Budget Statement

Lord Hain Excerpts

Friday 12th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome all our new noble Lords joining us for their maiden speeches today.

The Chancellor responded to an unprecedented threat in 2020 by giving the economy an unparalleled fiscal boost—twice as big as the package with which Alistair Darling successfully tackled the 2008 global financial crisis. Rishi Sunak now insists that

“it would be irresponsible to withdraw support too soon”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/3/21; col. 255.]

But the Office for Budget Responsibility’s central forecast shows that that is exactly the risk he is planning to run by withdrawing half the 2020 fiscal support this year and nearly 90% of it by 2022. He is pulling the plug on the economy prematurely and cutting fiscal support for recovery twice as fast as George Osborne did so draconically in 2010, launching 10 years of disastrous Tory austerity and low to nil growth.

The furlough scheme, the self-employment grants, the 5% VAT rate for hospitality and tourism and the universal credit uplift all end in September. The Chancellor even plans to start withdrawing the furlough scheme and the business rates holiday for hospitality businesses on 1 July, only nine days after Covid restrictions are due to end no earlier than 21 June. He cannot possibly be confident that recovery will be firmly established so soon. His Budget cheats the challenge and fakes the change, most notably by including more than £16 billion of public spending cuts relative to his March 2020 pre-Covid spending plans.

The Chancellor is trying to find an early exit from his fiscal dilemma. By rushing his fences he risks removing support for the economy and derailing recovery just when the vaccine offers a way out of the virus, piling even more pressure on massively underfunded health and care services.

Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Welsh Forms) Order 2021

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord True, for his clear explanation. I too look forward to the maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Hannan—although we have disagreed fundamentally on Europe and will doubtless continue to do so.

The draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Welsh Forms) Order 2021 is not controversial, and I support it. The Government have made it clear that consultees have included the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, political parties, the Welsh Language Advisory Group, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and officials in the Welsh Government. But has the noble Lord or any of his ministerial colleagues talked directly to Welsh Government Ministers? I ask because that has often not happened on other issues. What did the Welsh Language Advisory Group say specifically? Were any modifications or large changes made as a result of its feedback?

I realise that the order sets out Welsh language versions of certain forms, and certain forms of words, to be used at police and crime commissioner elections in Wales, not least because only Welsh versions of the ballot paper and the nomination form for candidates at PCC elections in Wales have so far been covered in legislation, and other forms have not. The changes in this order follow pressure from electoral officials in Wales and Welsh language groups to bring consistency with other elections held in Wales over such matters as poll cards, postal voting and arrangements for voters with disabilities, and to ensure that all forms and guidance notes are bilingual, in Welsh and English, which is very welcome. The practice at previous police and crime commissioner elections was for the forms and arrangements to be left to local Welsh returning officers, using powers in Article 85 of the 2012 order, supported by guidance from the Electoral Commission.

Turnout in these PCC elections has been very poor indeed. In 2012, turnout averaged just 15.1% across all 40 police areas in England and Wales, measured as valid first preference votes as a proportion of the electorate. There was a welcome rise in 2016 to 26.6%, but that is still a miserably low figure. Presumably, the Government have lumped them together with key English and Welsh elections in May, for example to the Senedd—the Welsh Parliament—and for the London Mayor, in order to increase turnout.

Although relations between the Welsh and UK Governments on the running of elections are generally constructive, the fact that the PCC elections are happening on the same day as the Senedd election is problematic. The Welsh Government would have preferred to consider all-postal voting or to have early voting centres for the Senedd elections, but these were effectively ruled out because the Cabinet Office would not agree to them for the PCC elections. Can the Minister please say why? Was it because, like Donald Trump, who also opposed such measures for early postal voting to encourage turnout during the pandemic, they actually do not want to make it easy for people to vote? Is that the reason? I hope not, because it was clearly Trump’s reason.

