Retained European Union Law

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, regulatory freedom is one of the advantages of Brexit, not one of the disadvantages. We now have a choice as to whether we proceed nationally in regulations and standards, if we wish to get ahead of other international bodies and organisations, or whether we wish to track other organisations’ rules. US regulations, European Union regulations, others’ regulations or national ones may be the best ones for this country in future, but we have the ability to make that choice now, and that is one of the advantages of Brexit.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, it is fair to say that the relationship between the EU and the UK has become very complicated, and that has been added to by the arrangements with the protocol. Would my noble friend be prepared to publish an organogram that would set out for us what all these committees are and who populates them, so that we have some grasp of the relationships between the EU and the UK, including the very complicated committee structure under the protocol?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I would be very happy to publish such an organogram—I think we will need an A2 or maybe an A1 piece of paper to get it all on. But it is still a lot less complicated than it was when we were a member of the European Union, and the arrangements still fit within the norms of a trade agreement. I appreciate that they are complex, and I am happy to try to make that as clear as we can in public.

EU Relations

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his advice; I am certainly taking it, in that we should carry on negotiating—that is what we are trying to do, including this week and, I hope, beyond it. I repeat that Article 16 is a legitimate provision within the protocol. It has already been exercised once, and we cannot be in a position where it is not possible to exercise a legitimate provision in the protocol. That is simply not a reasonable position to take.

On the question of Ireland, we have made clear—I have said in this House on a number of occasions—that we do not wish in any way to threaten Ireland’s place in the single market. Nothing that we have proposed would do that. We have proposed measures that would protect the single market while allowing trade to flow freely throughout the United Kingdom. We have no wish to do that and nothing in what we have proposed can be interpreted as such; I want to be absolutely clear on that point.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord succeeds in his negotiations but, irrespective of how many times he triggers Article 16, should that happen, it in no way replaces the protocol. In other words, there is the feeling in some unionist quarters in Northern Ireland that if we trigger Article 16, we will get a new deal. We are not getting a new treaty or a new protocol; we are merely amending it. It is a negotiation within it, so it is a mirage that triggering Article 16 is a solution.

Will the Minister also consider the fact that those of us who live there and have our political background there are, effectively, totally excluded from this process when we have solutions to put in place, based on the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, which would avoid a lot of the problems that we have currently? Would he be kind enough to address that and confirm that no triggering of Article 16 replaces the protocol?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. I have said before, and say again, that Article 16 is not an on/off switch for the protocol. It is not a sort of self-destruction mechanism for the protocol; it is a safeguard. There are constraints on what can be done with a safeguard. The legal limits of it are to be defined but, if you use Article 16, it is clear that you are left with a protocol with safeguards operating. That is why we find it so difficult to really understand the volcanic reaction that we get to the suggestion of using the safeguards provisions. It is a safeguard, and it is designed to support stability and ensure that the protocol fulfils its task of supporting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. If we do use the safeguard and Article 16, that will be the spirit in which we do so.

UK Cash Network

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, as a former member of the Select Committee on Financial Exclusion, so ably chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, I first endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, said about levelling up. Even though the statistics show a reduction in the number of those needing cash, people still become at the mercy of ruthless illegal moneylenders and others, and this is destroying lives. Can the Minister assure the House that he will keep pressure on the banks to ensure that there are effective and accessible services that allow these people access to the financial system, so that they can avoid all this desperation and the criminality that flows from it?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, basic bank accounts are one requirement of the banking system; the nine largest account providers are required to provide this to customers, and there are some 7 million basic accounts open with these providers. They are easier to open than ordinary bank accounts, and that facility remains available.

