European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Empey and Baroness Kennedy of Shaws

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey]

I understand what the noble Lord is saying perfectly well. To put this into context, my party supported remain in the referendum, on a free vote. We cited two things: Scotland and the border. I have had this discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I am not a Europhile at all—I never have been, even though I spent eight years in Brussels on the Committee of the Regions, very minor body that it is. I have some sense of the EU. But a vote has taken place, and we accept the outworkings of that vote. We are trying to get on with it and to find a solution that works for all of us.

When we talk about “the” border we must remember that it is not confined to the island of Ireland. The primary bit of the border between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland is actually between Dublin and Holyhead, Rosslare and Fishguard—it is in Wales. That is where the vast majority of the problem lies, and where the bulk of the goods go in order to use Great Britain as a land bridge. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, mentioned that a very large percentage of goods that travel via Northern Ireland go to Great Britain. These are goods in transit.

Noble Lords need to appreciate what we are talking about in terms of scale. In this amendment we use the phrase, “all-island economy”. I was privileged to serve as Trade Minister and Energy Minister, and I was the Northern Ireland Minister who established InterTradeIreland, which is designed to promote trade. On taking office, I discovered that neither the United Kingdom nor the Irish Republic could agree on the amount of trade that they do, and that is still the case. In 2015, the Central Statistics Office in Dublin produced a report on goods exports classified by commodity, listing where the goods were going. Exports from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland accounted for 1.6% of the Irish Republic’s total exports. The CSO also produced a report setting out the percentage of imports to the Irish Republic from Northern Ireland, including live animals and food products, and that was also 1.6%.

I had to deal with these matters for years. I set up a cross-border body and implemented the outworkings of the agreement. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, and I are the only two Members still in the Chamber tonight who were involved in the agreement. He will know the heavy lifting that had to be done by the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who is not in his place, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, and others to get the agreement approved. It was approved by 71.2% in a referendum in Northern Ireland. We are talking about a referendum of 52%, but we had a majority vote of 71.2%. It was a hard slog and he knows that.

I agreed with the earlier remark of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that the Government have not produced sufficient hardcore copy to match the proposals put forward by Brussels. He makes a fair point. Brussels has put forward 118 or so pages. I am not asking for that but I think that we have to have a counterproposal on paper. If that happens to involve technology, so be it. I have no difficulty with that and nor does the European Union. A report was recently published in Brussels by the EU’s Policy Department for Citizens’ Rights and Constitutional Affairs, which comes under the Directorate-General for Internal Policies. It sets out what are thought to be feasible proposals involving technology and other things. We already have a currency border—Northern Ireland and the Republic have different currencies—and we have different taxes, so we are not dealing simply with a one-dimensional problem.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I have noticed that the discussions have concentrated on trade, and I understand the good reasons for that. However, the matter that I raised concerns the movement of people. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, is very knowledgeable about Northern Ireland and the south and so forth, so I would like to ask him how we deal with the fact that the Republic will remain part of the European Union and have free movement of people, whereas the north will not if we leave completely and are not part of the single market. How do we deal with that in the context of immigration policy? Technology cannot deal with this. Where will people’s documents be examined to see whether they have an entitlement to make the passage? Where will that happen?

[Lord Empey]

I was not responding to that part of the amendment but I am quite happy to give my opinion on it. I think that a number of measures can be achieved. First, the Republic is not in Schengen, and that is helpful. Clearly, there has to be co-operation between the relevant authorities, which there already is. Regarding immigration controls, cars are often stopped by the authorities on both sides. The guards recently arrested people who had entered the Republic from Northern Ireland whom they believed were illegal immigrants. Therefore, that works.

There is a series of measures that the United Kingdom and the Republic should take to create a disincentive. People have to have a reason for coming, and very often that reason is work. First, we should make it much more difficult to get national insurance numbers and have a much better system for that. Secondly, employers should face greater penalties if they employ people who are not there legally, and that should be done on both sides of the border. Thirdly, we should have much more detailed intelligence sharing to create a disincentive throughout the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. That is something that I think we should do anyway, but it would certainly act as a disincentive.

However, if people are saying that we can put structures in place, the point is that we do not even have them today. Reference was made to smuggling. Smuggling is rife and has been for years. One has only to look at fuel smuggling—the paramilitaries have been making an absolute fortune out of it. As for the common travel area, citizens of both countries have the right to move freely between the two and that will continue. However, the noble Baroness mentioned people who would somehow be in the middle, saying that there would be a difference between EU citizens who have a right and EU citizens who do not. To get on to the island, they have to come through a port and the immigration system of the Republic of Ireland or they have to come through the United Kingdom. How many people are we talking about? I would have thought that creating disincentives for people to enter the jurisdiction illegally would be as good as anything rather than having to look at every individual who appears. I do not see that that will be a huge problem and, quite frankly, I do not think that it will affect many people.

Perhaps I may return to the amendment. We are obviously very grateful for the great support there has been for the Good Friday agreement, and it was painful to hear Members in the other place saying that the time had come to get rid of it. I have said to several people that I cannot think of a worse proposal. I cannot begin to think where we would start in trying to put things together again—I cannot even contemplate that. We have achieved something that generations failed to achieve. I make a point of repeating that and I regret the comments that have been made. However, the agreement that we are talking about and defending—the noble Lord, Lord Hain, knows my views on this—is not the agreement that we negotiated and it is not the agreement that was voted on in the referendum in 1998. It has been changed. The noble Lord, Lord Hain, did his best in 2006 to try to get things going again, and I understand why he did so, but there was a substantial change at the core of the agreement which in my opinion has led to the present impasse. However, that is for another day. Let us concentrate on the common ground, of which there is quite a lot here.

We want to solve this problem and I think that the Government have an obligation to be more precise. Quite frankly, the document of 8 December is contradictory—in my opinion, it does not really add up. People are saying that there will be the same regulations and that that will be the default position after Brexit but that, at the same time, there will be no difference in the regulations between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The only logical outworking of that is that you remain in the single market, but we are not going to do that and I do not think that it is what Brexit means.