Welsh Ministers are also pretty staggered that the UK Government have decided to permit not just leafleting but canvassing in England at a time when the advice is still to stay at home. Is it not extraordinary that we are saying to people, “You can’t see your loved ones but if someone pops up on your doorstep from the Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat parties, or Plaid Cymru, please have a chinwag with them”?

To be fair, the Cabinet Office Minister, Chloe Smith, has made it clear that this change to the guidance is for England only and does not apply to PCC elections in Wales in respect of canvassing and so forth, since campaigning rules are part of the devolved responsibility for public health. But, surely, it remains perverse that in England you cannot see your loved ones but you can see a political party representative on your doorstep. Perhaps the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord True, could enlighten us all about that in his reply. In the meantime, I am happy to support this order.

Ministerial and other Maternity Allowances Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 22nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am sure that we all wish Suella Braverman well in her forthcoming maternity leave, and this Bill is welcome. It is notable for both ensuring her income is fully protected, and for the actual cover it gives her, meaning that she can devote herself to caring for her child without worrying about being on demand 24/7, as is required for the post of Attorney-General.

The Bill is also a big improvement on the predicament faced by my Government colleague Yvette Cooper when she was a Minister, as she explained in the Commons on Second Reading:

“When I needed to take maternity leave as the Minister for Public Health in 2001, I asked the Health Secretary what I should do. He did not know, and said, ‘Ask the Prime Minister.’ He did not know, and said, ‘Ask the Cabinet Secretary.’ He had absolutely no idea, and as Ministers are Crown appointments, he said it was really a matter for the Queen, but nobody thought we should be asking Her Majesty”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/21; col. 552.]


The fundamental problem is that the Bill benefits only a tiny number of women at a time when life is more difficult for mothers with babies than at any time in modern history. I wish to ask a series of questions, for which I would be grateful to have a reply from the Minister.

Does this Bill mean that maternity leave is merely a perk granted by an employer if only this legislation is passed? Thousands of women right across the country are having to leave work to care for a child. Stella Creasy MP has pointed out that during the pandemic,

“one in four women who are pregnant or a new mum have said that they have faced discrimination, and that they are losing their jobs or being furloughed”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/21; col. 542.]

Surely this Bill effectively establishes a two-tier system for maternity leave. Where does it leave women MPs of childbearing age? Why does it not extend to them, or, for that matter, to all staff in this Parliament, as other speakers have said? Where does it leave women who are self-employed and who take maternity leave, some of whom have had to take the Government to court to resolve the injustice of the predicament they face? Where does it leave fathers over paternity leave, especially those partnered by women who wish to return to work straight after childbirth?

Surely we need a Bill to give at least every woman in the Palace of Westminster, if not in the country, the same rights that this Bill is giving to the Attorney-General. That being the case, can the Minister indicate whether any advice has been given about whether, once this Bill is enacted, the Government could be vulnerable to judicial review for not granting the same right more widely? As the former Conservative Cabinet Minister, Maria Miller MP, argued during the Commons Second Reading

“being forced to leave a job for being pregnant is exactly what happens to thousands of pregnant women. In righting this wrong for Government Ministers, will the Paymaster General also undertake to right it for women throughout our country? Codifying the protection of a pregnant woman’s job is exactly what thousands of women need now. The people we represent want to know that Ministers are being treated no differently from them. Routinely identifying pregnant women for redundancy is too familiar a problem … We cannot ignore the fact that for thousands, current legislation provides protection only in theory but not in practice.”—[Official Report, Commons, 11/2/21; col. 544.]

That, in a nutshell, coming from a senior Conservative supporter of this Government, is exactly the issue that I ask the Minister to address in his response.

Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland: Border Controls

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 4th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has made an important point and he is quite right about the involvement of the parties. One of the sad aspects of this has been the bypassing of the parties in Northern Ireland. My right honourable friend set out a detailed set of proposals which are in the public domain, and he has indicated in those that if it is not possible to agree a way forward in the way we have proposed, the UK will consider using all the instruments at its disposal.

