its impact on Northern Ireland than anything in the Windsor Framework or the initial withdrawal agreement. The taskforce report represented a conclusion involving the two main unionist parties, after some period of rather sterile activism against the United Kingdom Government. It said that there was no set security or sanity in the junior partner in the United Kingdom being permanently estranged from the senior partner. The period since Brexit has opened up a similar period of estrangement, and it is time that this came to an end.

The crucial thing about the Windsor Framework, as underlined by the Minister’s remarks, is that it moves away from the very problematic commitment in the withdrawal Act that the British Government would foster an all-Ireland economy. How you would do that I was never quite sure, by the way, because the all-Ireland economy is based on a model condemned by Piketty, Krugman and Stiglitz—all Nobel Prize winners in economics—which is basically one of low tax for incoming American firms. It is difficult to do anyway. The point is that the Windsor Framework unhooks the British Government from a commitment to further the all-Ireland economy. In that sense, given the problematic aspect of the withdrawal agreement, many difficulties and flaws remain, but I welcome the fact that the Minister has come today and, essentially, refreshed certain aspects of the Windsor Framework. I am grateful to the Minister for her introduction.

[Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)]

My Lords, I am deeply grateful for being given permission to take part in this debate. I welcome these regulations, like I have welcomed the Windsor Framework on many occasions, because it deals with special arrangements to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland. I do not want to see borders anywhere between the UK and Ireland and between Northern Ireland and Britain. Therefore, it is important that the challenges and impediments presented by the Windsor Framework are ironed out—hence the appointment 18 months ago by the then Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, of the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, to deal with particular issues regarding implementation.

The noble Lord was fairly circumscribed in what he could do, but some of those recommendations looked at democratic scrutiny and the democratic deficit. He also proposed that Assembly Members on the Democratic Scrutiny Committee would have a greater amount of time for scrutiny. A committee that I am a member of, the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee, met the Democratic Scrutiny Committee on several occasions and it raised with us the lack of time that it has been given to do scrutiny, so I was very pleased when the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, proposed that the instrument would extend by five days the time by which that Democratic Scrutiny Committee of the Northern Ireland Assembly must vote on whether to hold an inquiry. That recommendation was accepted by the Government and now we are giving it legal effect. I welcome that.

I also ask this of my noble friend the Minister. Our Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee and the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, proposed a hub. I note that I am sitting beside my noble friend Lady Anderson, who has met me on that specific issue to seek an update on the hub. How far is it progressing and what work has been done already? When will there be a report to the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee and to your Lordships’ Chamber on the progress that has been made? In summary, I support this instrument and the changes that it seeks to introduce as they will bring greater accountability from the work carried out by the Democratic Scrutiny Committee.