Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Debate between Lord Browne of Belmont and Lord Judge

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judge (CB)]

I shall not help the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, out, but I will say that the next time we come to this Bill, I think we will find that Clause 22 is the most devastating of all the Henry VIII powers. As to this amendment, I hope the Committee will excuse me if I do not keep repeating what I have said and would go on saying. I thought of giving the Minister a sheet of paper for him to write on, but then I thought I had better take it away as he might keep it and write on it. That is my point.

[Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)]

I rise to speak to Amendment 22 and, indeed, all the other amendments. I am conscious that this amendment and others like it have been developed in response to concerns raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s report and, as such, are informed by growing concern about the Executive’s use of delegated legislation. In the context of the legislative challenges posed by Brexit and Covid-19, there has been increased use of delegated powers, which has concerned the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and given rise to two important reports, Democracy Denied? and Government by Diktat.

The basic thesis of these reports is that there is a growing democratic deficit arising from the fact that delegated legislation does not afford the same opportunity as primary legislation for parliamentarians to scrutinise its development. The point is not that the delegated legislation is always wrong but that to avoid creating a democratic deficit, wherein the representatives of the people in the legislature are afforded less opportunity to shape legislation than in primary legislation, the use of delegated legislation must be limited.

As a democrat, I applaud this general approach and believe it is imperative in a functioning democracy that the opportunities for people to shape legislation through their parliamentarians in the legislature are maximised. Of course, there are ways in which a democratic deficit has been felt in our politics other than overreliance on delegated decision. In truth, the reason we are considering the Bill at all is the concern about the democratic deficit at the heart of the EU project, which was undoubtedly one of the key drivers of Brexit.

Brexit has been applied in England, Scotland and Wales with the effect that the democratic deficit arising from EU membership has been fixed in those parts of the United Kingdom. Laws are now made for Great Britain by Great Britain, but the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland has not been fixed. It has not been alleviated, it has not even been left untouched and it has not been allowed simply to deteriorate. The underlying difficulties have instead been allowed to become total, such that rather than amounting to a widening of the deficit—a democratic shortfall—that shortfall has been replaced by something much more radical: the complete negation of democracy in relation to the development of 300 areas of law to which we are subject.

The protocol that Parliament imposed on Northern Ireland against the clear wishes of its unionist representatives was one that, rather than addressing the principal difficulty with EU membership for anyone raised in the Westminster political tradition, has made it infinitely worse. In this context, the significance of Amendment 22—and, indeed, all the amendments debated tonight—is that it introduces not a regulation-making power that is part of a process that represents a step backwards, but one that is a step forward.

Finally, to unpack this problem, rather than using my words, I will use some very powerful words of a man living in Northern Ireland who wrote to my noble friend Lord Morrow, who unfortunately is unable to be in his place tonight due to a family illness. This man expressed his dismay at the actions of some parliamentarians from outside Northern Ireland towards our problems. I will be quick and quote just a few passages from his letter.

He writes: “I am deeply concerned about the approach adopted by some Peers who are seeking to remove the regulation-making powers from the Northern Ireland protocol rendering it ineffective.” He goes on, very powerfully, “Anyone who does not understand what a significant, democratic step forward that will be for us in Northern Ireland is completely detached from the reality in which we live and clearly has no idea what it feels like to have your votes slashed, as ours have been. I find it shocking that some Peers seem so absorbed in their Westminster bubble battle against delegated legislation, supposedly in the name of concern for democracy, that they should have completely lost their sense of perspective such that they cannot see how inappropriate it is to oppose these regulations in the name of opposing a democratic deficit. If they wanted to have a fight about delegated legislation out of regard for a concern for democracy, this was the last context in which to do so. It is so striking that the democratically elected House did not pick this fight on this. I would urge you to call Peers to recognise how these regulation-making powers will help restore some much-needed parliamentary democracy in places where it has been completely taken from us and help restore what was promised in the Belfast agreement, namely our right ‘to pursue democratically national and political aspirations’. That right has been taken from us in the 300 areas of lawmaking. These regulation-making powers represent a first step in their restoration. Rather than opposing them in the name of democracy, Peers should examine these powers in context and celebrate them for what they are, a critical step in restoring democracy to Northern Ireland.”

By all means, declare war on regulation-making powers that reduce democratic scrutiny but, please, do not declare war on these regulation-making powers, which take a first, crucial step in its restoration.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Lord Browne of Belmont and Lord Judge

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Belmont]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention, but I understand that that was on a very narrow case of fatal foetal abnormality. I will address that matter shortly, which should answer his question.

The chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission recognised that the recommendations were non-binding in oral evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the other place when it was reviewing the law in Northern Ireland. Professor Mark Hill QC wrote an opinion about the CEDAW report, in which he stated:

“The Committee does not have the capacity or standing to give a binding adjudication on the United Kingdom’s obligations under CEDAW or on the proper interpretation of CEDAW”,


made the point that the International Court of Justice had not interpreted CEDAW as providing a right to abortion, and said:

“The interpretative function under the CEDAW is reserved, not to the Committee, but to the International Court of Justice.”


If this is not enough to convince your Lordships that the authority being given to this Committee is flawed, I shall quote from a Supreme Court judgment —R (A and B) v Secretary of State for Health—in which Lord Justice Wilson said:

“The conventions and the covenant to which the UK is a party carefully stop short of calling upon national authorities to make abortion services generally available. Some of the committees go further down that path. But, as a matter of international law, the authority of their recommendations is slight”.


Here we come to the case that the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, referred to. The judgment in that case stated:

“If the Supreme Court rules in the case of Sarah Ewart that there is a right in relation to fatal fetal abnormality, then that would create a very strong case for a small but important change to the law. It would not, however, create anything resembling a general right to abortion”.


Indeed, the basis for thinking that the court might support a right in relation to fatal foetal abnormality is what was said in relation to a case last year, in which the plaintiff did not have standing, so no rule was made. The court also gave another indication, to the effect that there is no human right to abortion on the basis of disability generally—something permitted in Great Britain.

Secondly, the medium of human rights is normally expressed as a check on the majority expressed through constitutional due process. This is highly ironic, given that the only reason we are here is the complete disregard of constitutional due process manifested last week in the other place, where we saw: dispensing with scope; debate being permitted in relation to out-of-scope issues that should have been the subject of their own Bill, even though the Bill before the House was being fast-tracked; and the imposition of a change on the part of the UK with the smallest population, and thus the smallest number of MPs, by MPs from outside Northern Ireland

The ethic that the end justifies the means is the kind of thing that constitutional checks are supposed to guard against, not encourage. If the proponents of Clause 9 press their case on the basis of the end justifying the means, as at present, that will cast a great shadow over the integrity of their human rights pretensions. If we want to live in a functioning union, by all means let us talk about human rights, but do not use them wrongly to suggest that there is a general right to abortion when no such right exists, and do not use them to dispense with the respect for constitutional due process, the presence of which can facilitate a functioning union, whereas disrespect for it will bring about its demise.

[Lord Judge (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I may be allowed two minutes to look at the provision that we are considering, which is Clause 3(6). What is proposed is,

“a review of the current legal framework on abortion in Northern Ireland with an analysis of how that … could be amended by Parliament … when there is no Executive”,

followed by these very important words, which I have not heard this afternoon,

“subject to a sunset clause to respect devolution”.

I read that to mean that whatever we may do, when there is an Assembly in Northern Ireland, it will be up to the Assembly to decide what the law should be in that country. It may revert to the law as it is now—but we hope that it will not.