Brexit Opportunities

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I very much welcome that suggestion from my noble friend. It is an extremely good one and a reminder that in many cases, Governments of both parties opposed proposals that have now become law and to which we are supposed to reconcile ourselves. I will certainly take that up and see what we can find—within the limits of Civil Service record-keeping capacity, which may impose some limits on what we are able to do.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the issue with the protocol in Northern Ireland is not necessarily its operation but its existence; that is the basic problem. Will he confirm that large swathes of the law that he proposes to amend and change will not be possible in Northern Ireland? We had evidence at our committee yesterday to that effect. The gap between the two parts of the United Kingdom will increase, not decrease, as this process goes on.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

This is obviously a very significant issue and why we put forward the proposals that we have in the Command Paper to try to deal with the problem. Our proposals for dual standards for goods circulating in Northern Ireland and a different way to manage the governance of the arrangements would, we hope, deal with the anomalies that exist, but, of course, they remain to be negotiated. It is a very significant difficulty which we have debated frequently and hope to resolve.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland (EUC Report)

Lord Empey Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I join in congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, and the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, on chairing these committees. Although the principal committee’s report is over a year old, many of the issues that it pointed to on publication have come to pass. It has been an excellent reference document for those of us who are concerned with what is going on and, indeed, anticipated some of the problems. The noble Lord, Lord Jay, can take some pride in the fact that the sub-committee—a pretty diverse bunch—managed to get a unanimous report. We are therefore here to praise him, but perhaps the day will come, on subsequent reports, when we are here to denounce him, so we had better not get too carried away.

There is an interesting and significant point in the fact that people were able to agree this report. It illustrates that you can achieve something. Enough people in this room sat for years trying to negotiate what became the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. As it was possible to sort out some of those problems, which literally dealt with blood and guts, it is surely not beyond the bounds of possibility that we can sit down with our European partners and deal with this.

The whole thing was not properly thought through from the beginning and people did not grasp the significance of the relationship that we had built up with the European Union over 40-odd years. I am no spokesperson for the EU and do not believe in its federalist tendencies, but the fact is that this Parliament signed up to every single, solitary thing. In many respects, it did so carelessly. Being on the committee dealing with those matters in the other place was almost like being put in a sin bin. We agreed to things of far-reaching significance, which many in this Parliament did not fully appreciate. We are living with the consequences of that now.

To take a case in point, throughout the reports are many criticisms of the fundamental contradictions that exist in the Government’s position—from the point of the referendum to the present circumstances. I will just illustrate one, which our helpful Library note spells out from the start, in its first sentence:

“Under the terms of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland agreed between the EU and the UK as part of the Withdrawal Agreement, Northern Ireland has a unique status.”


That is the fundamental point: our status has changed. People can huff and puff, but that is a fact. It goes on:

“It is part of the UK’s customs territory but is subject to the EU’s customs code, VAT rules and single market rules for goods … SPS … rules to protect animal … health”,


et cetera. So it has changed. For proof of that, when some people decided to take legal action against the Government and challenge the protocol, what was the Government’s defence? “Oh, but we’ve changed the act of union” was their defence. That is being appealed and it would not be appropriate to comment further on it, but I am just making the point.

In parallel with that, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said in the earlier part of this year that there was no border. When he was interviewed later in the year, before the Summer Recess, he had to concede that it was a comment that had not aged well. It was nonsense when it was made and it is still nonsense. The Government have to be much more realistic about where they are. As a former colleague of mine in local government who made malapropisms from time to time said, the cows are coming home to roost. That is what is happening to us now. All these contradictions are confronting the business community and people who are trying to make a living. We as a country are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on providing mechanisms, through the trader arrangements, to deal with the paperwork and to try to keep businesses going. This is an unsustainable position.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, on numerous occasions used the word “trust”. We have to have a negotiation. We can call it whatever we like—discussions, chatting to the vice-president, or whatever it is—but we have to sit round the table. The European Union is our nearest and most significant trading partner. Looking at the world in the past few months, one can see the necessity for this. The EU was willing to play a significant part in solving our problems in Northern Ireland from the days of Jacques Delors, who was the first person to agree the funding streams that are still going on, so surely, with that sort of approach, it ought to be possible to get a negotiation going that will deal with the downstream consequences of all this.

Under these rules, we are effectively being treated as a third country. My noble friend Lord Caine was talking about Sainsbury’s sausages, but that is what he meant. What nonsense this is. Our committee was given statistics by Professor Shirlow of the University of Liverpool. He pointed out that trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland is equivalent to 0.0008% of European GDP and that only a very small proportion of that would be at risk of entering the EU single market. People on the island will know immediately if there is any attempt to flood the EU single market with inappropriate goods. My party has called for the law to change—I was delighted to see this in the Command Paper—to make it an offence to use the territory of the United Kingdom to send unregulated goods into the single market. That would send a signal to the EU and our traders that that is not something we will allow.

