North Belfast: Violent Attack
Lord Caine Excerpts(5 days, 17 hours ago)
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Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, the barbaric attack in north Belfast on Monday evening was truly sickening and our thoughts are with the victim. Will the Minister join me in commending the bravery of the public who intervened and the swift response of the Police Service of Northern Ireland? Does she agree that nothing justifies the violence we saw overnight? We are all angry. The right response, however, is not uncontrolled rage but to allow the law to take its proper course. In early 2024, the Irish Government were quick to raise concerns over migrants entering their jurisdiction through Northern Ireland. Can the Minister tell us what conversations are taking place to prevent migrants coming into Ireland from other safe EU countries that are in the Schengen area and then exploiting the common travel area to claim asylum here in the United Kingdom?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent) (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his comments with regard to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. I think that anyone who has watched the news in the last 36 hours can only be in awe of and very grateful to the chief constable, Jon Boutcher, and the brave men and women who are serving in all our emergency services, but especially the PSNI. I put on record the thanks of the whole House to those extraordinarily brave bystanders who chose not to look the other way but intervened very bravely to save a member of their community.
With regard to the specific question that the noble Lord raises on common travel area, he will be as aware as I am that the common travel area has been in operation for a century and is regularly a matter of conversation for both the British and Irish Governments; that continues to be the case and has been so this week. I think it is helpful for Members of your Lordships’ House to know that, in the last 12 months, 1,500 enforcement operations took place in relation to illegal immigration in Northern Ireland, with more than 1,200 arrests. This is something that this Government take very seriously.
Supreme Court Dillon Judgment
Lord Caine Excerpts(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for making herself available today to take this Statement and answer questions on the important Supreme Court judgment; I appreciate that she has a very busy portfolio, so I am grateful.
Can the Minister tell the House what the urgency was that required the Secretary of State to make his Statement in the other place last Thursday when many of Northern Ireland’s MPs, along with members of the Northern Ireland Select Committee, were attending the Balmoral agricultural show? One can only speculate as to what would motivate the Government to make a Statement on a day when they would have known that a significant number of interested MPs would be unable to attend.
Turning to the judgment, the Opposition welcome that the court found in favour of the Government in respect of article 2 of the Windsor Framework. I remind the House that this relates to measures introduced by the previous Government, of which I was a member. The appeal in this area is a continuation of the one we lodged following the High Court judgment of February 2024. We were always very clear that the human rights protections in the Windsor Framework were intended to cover those specific to Northern Ireland, as set out in the rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity section of the Belfast agreement 1998. It was never our intention that article 2 of the framework should apply more broadly than that and enable the courts to disapply primary legislation where they believe it engages provisions of EU law that no longer apply in Northern Ireland.
However, as the Statement points out, the judgments in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal had implications for the effective implementation of government legislation on a UK-wide basis, not just in areas of national security as the Statement refers to but also, for example, in tackling illegal migration. We are naturally pleased, therefore, that the position we took has now been vindicated.
Turning to the issue of conditional immunity, I regret that the Statement continues the current Government’s wilful mischaracterisation of what is contained in the 2023 Act. There was never a general immunity—to which I would emphatically have never agreed—but a conditional scheme in relation to specific cases where an individual co-operates fully with the commission, with tough sanctions including revocation, fines and possible prosecution where somebody knowingly sought to mislead or hide the truth. The effects would have been to facilitate information recovery, helping to provide answers to victims and survivors while ensuring that individuals, including veterans, could speak freely without fear of further consequences.
Notwithstanding what it says about ECHR compatibility, which is more nuanced than the Statement implies, the court’s judgment is also clear that the immunity provisions in the 2023 Act do not breach article 2 of the Windsor Framework and therefore do not need to be disapplied. Can the Minister confirm this is the case and that, as the law currently stands, any veteran engaging fully with the commission could apply for conditional immunity and this could be granted? Does it not also follow that the decision by the Government to use the Human Rights Act to remove these provisions is a political choice, rather than a legal requirement, and one that will once again lead to the prospect of investigations and prosecutions? It is a political choice that will not be lost on so many of those who served to keep people safe and secure from terrorism during 30 years of Operation Banner.
The court also ruled that the current commission can carry out investigations to an article 2 and 3 standard and can operate independently of the Secretary of State—not least in part thanks to the amendments passed in your Lordships’ House. Does this not render the sweeping changes in the Government’s own Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, which had its Second Reading in the other place as far back as November and has not yet had its Committee stage, almost completely unnecessary? We all know that the reason for the delay has been an impasse between the Northern Ireland Office and the Ministry of Defence over additional protections for veterans after the ones announced last September were shown to be wholly inadequate, with all but one applying in equal measure to paramilitaries. Can the Minister tell the House whether these new protections have now been agreed and, if so, when they will be published? Have they been backed by the Dublin Government, who have been seen by many as driving this process, over which they have effectively given themselves a veto?
