Israel and Palestine

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, it would be quite wrong if this House simply overlooked the worsening security situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories, so my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries is to be congratulated on obtaining this debate.

To those like me who have spent a substantial part of their professional life working for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine dispute and working to give effect to UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was, of course, drafted and sponsored by Britain, and its successor resolutions, these are dispiriting days. There is an Israeli Government who have turned their back on that solution, a Palestinian Authority which has no new contribution to make, activists in Gaza whose sole response to any rise in tension is to fire rockets into Israel, and a slide, once again, towards violence right across the region in both Israel and the Occupied Territories.

It is easy to despair, but the hard fact is that there will be no stability and security in that region on the present basis—no number of Abraham accords, no amount of crackdowns by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories, no expansion of illegal settlements will bring that security and stability about.

What should Britain with its historic responsibilities for the state of the region be doing in these unpromising circumstances? Faced with Israeli intransigence to even talking about a two-state solution, we should make it clear that we will legitimise nothing less than that. We should do so by recognising a Palestinian state. Plenty of others have already done so.

Our policy of endless prevarication over recognition is a bankrupt one. It was defensible while negotiations were under way—and I myself defended it for many long years—but no longer even faintly credible. Will that bring about a solution? Of course not. But it would show that we will not be a party to any abdication of responsibility for the present drift toward tit-for-tat violence and a rejection of international law.

In addition, I hope we really will sustain our humanitarian support for UNRWA and for the suffering people in the Occupied Territories and Gaza. Allowing cuts in our aid programme to fall on them would be both shameful and counterproductive, and I hope the Minister can give us the latest FCDO commitments on those programmes which have been so important over the years.

We should engage at every level with the Government of Israel and with its people to demonstrate that we continue to value their state and their democracy, however much we may disagree with some of their present policies. That is no easy path to tread, but it is still worth while in my view.

British-Iranian Relations

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the right reverend Prelate and also talk about the matters he talked about. My noble friend Lord Alton’s welcome and timely debate invites us to address the issue of what the Government’s priorities for British-Iranian relations should be. I would have no hesitation in naming the reversal of the lamentable decision to close down the BBC Persian radio service as the short-term top priority.

Why so? First, it would be one of the few actions that our Government could take of their own volition to reach out to Iran’s citizens in a period when they are going through great stresses and difficulties and are deprived of fair and accurate information.

Secondly, although I have listened carefully to the BBC’s and the Government’s explanations justifying the closure of BBC Persian’s radio broadcasts, I find them totally unconvincing. It is true that the radio audience is smaller compared with that of other media channels but, when they are deprived of radio, what alternatives will that audience have that do not put them at increased risk and cost?

Thirdly, and most importantly, why on earth is a step being taken that will only give delight to those who oppress Iranian citizens and deprive them of objective information—a step that they will surely hail as a victory? I very much hope that the Minister will tell us that this regrettable closure will now not proceed and that the cost of maintaining the radio service will be met as an addition to the FCDO’s block grant to the BBC’s overseas services.

In conclusion, I will mention another long-standing priority: the currently stagnant negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme aimed at reviving the JCPOA. In my view, the Government are to be congratulated on persevering with this effort, unpromising though the present circumstances are. To abandon the JCPOA would merely give pleasure to the hard-liners in Iran who have always sought to undermine it. To abandon it without any alternative course to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon would be folly.

This debate certainly should not pass without paying tribute to the courage and determination of those in Iran who continue to demonstrate their rejection of oppression. Can the Minister say why refugees fleeing Iran are not on the list of those receiving expedited treatment for asylum claims? Surely they should be, irrespective of how they get here.