Other issues in the report and the Command Paper can be used as a strong basis. One thing stands in the way of taking the positives from this. If you are trying to get people to invest in the unique situation of having access to both markets, there is one roadblock, which is the requirement for the Assembly to approve it after four years. If you are going to market something to an inward investor, that is a huge roadblock. That is saying that there is a question mark over the investment before you even get started.

While we have that sort of arrangement, which is not satisfactory anyway, getting any gain or advantage will be hugely challenging. There could be potential, but we also have the democratic deficit. I think that the phrase used during the referendum was of a “vassal state”; well, we are the vassal region. We are taking rules over which we have no say or input whatever. It is a constitutional carbuncle. When my noble friend replies, can he tell me and the Committee on what basis did the Government attempt to establish what consent existed for the protocol? Who indicated consent for the core elements within it? How did they judge that?

What we should now be doing—I hope that our committee addresses this—is to encourage a dialogue, sitting down away from the war that goes on in the press. We are in a difficult period in Europe, with elections coming up for the French president and a new chancellor in Germany. These are important times. As my noble friend said, we risk instability in Belfast if we do not deal with this now. We have to sit down with our colleagues in Europe and settle this.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)]

Before the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, addresses us, I just let the Committee know that the noble Baroness, Lady Goudie, the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, and the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Bhatia, are not speaking today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am sure that the lure of a cup of tea was probably greater than the speech that I am about to finish, or that the Minister will provide as well.

The committees have done vital work but, so far, the Government have been unable to clarify a way forward. Perhaps not today—that might be too much to ask—but we look forward soon to the Minister providing answers to the question of what the future will look like for Northern Ireland and when we will see arrangements on a long-term, secure and predictable footing. As the noble Lord, Lord Wood of Anfield, said, the Government need to be candid—as candid as they can—about what the protocol does, as opposed to what the Government say or have said in the past it does. Does the Minister agree with the noble Lord that failing repeatedly to implement the protocol and having government by grace period is disastrous for the UK’s international reputation?

Various solutions have been proposed, but we all seem broadly to agree that a red line needs to be that any suggestions requiring border infrastructure on the island of Ireland should be disregarded. Many issues will have to be overcome, but I do not want to have to explain to the next generation of young people in Northern Ireland that a hard border, with all the consequences we fear that would bring, came about because this generation wanted the freedom to reduce food standards despite saying that they had no intention of reducing standards. As the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, said, regulatory sovereignty should not be prized at the expense of political stability. I realise that that is a very stark way of putting this. I expect the Minister will say we can have both—I do hope so—but it would be useful to know how he intends to do that.

I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, very much. It was really engaging. I was just saying to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, that I could listen to him all day.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

Everybody should say that.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am sure they do. He urged realism and pragmatism, and encouraged dialogue, and he is obviously right on all those points. We used to hear a lot of talk about technological solutions to this problem. Can the Minister update us on whether the Government are still pursuing those technological solutions and describe to us what they could involve?

The current situation of deadline followed by extension followed by deadline is a nightmare for business. Options are available: alignment, equivalence, domestic legislation. The choices we have are sometimes considered in a very rigid and limited way, posing alignment against equivalence. As the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, said, we need a bespoke solution for Northern Ireland.

The Government have rejected alignment, and the EU has rejected equivalence. That is fine, but we need flexibility and compromise, and, as we have heard repeatedly today, we need trust. We could introduce domestic legislation, for instance. What response have the Government had from the European Union to the option of imposing penalties on businesses which are found to have failed to comply with the rules?

In his speech at the British-Irish Association on 4 September, which was referred to by other contributors, the Minister said that these are

“existential issues of territory, of identity, of borders, all against a background of a peace process and institutions in Northern Ireland which can only bear so much weight … So we badly need to look reality full-on. To put our arrangements here onto a more durable and sustainable footing, one that represents genuinely mutual benefit”.