The commission that was established in 2024 has, from a standing start, so far received requests from 290 individuals from all parts of the community. It is conducting 123 live investigations, involving approximately 200 deaths, with its first reports expected imminently. Rather than burdening this House with yet more unnecessary legislation, the Government should get behind the commission and ensure that it has the tools to do its job. Instead, they have made the political choice to embark on a course that will once again leave veterans exposed, facilitate the republican rewrite of history and, regrettably, only delay the provision of answers for so many victims and survivors of the Troubles.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for dealing with questions following last Thursday’s Statement from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. The judgment is undoubtedly a complex one, but we believe it firmly vindicates the many concerns that were raised during the passage of the previous Conservative Government’s Bill in your Lordships’ House, as well as elsewhere, about the immunity provisions contained in the 2023 Act.
From these Benches, we consistently opposed the unacceptable equivalence that the immunity provisions made between terrorists and those who had served the Crown in Northern Ireland. It was this position of equivalence that led to all political parties in Northern Ireland—we should not forget—victims and survivors’ groups, as well as many veterans in Northern Ireland, opposing it. Although those provisions never came into force and were not before the Supreme Court in this case, I know that the Minister is all too aware that there remain many concerns about both the remedial order and the Troubles Bill among veterans’ organisations. The Supreme Court’s ruling makes getting those protections right more urgent, not less.
The court confirmed that the ICRIR’s design is not fatally flawed in principle, but only by deferring key questions to be resolved case by case. That approach creates precisely the uncertainty that veterans fear most of all, particularly given the inherent evidential disadvantage they face. Dillon has not resolved these questions; it has simply postponed them. We believe that that makes it even more important that the protections built into the Troubles Bill are robust and clearly defined from the outset.
Last week, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said that protections for veterans
“will be published in advance of Committee”—[Official Report, Commons, 14/5/26; col. 146.]
in the House of Commons. Can the Minister confirm that these provisions to protect our veterans will also be shared with noble Lords, and that our views and concerns will also be taken into consideration? Can the Minister also confirm that these will be real and substantial protections that recognise that there is not, and never should be, equivalence between those who serve our country and those who have committed terrorist atrocities? The judgment clearly has consequences beyond this case alone. Can the Minister say what she believes the wider implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling on article 2 of the Windsor Framework will be for both Northern Ireland and the Government’s ability to legislate going forward?
Finally, does the Minister agree that, in all the heat and fury surrounding these issues, it is vital not to forget the families, victims and survivors, who simply want to know the truth of what happened to their loved ones and to have some prospect of justice? I had the privilege of visiting the Wave Trauma Centre in Belfast recently. Speaking to a small group of victims and survivors was deeply moving. They just want to have hope that, after all these years of waiting, they might have answers and some sense of closure. Does the Minister also agree that it is equally important that this process does not lose sight of the objective of long-term reconciliation, including measures to promote genuine cross-country understanding, such as measures to advance integrated education?
Northern Ireland After Brexit (Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee Report)
Lord Caine Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Caine (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure, on behalf of the Official Opposition, to congratulate the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee, so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, on producing such a comprehensive and stimulating report. In addition, I put on record our thanks to the distinguished former Secretary of State the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, for conducting his independent review of the Windsor Framework, commissioned following the democratic consent vote in the Assembly in December 2024. Both the committee’s report and the noble Lord’s review contain a number of important recommendations that complement each other and which should be read side by side.
It was a privilege to be a Northern Ireland Office Minister when both the Windsor Framework and the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper were negotiated and published. As such, I was responsible for—some might say guilty of—taking a number of the measures contained in both documents through your Lordships’ House, including the Stormont brake, to which reference has been made today and which I genuinely hope that I did not try to oversell.
Like my noble friend Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee, I, too, would not start from here. However, the origins of the Windsor Framework were of course in the desire of the previous Government to deal with the consequences of the flawed and highly defective protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland that had been negotiated in October 2019—although I am of course fully aware of the context in which that negotiation took place. Within a short space of time from the coming into force of the protocol in January 2021, those consequences had become all too apparent. As I put it in a debate in Grand Committee on 13 September 2021, while a member of the former sub-committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme:
“It has disrupted trade, damaged businesses, hit consumers and contributed to growing political instability … we now risk rushing headlong into a full-blown political crisis from which the institutions established under the 1998 agreement could take years to recover”.—[Official Report, 13/9/21; col. GC 253.]
That crisis manifested itself only a few short months later, in February 2022, when the DUP First Minister resigned, triggering the collapse of the institutions—I should add, just weeks after I had taken through legislation as a Minister, part of which was designed to make it more difficult for that to happen. Instead, and as a result of the DUP’s decision, devolved government ceased to function for another two years.
The Windsor Framework was, therefore, an attempt—a valiant one, in my view—by the Sunak Government to address these issues, motivated, as I can assure noble Lords, by a desire significantly to reduce checks on goods that the protocol had introduced, protect Northern Ireland’s position within the UK internal market, and of course copper-fasten Northern Ireland’s place as an integral part of our United Kingdom. Taken with the subsequent Command Paper, Safeguarding the Union, in January 2024, it ameliorated some of the worst impacts of the protocol. It has led to the freer flow of goods coming from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and vice versa, while at the same time ensuring that Northern Ireland has unfettered access to the EU single market—a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick—so vital for industries such as the agri-food sector. In addition, both the framework and Safeguarding the Union in particular facilitated the restoration of devolved government at Stormont in February 2024—and we should not lose sight of the importance of that.