Afghanistan: British Council Staff

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My noble friend is not here to share his response but I always feel that Ministers across your Lordships’ House need to engage directly. I know that those are the sentiments of my noble friend the Leader of the House, as well, so I will certainly look into that. On the specific point that the noble Baroness raised, I am aware of some of the cases that have been raised of those who did not qualify under the ARAP scheme and have applied to the ACRS scheme. A number of those cases are being worked through but I am not going to give specific numbers. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, talked about getting into specifics but the numbers regarding those who qualify and under what category, and which part of the process they have reached, are literally moving on a daily basis. However, I assure the noble Baroness of my good offices and if she wishes to meet me, I should be happy to do so.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I should declare an interest, I suppose, because when I was a junior member of the embassy in Kabul in 1962, I negotiated the first placement of British Council teachers at one of the four high schools in Kabul. The British Council’s time in Afghanistan has been one that we should recognise as a major contribution to that country and our own foreign policy. Is the Minister quite sure that the criteria for admitting people to this scheme are not too tightly and narrowly drawn?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord speaks with great insight and expertise on the importance of our diplomatic services. I must admit that I was not around in 1962, so I do not have his strength of experience. Nevertheless, on the more material point that he raises and the criteria established for working through the three cohorts of Afghans who have been asked to apply for this scheme—we work closely with the organisations in the application of those criteria—as I said in response to my noble friend Lord Kamall, the number wishing to come to the UK who have applied to the scheme far outweighs the number allocated. It is therefore right that we adopt a process that is fair to the individuals applying and ensures that the criteria can be applied as regards additional family members, a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith. It is right that we show compassion if someone approaches but does not fulfil the strict criteria for additional family members who happen to be an elderly mother or father, or a child over the threshold of 18. But that requires a certain degree of delay as an assessment is made on the security of that person’s viability for coming to the UK.

EU: Trade in Goods (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, like other speakers, I begin by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, whose valedictory speech we took such pleasure in hearing, although with such regret on the occasion of it. I worked for her in a number of capacities, first when I was Permanent Representative to the European Community. She had put her name to an Act that set up the single market: the Single European Act, of which I believe she can be proud. It was not only her name but Britain’s too. It is one of the answers to those who say, “Did we contribute anything positive to the European Community when we were a member?” That is one of the conclusive answers.

I also worked for the noble Baroness when she was Minister for Overseas Aid and I was ambassador to the United Nations. Although our contribution in GNP terms was a figure I will not embarrass her or anyone else by giving now—it was lower than what we have now—she put in a great deal of effort to get it on an upward trend. For both those reasons and in both those capacities, she has made a notable contribution to the public life of this country.

It has become a feature of debates in this House on Select Committee reports to criticise the extreme—indeed, sometimes pretty well farcical—delays in bringing them forward for debate. I am afraid this is one of the farcical ones. Trade statistics are always lagging, so if you take as long as this to debate a report, the statistical basis for which was necessarily quite some time before the report itself was written, you ensure that all the figures are out of date.

Since the report was written, those figures have tended to move further and more consistently in a negative direction. I point out that the figures the Government and other speakers have used are of a devalued currency; that also casts some light on their validity. If noble Lords doubt that things have moved, and are still moving, in an adverse direction, just read reports by the OBR, the Centre for European Reform, on whose advisory board I sit—I am sorry that it was responsible for the doppelganger approach, which I think was of somewhat greater validity than the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, would allow—or the King’s College group, UK in a Changing Europe.

My first question to the Minister is: does he stand by the Government’s extraordinarily complacent assertion in its ministerial correspondence with the committee, on which I also serve, that our trade with the rest of Europe is “generally proceeding well”? If he does, I recommend he say that to any of the trade associations or groups that assert the contrary. He would be likely to get what the great PG Wodehouse called “the bird”.

None of this deprives our debate of its validity and topicality. Many of its main themes have been extremely cogently set out by our chair, my noble friend Lord Kinnoull, who has brought such skill to the management of our committee. I will concentrate on two of them: sanitary and phytosanitary rules, and the predicament of small and medium-sized enterprises, both of which have been referred to by previous speakers and make up important components of our trade with the EU. SPS sounds a pretty arcane subject but those rules, applied to us as a third country, contribute much of the friction which has been imposed on our exports of agri-food products since we left the EU. Trade in those products had grown steadily throughout our period of EU membership.