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, the Irish protocol does of course contain the flexibilities that can resolve this impasse and it is a treaty that is backed by Parliament. Surely the Government must accept that the chaos facing many Northern Ireland businesses trading across the Irish Sea is the predictable consequence of their hard Brexit stance, which is backed enthusiastically by the DUP, coupled with the Prime Minister’s ludicrous promises of unfettered access from day one. It is no good complaining about the protocol when it is the consequence of the very hard Brexit that the Tories and the DUP wanted, despite Northern Ireland voting decisively against that.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, we have moved from “what if?” through to “what now?” to “what then?” The fact is that a decision was made by the British people to leave the EU customs territory and the single market, and we must proceed having accepted that solution.

EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Hain Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is now clearer what the deal means. If we diverge from EU rules on labour, environmental and state aid standards, then, subject to arbitration, tariffs may be imposed by the EU. Like Switzerland, the UK will be the junior partner in a complex institutional hierarchy of bodies that will oversee the future relationship for the indefinite future.

Where the Brexiteers promised freedom from the red tape of Brussels, there will instead be bottlenecks from a new partnership council, a trade partnership committee, 10 trade specialised committees, eight specialised committees, four working groups and a parliamentary partnership assembly to oversee the dispute resolution mechanism. The Economist has observed that Britain will become a “supplicant”.

British citizens will no longer feel at home in the EU 27 member states, entitled to make their lives there to live, work or study. Professionals will find it harder to work in Europe, as qualifications will no longer be automatically recognised.

Gaps in the security part of the deal include limits on British access to EU security and police databases, which will have an operational impact, making a nonsense of claims by Priti Patel that the new deal somehow makes Britons safer.

The Brexiteers have contrived a deal where, in future negotiations with the EU, the UK will be a third country, outside the tent, without the privileges of membership and with a diminished scrutiny role for the UK Parliament. So much for “taking back control”.

The EU-UK trade and co-operation agreement is little more than a damage-limitation exercise that slightly softens the impact in some areas of what is not merely a hard Brexit but in practice a very messy half-Brexit.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, what a tragedy. Dogmatism which confuses sovereignty with power and influence has triumphed. This thin deal is better than no deal, which is why I will not vote against it today, but no pumped-up, jingoistic celebrations can disguise an act of gratuitous, enormous national self-harm.

Our weight and influence on the global stage as a senior member of the world’s biggest trading and diplomatic bloc is now reduced to that of a bit player in an increasingly dangerous multipolar world. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, explained, we will be a rule-taker, excluded from the very European trade, defence, foreign and external security policy-making that still impacts directly upon us as a close neighbour and trading partner.

Leaving the EU single market, which constitutes around half our trade, will, the Government estimate, reduce national income per head by around 5% and have two to three times the medium to long-term economic impact of Covid-19. Non-tariff barriers, estimated by HMRC to cost £7 billion a year, will damage UK goods, where we have a trade deficit with the EU. Yet on services, where the UK has an £83 billion surplus with the EU, the deal provides absolutely nothing, future access humiliatingly dependent on EU permission.

As for taking back control of immigration, since the 2016 referendum net immigration from the EU has collapsed but from the rest of the world it has exploded. As EU nationals have been driven away, our NHS has been left with over 40,000 nurse vacancies and our care sector with over 120,000 vacancies—not much increase in sovereignty for our sick and elderly citizens.

UK nationals are losing sovereignty over our rights to live, work or study in the EU and will need visas to stay there for more than three months. We are losing sovereignty over rights to free healthcare, mobile roaming charges, frictionless border entry and much else. In the name of reclaiming sovereignty, we are torpedoing the sovereignty of the UK, as Scotland threatens to go its own way, maybe to be followed by Northern Ireland. Even my homeland, Wales—long a bastion for UK unionism—has recently seen an unprecedented boost to the independence cause.