However, that is only one side of the story. When I took the Stormont brake regulations through your Lordships’ House, I said, rather too candidly for the Cabinet Office officials, who sought to censor my speech, that
“the Windsor Framework is not a perfect document”,
but that it
“represents very significant improvements on the old protocol negotiated in 2019”.—[Official Report, 29/3/23; col. 318.]
Taken alongside Safeguarding the Union, I still hold to that view. However, I fully accept that we clearly did not get everything right or solve every problem—although, given the unfortunate history of the protocol and the joint report of December 2017, it might be argued that it was the best we could have achieved in the circumstances. Anyone with experience of dealing with the EU, of which there are a number in the Committee today, will testify as to just how difficult it can be to persuade the Commission even to consider reopening agreements, especially ones that have only recently been reached.
As a number of noble Lords have pointed out, despite our best endeavours as a Government, significant problems remain. There is clear evidence of trade diversion, and my noble friend Lady Foster of Aghadrumsee highlighted figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency just this month that I was going to cite in full to support this. What consideration are the Government giving to the sensible proposals put forward by the Road Haulage Association that could reduce the burdens deterring operators from moving goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland? I agree that a trusted haulier scheme, also endorsed by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, lifting the existing £2 million turnover threshold for the inclusion of SMEs into the UK internal market scheme—and, crucially, moving the determination of at-risk goods from the point of entry into Northern Ireland to the point of sale—would be important and welcome measures. My noble friend Lord Elliott of Ballinamallard also raised significant problems around the movement of agricultural machinery and ongoing problems over veterinary medicines.
On democratic scrutiny, whatever the measures to improve this in the Windsor Framework and Safeguarding the Union, such as the Stormont brake and the applicability Motion, it is at least arguable—I put it mildly—that these have not necessarily worked as effectively or strongly as we might have hoped at the time. As a result, as many noble Lords pointed out, Northern Ireland, uniquely in the United Kingdom, has to accept and implement laws put forward by a supranational body of which we are not a member and over the shaping of which it still has little or no influence. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds of Duncairn, put that point powerfully in his contribution, as did the noble Lord, Lord Hain.
We have never taken the view that the Windsor Framework was the final word or beyond improvement in what is an evolving or, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, put it, dynamic situation. We will always look at constructive proposals for change and reform. It is in that spirit that the Opposition approach both the committee’s report and the independent review. I will confine my comments to a few of the recommendations.
I fully accept what the report describes as the “labyrinthine complexity” of the arrangements under the framework, highlighted graphically by the impenetrable charts on pages 24 and 25, to which the noble Lords, Lord Carlile and Lord Jay, drew attention. Like my noble friend Lady Sanderson of Welton, I sometimes wonder how a party whose instinct is, or at least always should be, to make life for business and consumers easier could have settled for such a mind-boggling set of arrangements.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Empey, who said that we had gone completely OTT on this, and with my noble friend Lord Lilley, who described the current arrangements as a “sledgehammer to crack a nut”—a phrase I used in the debate to which I referred earlier, in 2021. There must surely, therefore, be scope to streamline and reduce the number of bodies involved in the implementation of the framework, and anything that simplifies matters for business, particularly for SMEs—which are the overwhelming majority in Northern Ireland—has to be welcomed.
Like everyone else who spoke, we particularly support, therefore, the establishment of the one-stop shop, also recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, as a place where business can seek advice and support to assist with problems that arise during the course of its trade and transactions. I strongly agree with the points transmitted to the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, in this respect. Like others, I invite the Minister to give an update on progress towards establishing that one-stop shop when she winds.
The Government have accepted that the Democratic Scrutiny Committee should have more time to decide whether to launch an inquiry into replacement EU legislation, and will legislate when parliamentary time allows. Can the noble Baroness give us an assurance that this will take place in the next Session, which we anticipate beginning in May?
On commitments in Safeguarding the Union, which is covered by the committee’s report, will the Minister commit both to the long-term funding and longevity of the principal bodies established under the Command Paper: the independent monitoring panel, InterTrade UK and the east-west council? Can she also tell the Committee what is the status of the pledge in Annex B of Safeguarding the Union to publish a series of papers by sector that highlight the benefits of Northern Ireland’s place within the union? This is something that I have pursued through Written Questions but, sadly, the replies have been hardly enlightening.
Time prevents me from commenting on the so-called reset and proposed future dynamic alignment, although these will obviously have significant implications.
In conclusion, the recommendations in both the committee’s report and the review from the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, are to be welcomed. They are overwhelmingly positive and should, if taken forward, make a number of improvements to the operation of the framework, including maximising Northern Ireland’s influence in Brussels and ending a number of the complexities regarding the current arrangements. But looking ahead, it is clear that at some point more fundamental changes are going to be needed to deal with the outstanding problems, and a number of noble Lords, not least my noble friend Lord Lilley, put forward suggestions in that respect. As a constructive Opposition, we are open to ideas and meaningful dialogue with all interested parties and organisations as to how this might be done, consistent always with the economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, which we hold so dear.