My first question is: should we not seek to conclude an SPS agreement with the EU, as some other third countries have done—Switzerland and New Zealand, for example? In this way, we would alleviate the burden placed on our agri-food exporters. The case is all the more compelling when you realise that such an agreement would remove some 80% of the problems which bedevil the Northern Ireland protocol. Your Lordship’s committee proposed that course of action several times, and every time the Government rejected it out of hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has said. Why? Well, they did not really deign to explain that in any detail. So, my second question is this: can the Minister explain why that common-sense solution should not be adopted? In doing so, it might be relevant to recall that, when our committee took evidence last week for our current inquiry in Wales and Scotland, we were told that negotiating an SPS agreement was a top priority for both those nations. That was the view of all parties—all parties—in Wales and Scotland.

Then there is the case of small and medium-sized enterprises. Their trade association said publicly last week that 20% of the companies that used to trade with the rest of Europe had now ceased to do so altogether, and that many others were struggling with increased bureaucracy and costs. Again, your Lordships’ committee recommended that the Government extend the duration of the scheme they introduced when we left the EU to assist small and medium-sized enterprises, in order to help them overcome these problems. Again, this was rejected, without any serious arguments to justify that. So my third question is: does the Minister not think that decision should be reversed before any more damage is done?

It is not impossible that more bad news could be coming down the track so far as our trade with the rest of Europe is concerned—and we must remember, of course, that that is nearly half our trade. Most obviously, if the Government’s efforts to find a negotiated solution to the problems with implementing the Northern Ireland protocol were to fail, some kind of increase in trade barriers could ensue. That is a pretty obvious one. Also, if the EU’s developing policies of introducing cross-border adjustment mechanisms to take account of carbon content and climate change considerations were to result in more friction in our mutual trade, that would be damaging to us too. The application of the EU’s rules of origin could do the same, and they are due to move into a sharper focus and higher gear in the coming year.

I invite noble Lords to reflect that this is all taking place during a period when the sterling exchange rate’s loss of value, as I referred to before, should have been giving our exports a major boost—it clearly has not done so—and when our place as one of the main recipients of foreign direct investment both from outside Europe and within it has been slipping away. I would argue that there is no ground for complacency here—quite the contrary. Perhaps the Minister will tell us that the Government have shifted from their stated view that things are generally proceeding well. I really hope he will do that when he replies to the debate.

Russia: Sanctions

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the assessment of the Foreign Minister of South Africa was not something I agree with. We are of course watching the situation closely and I agree with the assessment of the noble Lord. When you see one of our key partners in Africa, which is also a member of the Commonwealth, carrying out such exercises and welcoming the Russian Foreign Minister, that is a cause for concern. I assure the noble Lord that we have made our views clear.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister not agree that action to implement sanctions successfully has to be collective and not separate? What exists in the way of collective machinery among the main partners in those sanctions to ensure that the large numbers of people working in Moscow, Beijing and Tehran to evade such sanctions do not succeed?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I agree. That is why, as I have said, we are working in close co-ordination with our key partners. Where we see circumvention we are acting in a co-ordinated fashion, including through the G7, to ensure that those issues can be addressed. Sanctions are there for a reason: to prevent certain individuals and organisations continuing their work, by penalising them quite directly. It is our job as part of British diplomacy, along with our key partners, to ensure that this message is heard around the world.

Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (European Affairs Committee Sub-Committee Report)

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Friday 20th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, the valuable report we are debating, remarkably well presented by my noble friend Lord Jay of Ewelme, lifts the lid on a somewhat overlooked aspect of the Northern Ireland protocol and the withdrawal agreement with the EU: the scrutiny of single market legislation, which necessarily applies to Northern Ireland under the ratified terms of those agreements, but over which neither our Parliament nor Northern Ireland has a formal voice let alone a vote.

I speak as a member of your Lordships’ European Affairs Committee. This report was also submitted under its name, although you would not guess that from the Order Paper. I speak on my own personal behalf, and not that of the committee. Views expressed and questions posed are my own and not those of the committee.