I welcome this. I could not agree more. This is the kind of approach that we need from the Government. I note that the tone from the European Union also seems to have changed in recent weeks. However, other than saying in the Command Paper that Article 13 of the protocol allows for subsequent agreements to replace it, the Minister does not really tell us what he thinks should be done. Still, this is a change of tone, and we should welcome it.

While we have the Minister here, I want to ask him about Article 10 of the protocol, which has not received much attention today. Can he provide the Committee with his assessment of whether, and in what circumstances, Article 10 has any impact on state subsidy in Great Britain, not just in Northern Ireland? What legal advice was sought before agreeing to Article 10? Did he know that restrictions on subsidy in Northern Ireland could “reach back”—which I think is the legal term used—into the rest of the UK? I ask this because not only because I am interested in the answer but because I know from the Command Paper that the Government think that Article 10 is now redundant. I can see why they would make that claim, but it reveals their approach to these negotiations. After all, the Prime Minister described the protocol at the time as an ingenious solution. Did he know when he made that comment that he was potentially compromising on state aid? If he did not, he really should have done.

The Government have an appetite for immediate gratification, agreeing things to get through the immediate crisis. This can work; we get it—

Northern Ireland Protocol

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we are obviously ready to work with anybody and plans are in train to encourage investment into Northern Ireland; I believe there are some events in prospect in the next few months. The noble Baroness is right to call the protocol an imperfect solution: I think it is very clear that it is imperfect. I would say, as she does, that much of the protocol is not in question. Issues such as the common travel area, human rights, the Good Friday agreement and so on are not controversial. What we must do is make sure that the trade and governance arrangements of the protocol work better, and the proposals we have put on the table work with the concepts in the protocol to try to achieve just that.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, today is not the day to enter into a discussion of how we got into this mess, but one fact is clear: the businesses and the people of Northern Ireland are the innocent victims of a situation which they did not create and did not want. With that in mind, I ask my noble friend: are we seriously, as a Government, going to look at real alternatives capable of resolving these issues within the concept of the Belfast agreement, which I believe has been completely demolished by the current protocol? We want new arrangements that are workable, coherent and long-lasting and will bring the stability that businesses and consumers in Northern Ireland urgently need.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I very much agree with the thrust of my noble friend’s comments. The proposals that we have put on the table are significant and pretty fundamental in the way that they would adjust the way the trading arrangements of the protocol work. They are intended to be durable and to do something significantly different from what is done now. As I say, we work, in these proposals, with concepts of the protocol; we have not swept it away. We do not agree that the right thing is simply to scrap the protocol and that nothing need fill its place. We believe that the right thing is to work with the grain and use the concepts, but use them to make sure that the arrangements work in a significantly different fashion.

Finance Bill

Lord Empey Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Forsyth referred to simplification. A 417-page Bill and 349 pages of Explanatory Notes to explain it—I know that most noble Lords will have read both from cover to cover—illustrates that we are not moving in the direction of simplification.

We now have a situation in this country where, because of our devolved settlements, significant economic barriers are being exercised in the devolved areas—particularly in Scotland, where taxation powers are broader than in the other devolved Administrations. But there is one thing that we are not doing: we are not explaining to the people in those regions where the money that the devolved Administrations spend comes from.

I have said before in this House that the devolved Administrations are a bit like giant ATM machines; when the cash stops coming out of the machine, those in the devolved areas simply say, “Well, Westminster didn’t give us enough”. We do not explain the arithmetic to the people in the devolved regions. That would not be a difficult exercise; all it would require would be for the Treasury, perhaps on an annual basis, to produce a short leaflet, or put it online, to show people where the money actually comes from. Local authorities often send out leaflets telling people how their taxes are spent but that does not happen nationally. There is a total absence of accountability to this Parliament for the funds given to the devolved Administrations. Vast sums of money are given over but there is absolutely no feedback or requirement to account for it. That is a perverse principle.

