Brexit: UK-EU Movement of People (EUC Report)

Lord Eames Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, I join those who have paid tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, and her colleagues for an excellent report, which has dealt with some grey areas that troubled us all for a long time before its publication. While in my remarks I want to express a certain degree of disappointment, I congratulate the committee on the thoroughness of its efforts, and I believe that the report will withstand scrutiny in the days to come.

It is right when we discuss the movement of people that two words, immigration and emigration, dominate our thinking, and so it has turned out to be this afternoon. But there is another aspect to this problem, which we would be failing as a House if we did not take note of. Brexit will mean that the only land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union will be a line on the map of Ireland. As I have said in your Lordships’ House on frequent occasions, there is very much more involved in Brexit for the people of Northern Ireland than for any other part of the United Kingdom. That land border will assume immense significance, for economic, cultural and political reasons, for both the EU and the United Kingdom, but it will also become a significant issue in the movement of people.

I cannot overemphasise the importance of that land frontier for the citizens of the United Kingdom who live and work in Northern Ireland. I say again that it is they who will be on the front line when Brexit becomes reality. Nowhere else in the United Kingdom will the particular problems that we face and will face become as evident. Today, need I remind your Lordships, perception can become reality in an instant. There is a perception in Northern Ireland that, despite verbal reassurances, the particular needs of the border areas in Northern Ireland could take second place to the many international decisions to be reached in the current negotiations. Principal among those concerns is the movement of people, not only in terms of immigration or emigration but in terms of the lives that will be affected by the new significance of the land border between the United Kingdom and the EU. These are people who live in the border regions and whose families literally span the border—people whose work takes them across it every day of their lives, farmers whose work and land cross it, children whose journey to school makes the current border irrelevant.

In my conversations with the Irish Government on these issues, I have come across widespread sympathy for the concerns that I am expressing today. The understanding is that equal social and economic issues will arise on both sides of the land border. I know that that sympathy has been expressed to Her Majesty’s Government before the negotiations have begun. It remains to be seen how long that degree of co-operation and sympathy can be maintained, but it is vital because of the area that I am talking about.

In preparation for this debate, I went to the border town of Newry, which is the hub of activity for that region. In our own post-conflict society, it has become very significant because it has a higher proportion of immigrants living, working and bringing up their families than any other part of the border region. For them to be subjected to the sort of uncertainties that we are all conscious of—to be confronted by doubt and lack of clarity in their new home—is nothing short of a human tragedy.

On that visit to Newry, I met many people who, without exception, expressed concerns about freedom of movement. Of course, like all of us, they had worries about how trade will be with their EU neighbours in the Republic of Ireland. However, their principal worry by far centred on freedom of movement in everyday terms. That freedom is not being questioned by them on high-sounding, detailed constitutional grounds; they realise that those matters are beyond them. But they are asking about a way of life: ordinary people and their basic needs. If those needs and questions are ignored, Brexit becoming a reality might produce a host of problems that we have yet to prioritise.

I have studied this report very carefully, for obvious reasons. I appreciate the depths of its analysis, but I am disappointed to find that neither in the membership of the committee nor in its gathering of evidence is there recognition of the realities of the movement of people in the Irish border areas. Noble Lords may tell me that they are so unique they are not worth prioritising. Should they take that view, I would remind them that the problems that have arisen in my homeland over the years can very quickly become major issues for the United Kingdom as a whole.

Perhaps the Minister, in responding to the debate, will be able to reassure me and the people of the United Kingdom to whom I refer—the people who live in border areas. I ask her to recognise, and convey to Her Majesty’s Government, that these are not make-believe issues that I raise. They are urgent issues of a human nature which she and her colleagues will find are being looked at sympathetically by the Government of the Irish Republic. I hope she will also reassure the House that, having recognised the special nature of the problem I am raising, it will not be forgotten as the agreements and the negotiations continue.

Finally, more than emigration or immigration are involved in the movement of people and Brexit. There are other aspects to the freedom of movement after Brexit.