It is surely a mistake to overlook this aspect of these agreements, which amounts to acceptance of what is often known in the jargon as “dynamic alignment” with single market legislation as it emerges down the years. That is a fact of life, whether we like it or not. We all—the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland and the EU—need to come to terms with it and mitigate its implications as best we can so that the democratic deficit does not become and ever deepening crevasse. Why so? Because it is very clear, from any reading of the withdrawal agreement and of the protocol, that that was what we signed up to and ratified in January 2020 and which is thus part of that rules-based international system which our Government purport to champion. Not even the Johnson and Frost negotiating duo have disputed this. It was not due to oversight, misunderstanding, draconian implementation by the EU, nor misrepresentation.

Moreover, despite the assertions of some, it is an integral part of every agreement with every third country which the EU has entered into which grants single market status to that state or to part of it—think of Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein, or even Switzerland with its bundle of agreements. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that it ever was, is now, or will be somehow negotiable, nor that Northern Ireland has been uniquely picked upon. My first question to the Minister is: do the Government share that analysis?

The issue then is what can be done to mitigate the democratic deficit. Quite a lot is in our own hands and could and should be dealt with straightaway. First, we could reverse our singularly unwise decision to block the Commission’s intention to open in Belfast a subordinate office to its London office. This sub-office would provide early-stage access to emerging EU single market legislation to the whole of Northern Ireland’s civil society—the Executive, Assembly, parties, trade associations, NGOs and many others—and the opportunity to get through to Brussels the implications of its proposals for Northern Ireland. This is surely better than having to rely on periodic visits by EU officials based in Brussels or London.

Secondly, and in addition, there could be a clearly defined, dedicated section of the UK’s mission in Brussels. Its job would be to ensure that the EU’s institutions—not just the Commission but also the Council and the Parliament—fully understand the implications of emerging single market legislation for Northern Ireland and, so far as possible, take them on board. My second question to the Minister is: will the Government take those two steps which are entirely under their control? Beyond those steps, there are more complex issues, which may need to be taken up in the review of the protocol in a couple of years’ time, given the difficulty of raising them during the present fraught process of negotiations over the protocol—although all would much better be addressed sooner than that.

There need to be processes by which the views of the Northern Ireland body politic—the Executive, Assembly and parties—have some kind of voice to and links with all parts of the EU institutions with actions affecting Northern Ireland’s involvement in the single market. This could include the UK/EU parliamentary grouping, the European Parliament more widely, the Council and the Commission. It would go well beyond, in intensity and frequency of meeting, the operation of the TCA machinery. Our aim should be to achieve for Northern Ireland a voice, if not a vote. My third question is: could the Minister, when he replies to this debate, say whether the Government’s thinking is moving into the terrain I have sketched out?

Afghanistan: Ban on Women Aid Workers

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, on the noble Lord’s first point, we are looking at additional mechanisms and I share his concern. I am aware of the INGO that he mentioned. This morning’s meeting with the women leaders involved INGOs, NGOs and, of course, former political leaders in Afghanistan—all women. It was a very enlightening insight into specific steps that we should be taking, and that will continue to be our process. Since the Taliban takeover, I have consistently said that we will be informed by our work with key partners, including on humanitarian aid. We want to identify mechanisms, because the current issues we have with aid distribution are replicated by the concerns of other agencies, as well as other international partners.

On how we will move forward with the Islamic world, we are working on that. I am engaging directly with the OIC’s special representative, and a number of countries around the Gulf have condemned the actions. They have also made visits to Afghanistan. I will be travelling to the Gulf region in the middle of February and will look to engage with a number of Gulf partners on other issues, but, importantly, on Afghanistan as well.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, first, I offer the Minister my thanks and congratulations on being active in helping the United Nations to take the initiative that it has by sending the Deputy Secretary-General and some of her colleagues to Kabul. It must be the right thing to do, and I hope the Minister will say that they will have our unstinting support in all the efforts they are making. Secondly, he was perhaps as surprised as I was to see some amity breaking out in the Security Council in recent discussion of what has been going on in Afghanistan, with apparent unanimity in criticising some of the actions taken by the regime there. Does he think that that amity and unity in the Security Council has any development potential in the future?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, I always welcome people coming together to try to work out solutions—and I say “one can only hope” in answer to the noble Lord’s second question.