Project Fear? More like “Project Reality”, for which I cannot and will not take personal historic responsibility by voting for this sovereignty-reducing, control-surrendering, rights-destroying, job-cutting, poverty-increasing, nationalism-inciting, miserably demeaning Brexit deal.

Taxation (Post-transition Period) Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and of course welcome the Bill. However, it reflects a chaotic last-minute scramble by the Government to retreat from their outrageous proposal to break international law in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol of the European Union withdrawal agreement, which was agreed by the Prime Minister and EU leaders in October last year. Among other things, the protocol requires that the UK introduce a framework for customs, VAT and excise after the end of the transition period on 31 December. The Bill before us now reflects the decisions of the joint UK/EU committee set up under that agreement on goods entering Northern Ireland “not at risk” of entering the EU, thereby ensuring they do not have to pay the EU tariff, as the noble Lord explained.

Crucially, the Government are therefore not introducing the so-called “notwithstanding” provisions into the Bill, which, along with those measures also now withdrawn from the UK internal market Bill, would have reneged on that withdrawal agreement.

I therefore welcome the statement made on 8 December by the co-chairs of the EU-UK committee. It is good news for businesses trading across the Irish Sea, as it is estimated that 98% of goods going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will now be able to do so free from tariffs, irrespective of whether there is a UK-EU trade deal.

However, there remains concern about the imminence of the end of the transition period and the potential for disruption, especially to agri-food products; I would be grateful if the Minister could say something about that in his response. The reported three-month grace period for businesses may at least limit, to some extent, the disruption on 1 January. However, as pointed out by the Institute for Government, the joint committee will need to continue to work on ensuring that the arrangements under the protocol are acceptable to the people, and businesses, of Northern Ireland, who have been plagued by months of stressful and disruptive uncertainty. That is the Government’s fault.

No doubt this latest change of direction by the Government demonstrates a recognition of the realpolitik of the outcome of the American election. The Brexiteers’ confidence that a trade deal with the US would be an easy win has already been proven misplaced. President- elect Joe Biden made a very clear statement on 24 November that, if the UK wishes to discuss a trade deal with the US, the Irish border must remain open. In answer to a question from journalists about what he would say to Brexit negotiators, he stated:

“We do not want a guarded border”.


Biden also made his position clear in a New York Times interview at the beginning of December, stating:

“I am not going to enter any new trade agreement with anybody until we have made major investments here at home and in our workers and in education.”


In any case, such a deal with the US would have been more political than economically significant. Leaked government forecasts suggest that a trade deal with the US could benefit the UK’s economic output by about 0.2% in the long term—a miserly amount compared with almost half of our trade currently done with the EU, which is at risk unless there is a decent deal.

The advent of the new Administration in the US therefore serves only to underline the fallacies of the magical thinking of hard-line Brexiteers. In debates on this Bill in the other place, they have complained that, under the agreement reached between Michael Gove and Maroš Šefčovič—a vice-president of the European Commission—the EU will be allowed to have its officials permanently based in Northern Ireland to oversee checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea. They protest that this is an infringement of sovereignty, which, of course, they have always mistakenly confused with power. Perhaps we should close all foreign embassies on our soil, in case they also fail this ridiculous sovereignty test.

Is it simply too tempting for us to imagine that there is perhaps a glimmer of light that the Government have finally found the courage to face down the tyranny of their own rabid nationalist Back-Benchers? As the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, observed the other day in an article she wrote for the Financial Times, in 2016, in the weeks following the referendum result, it became obvious to those in No. 10, like her, that

“there would be a trade-off between sovereignty and market access.”

Yet, she observes, four years later,

“the UK is still trying to wish away the trade-offs, with no coherent vision for future prosperity.”

On the contrary, she says, Britain is

“engorged with Covid-led state intervention”

with

“few radical policies to help enterprise”.