We talk about the pandemic and the rollout of the vaccines bringing our nation together, which I support and which is an excellent selling point. But when the biggest single element that affects the devolved Administrations is the money that they receive from the Treasury through block grants and Barnett consequentials, why do we not tell citizens in the devolved areas what the arithmetic is? It would not be a huge undertaking and it could be done on an annual basis. I suggest to my noble friend the Minister that the Chancellor might look at this. It is a simple exercise, but it would put in context what is actually going on in this country.

I want to refer to a matter that the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, raised on Clause 102, which deals with restrictions on the use of rebated diesel and biofuels. I mentioned the Explanatory Notes, at least some of which I have looked at. The background note at paragraph 33 states:

“This measure introduces changes that will remove the entitlement to use red diesel and rebated biodiesel from most sectors from April 2022 as part of the government’s strategy to meet the UK’s target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

That is a laudable aim but, as the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, mentioned, there is a perverse effect relating to our power suppliers in Northern Ireland. They are legally and contractually required to have distillate back-up in the event of a crash of the gas supply, because there is a single source of supply, called SNIP, which comes from Scotland to Larne, in County Antrim. If anything were to go wrong with that pipeline—which, thankfully, has not happened in all the years it has been operating—it is perfectly legitimate to require the people who generate our electricity to have that back-up. It is the only power supplier in these islands that has that legal requirement placed on it.

Distillate means red diesel, so the effect of the measure in the Bill would be that 12,000 tonnes of red diesel which does not need to be burned would have to be burned by April 2022 and replaced with another 12,000 tonnes of white diesel, simply because one has dye in it and the other has not. There is no technical difference between the two fuels—they are just the same, but one has red dye in it and one does not. The systems would have to be purged and because the number of tankers allowed to bring fuel in per day is limited to eight for environmental reasons, it would take between three and four months to purge and then replace. I am no climate expert, but we will produce an additional 23,000 tonnes of carbon that could be left sitting there because that fuel supply is only for an emergency and, fortunately, has not had to be used.

I appeal to the Minister to take this matter back to his colleagues. I have no doubt that the legal obligation for our power suppliers to have this back-up is one of those things that people had not realised—both the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, and I were Energy Ministers in Northern Ireland, and I do not know whether I enforced it or if it is his fault—but it was the right thing to do. It might even have been the Deputy Speaker’s fault, because he was there before I was.

So I think it is just one of those things that had not been picked up, but its effects would be negative and perverse. It would mean extra costs for the consumer and have significant implications for our power suppliers because we are in an all-island market now; there is no similar requirement for power suppliers in the Republic of Ireland to have such a back-up, so they will automatically be more competitive when they are bidding to generate electricity to go into the grid. I appeal to the Minister to be kind enough to take this matter back to his colleagues and explain the difficulties. I am sure they can be dealt with and overcome.

I support the general principle, although there is no question that red diesel is abused. I also make the point that paramilitaries have been smuggling such products for 20 years—reasonably successfully so far, from their point of view—so to penalise the electricity consumer through no fault of their own would be perverse in the extreme.

By the way, it would be interesting to know—the Minister may not know this or he may not have the information at his disposal today, but he can let me know—if in fact he received any representations from the relevant department in the Northern Ireland Executive and, if so, when.

On a broader, general point, very few people in any of our lifetimes have seen anything like the last 18 months. There is no doubt that the Chancellor has been very vigorous in his attempts to ensure that our industries do not collapse, but I have to say to him that one industry that is in severe trouble, as the Minister will know, is the aviation and aerospace sector. I am a member of the APPG on Aerospace, and we had a well-attended meeting with the Minister, Robert Courts, just before I came into the Chamber. The sector is in despair because of the chopping and changing.

Aerospace is one of the key providers of high-quality jobs in the UK—over 100,000 of them, highly skilled and highly paid. It also provides apprenticeships, which are vital for the future. The uncertainties and the on/off process that is unfolding before us make it very difficult. Orders for aircraft have, naturally, gone down dramatically. We need more investment in reducing fuels, developing alternative means of propulsion and so on, but at present that whole supply chain is in dire straits. It is propped up by the furlough scheme, but that will not last for ever.