The Government’s strategy for mitigating the disastrous economic devastation caused by Covid-19, which has reduced the capacity of the UK economy to withstand further shocks, is apparently one of compounding it with a possible disgraceful no deal or, at best, a scrawnily thin-deal Brexit. In July, the London School of Economics published a study showing that the business sectors that have escaped the worst fallout from Covid-19—such as manufacturing and services—are more likely to suffer from the effects of Brexit. Furthermore, the damaging economic impact of no deal is shown to be two to three times as great as that of Covid over the medium to long term. We now learn that Ministers have dreamed up Operation Kingfisher to support

“businesses that may be temporarily affected by changes of circumstances that are related to Brexit”.

Where is the economic strategy to generate the necessary revenues to fund all this state aid and the subsequent desperately needed recovery?

My noble friend Lord Adonis reports that a senior German politician confided in him that Chancellor Merkel thought it best, last week,

“not to speak to Johnson … ‘for fear of damaging British-German relations. It’s like how she managed Trump, by not speaking to him’.”


Last week, both Merkel and Macron refused to take the Prime Minister’s calls—perhaps the ultimate Brexit humiliation for any British Prime Minister for now.

The well-informed commentator Alex Andreou reported on Twitter the Brussels view of Boris Johnson’s behaviour:

“This has led people to split into two camps: There is one school of thought, that Johnson really is utterly clueless. His behaviour at the UVDL dinner last night (a car crash, apparently), has fed that impression. This makes people not want to do business with this government … The second school of thought, is that Johnson negotiated in bad faith throughout. That his aim was always No Deal and he simply strung 27 countries along, at the expense of a huge amount of work, effort and expense. This makes them not want to do business with this government … Note that the conclusion is precisely the same under either theory. That whether idiot or fraudster, Johnson is best kept at arms length. Polling in most EU27 shows that being tough with the UK yields a big favourability boost. So, I’m afraid, nobody is riding to our rescue”—


if we do not rescue ourselves, that is. Let us hope that it is not too late for the Government, having looked over the precipice, to step back from the brink of no deal on the wider relationship.

Given the poor state of relations that now exists between the EU and this Government, a thin deal is the most we can possibly hope for. However, as was spelled out by the Centre for European Reform think tank in August, this would at least avoid tariffs and provide the basis for building a deeper relationship in the future.

The agreement reached in the joint committee on the Northern Ireland protocol surely demonstrates the value of constructive compromise, collaboration and partnership in solving the many daunting issues currently facing our country over Brexit. Can this Government conceivably have the humility to admit that, in a shrinking post-Covid global economy, Britain can never prosper alone?

With more positive smoke signals about the negotiations as we debate this Bill, if the UK and the EU succeed in striking a deal, Boris Johnson will inevitably have a high-noon confrontation with the zealots who elected him Conservative leader, but the country will breathe a sigh of relief. I am afraid that, all along, that has been the problem in this sorry Brexit saga: putting dogma and factional fundamentalism ahead of the national interest.

Spending Review 2020

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, fully three-quarters of the fiscal boost being provided this year is to be withdrawn next year, and over 90% by 2022, according to the OBR’s central forecast. Indeed, if the small print in the spending review is to be believed, Rishi Sunak is already planning in the next two years to withdraw fiscal support for the economy at a rate five times faster than George Osborne did so savagely in his first two years at the Treasury.

There will be a £10 billion cut in departmental day-to-day spending in 2021, compared to the levels planned in March 2020, rising to nearly £13 billion in 2024; cuts to public investment plans in the four years from 2021 averaging over £3 billion per year; nothing about raising statutory sick pay to help people testing positive for the virus who have to self-isolate at home; and no extension of the £20 a week temporary increase in universal credit beyond April 2021, even though the Chancellor expects unemployment to soar next year.

The pernicious overseas aid cut of some £4 billion is out of total public spending of over £1,100 billion, equivalent to one-fifth of one per cent of GDP, and a vanishingly small rounding error compared to total public spending. It is a disgraceful and unnecessary cut that is as repugnant as it is right-wing symbolic.

Then there is the public sector pay freeze dressed up as a “pay pause”. There is a £700 million cut in the BBC’s budget buried away in the OBR report. This is indeed a punitive spending review that will even further damage Britain’s growth prospects.

Definition of Qualifying Northern Ireland Goods (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of these regulations and his customary professionalism and courtesy, although I am afraid that he rather glossed over, in the inimitable way of Ministers during this chaotic last stage of the Brexit saga, many of the things involved. Although he reaffirmed the UK Government’s promise of unfettered access into Great Britain for Northern Ireland goods, the question arises: what exactly are Northern Ireland goods?

The UK Government needed to define what are those Northern Ireland goods that qualify for unfettered access, but this has not been straightforward, given that some goods leaving Northern Ireland for Great Britain are the product of a complex process of production that includes components from elsewhere, especially in the Republic of Ireland. The picture is especially complicated for agri-food. For example, if a pig was born in the Republic of Ireland, slaughtered in Northern Ireland, processed into sausage in the Republic of Ireland and packaged in Northern Ireland, is that a Northern Ireland or a Republic of Ireland sausage?

As I understand it, the Government have taken all sorts of advice from businesses, but it became complicated, because it is so different for different industries and sectors. For instance, some have no contact with the Republic of Ireland and, therefore, the European Union, while others are fully integrated with both. If a good is defined as a Northern Ireland good but has very little contact with Northern Ireland—for example, it is just packaged there—there is a risk that Northern Ireland could become a back door into Great Britain, especially in a no-deal scenario, to avoid tariffs. That would undermine genuinely local Northern Ireland goods.

The Government did not have time fully to address the complexity of all this, so I am afraid that the statutory instrument is just a sticking plaster for phase 1, as they are calling it, and as the Minister virtually said. We are told to expect much more detail, as he said, and nuance in phase 2, which we are all promised will come next year. The problem is that the sticking plaster prioritises flow over control; that is to say, it basically defines everything in free circulation or moving around Northern Ireland as a Northern Ireland good. That could potentially include Irish and EU goods. The upside is that it avoids the need for new checks and procedures to distinguish between Northern Ireland and other goods leaving Northern Ireland for Great Britain come 1 January. The downside is that, especially if there is no deal, although conceivably even if there is a thin deal, it shares an advantage given to Northern Ireland goods, which is unfettered access into Great Britain, with those from outside Northern Ireland. Again, that is particularly bad in the event of no deal, given that Northern Ireland goods should not face tariffs on entry to Great Britain but Republic of Ireland goods would.

In other words, this is all a real dog’s breakfast, but one with potentially costly and important consequences for Northern Ireland’s economy and businesses, and another case of how Northern Ireland always seems to end up second best over the Government’s hard Brexit dogmatism.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Implementation Proposals

Lord Hain Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, consent—and the consent of both communities—is absolutely fundamental to this whole process. I agree with my noble friend that it would be to the benefit of all if a reasonable agreement could be reached sooner, as the UK Government hope is still possible.

[Lord Hain (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, has the Minister any idea of how desperate businesses in Northern Ireland, especially those trading across the Irish Sea—as many do—are to know what their future will be in a month’s time? I say bluntly: please do not give us the same old warm waffle about how it will be all right on the night. People’s jobs and livelihoods are at stake here, and they have no idea what the future holds for them.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, to say that the Government are wholly committed to the future security and prosperity of business in Northern Ireland is not “warm waffle”; it is the truth of the matter. We are providing extensive support through the trader support service. I have referred to other measures, including the £150 million that has been put into IT systems, and we are working at pace to deliver all that is necessary. I hope that agreement can be reached in the joint committee and that any uncertainties there can be resolved.