I appeal to the Government to get their house in order with regard to the aviation sector, and that means deciding when people can move around. I know these issues are difficult, but I have to say that a lot of the very good work that has been done is at serious risk of leading to high job losses. It is an area where this country in particular already has great leadership potential. In aerospace we are number two in the world, and there are not too many sectors of our economy about which we can say that. I appeal to the Minister to ensure that we protect this sector, which is so vital to the UK’s economy.

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Pitkeathley) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has withdrawn, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I certainly agree that it seems curious to us that there needs to be extensive process paperwork as well as the possibility of checks for goods that do not present any risk of moving into the EU’s single market. Obviously we agree that it is important to protect the integrity of the EU’s single market, but that needs to be done on a sensible risk-based basis. It was because of concerns such as this that we had to extend the grace period relating to supermarkets earlier this year, as is well-known, and why we remain concerned that a permanent solution to this problem has not been found yet.

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

My noble friend the Minister will be aware of the report from Marks and Spencer yesterday which revealed the cost to that company of its operations on both sides of the Irish border. This huge, undemocratic and bureaucratic superstructure we have created is surely totally out of proportion to the tiny amount of trade, in European terms, that flows across the Irish border. Will my noble friend and the colleagues he is negotiating with at the EU seriously talk to some people about realistic alternatives that achieve the objective of protecting the single market but do not cause the divisions within the United Kingdom that this protocol has caused?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we looked very closely, obviously, at the report from Marks and Spencer earlier this week and the costs that it has identified as being connected to the protocol. It is important to note that, although it is sometimes said that we are not trying to implement the protocol, in fact both companies and this Government have shouldered very considerable costs trying to do so—both in the private sector and, for us, in the trader support scheme, movement assistance scheme and so on. All of that is having a chilling effect on the ability to move goods across the whole of the UK, which is causing so much difficulty, so we need to find a realistic and lower-cost, risk-based approach to doing this. That is what we hoped to see and we continue to hope that we can agree with the European Union.

Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 29th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy to assure my noble friend that this Government’s intention is that Northern Ireland will benefit fully from the great trade deals we have agreed and those coming in future, which we are currently negotiating; that intention is clear in the protocol. Unfortunately, because of legislation passed by the EU, Northern Ireland does not benefit from certain TRQs in the same way as the rest of the UK. This is one of the issues that we are discussing with the Commission at the moment. We are making progress on that and I am hopeful of a satisfactory resolution.

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

My noble friend will be aware that, this week, considerable political instability was introduced into Stormont, in part because of the introduction of the protocol. Can he assure us that he is encouraging his counterparts in the European Union to engage with those who know something about the Belfast/Good Friday agreement? It is perfectly obvious that they do not really have a grasp on its balance and purpose. Can he also assure us that he is prepared to meet some of us to discuss this subject?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I assure my noble friend that we very much encourage the Commission—at all levels, from Vice-President Šefčovič and his team down—to engage with those who have experience of the negotiation of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement and everything that followed from it. We do everything we can to drive home the importance of protecting it as central to stability in Northern Ireland. Of course, I will be happy to meet my noble friend and colleagues to discuss this further.

Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rate

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, we have always been a Government who want to reduce taxation wherever possible. However, the Government have been very active in dealing with the abuse of corporate taxation over the last few years—for example, with the corporate interest restriction rules, which prevent multinationals from avoiding tax using financing arrangements, raising £1 billion a year since 2017. Other examples are the diverted profits tax, which has led to an additional £5 billion by countering aggressive tax planning, and the tax charge on offshore receipts in respect of intangible property, which is forecast to raise £1 billion a year.

[Lord Empey (UUP) [V]]

Since we left the European Union, the Government say that we must retain control over our money and laws. Is there a danger that we could end up replacing one group of people who are able to tell us what we can and cannot do with our money and laws with another group, other than the European Union? In such circumstances, is there a risk that the United Kingdom actually restricts its freedom and ability to control its own economy?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

I am not sure whether the noble Lord is referring to the move by the American Government to put forward their own propositions on international tax reform, but it is important to clarify that the US Government are following the G7 work that has been done on pillars 1 and 2. It is rather good news that they are engaging in a much more front-footed way than happened under the previous Administration.