On his other question, we will continue to work on our observation. I thank the noble Lord for his kind remarks. It is important that we strengthen the working of the United Nations. Often it has the access that other countries will not have. It has the structures that provide the provisions that other countries working individually will not have.

Taking up the point of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, I assure noble Lords that we are working with the UN, the Islamic world and near neighbours. The challenge remains the Taliban perspective and I am going to be very candid. They believe that every challenge and test, erroneously and rather perversely, is an added challenge from God. That will be their interpretation. That is why we need the Islamic world to speak. I have said to them quite directly, as a direct challenge, that women’s rights were not suppressed by the religion of Islam; they were enhanced. If they claim to follow the Prophet Muhammad, they should look at his personal example. Look at who was the first person to accept the religion. He was working for someone. That person was a woman.

Ukraine: Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, President Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine has upended our own country’s national security strategy, along with those of many other countries, particularly fellow European states. As our strategy is currently being reviewed and reset, this debate in the name of my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth could not be more timely or more welcome. I will focus my own remarks on the nuclear aspects of the Ukraine conflict, both military and civil.

It is a bitter irony that in the first days of 2022, the five legally recognised nuclear weapon states—China, France, Russia, the UK and the US—rather belatedly reaffirmed their support for the Reagan-Gorbachev statement that

“a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”.

A few weeks later, President Putin was threatening the possible use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state—indeed, one whose territorial integrity and sovereignty Russia had explicitly pledged to respect as part of the agreement by Ukraine to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, known as the Budapest memorandum. Then, in August, Russia blocked the agreed conclusions of the UN’s nuclear non-proliferation review conference. Perfidy does not come in much purer form than that.

We will know for certain only after this war has ended whether President Putin was merely sabre rattling or whether his remarks presaged something far worse. Let us hope that the unambiguous passage in the recent G20 communiqué:

“The use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible”


will have given him some thought. It was, of course, signed by the Chinese too.

Either way, President Putin will have put back on the table several key aspects of nuclear policy. First is whether a doctrine of “constructive ambiguity” on the use of nuclear weapons, as all members of the P5, including ourselves, currently maintain, is the best approach. There is nothing much constructive in Russia’s interpretation of that doctrine and not much benefit from the ambiguity. It might be preferable to move to a “sole purpose” doctrine, meaning that nuclear weapons’ only purpose is to deter their use by other nuclear weapon states.

Secondly, engagement with the whole issue of global strategic stability between nuclear weapon states will surely need to be resumed at some stage, drawing in the Chinese, whose nuclear arsenal is increasing by leaps and bounds; nor should we overlook the desirability of ensuring that the New START Treaty between the US and Russia on strategic nuclear weapons does not lapse and is, if possible, replaced by more constraining limits. There is also a need to look again at the question of intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe. While ensuring that Russia does not use nuclear weapons in or around Ukraine—it would be good to hear whether the UK, like the US, has conveyed any messages about the consequences of stepping across that line—this much wider agenda is coming towards us and we need to be ready for it.

There is another nuclear dimension to the Ukraine conflict: the need to safeguard civil nuclear installations in conflict zones. Both at Chernobyl in the early days after the invasion and at Zaporizhzhia, the site of the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, Russia has taken quite horrendous risks without any heed to the possible consequences. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, and his officials for the courage and professionalism they have shown in safeguarding those installations. I hope the Minister agrees with that and, if he does, will convey our collective thanks to the IAEA. Do we think that the international rules and conventions governing vulnerable civil nuclear sites in conflict zones are sufficient, or does experience in Ukraine show that they need, over time, to be strengthened and supplemented? This will not be the last occasion on which civil nuclear power stations find themselves in conflict zones.

I realise that some of the nuclear issues raised by the conflict in Ukraine are extraordinarily sensitive and not easy to handle in open debate, but we surely need to be thinking about and getting ready to engage with them.

BBC World Service

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I only truly understood and valued the significance of the BBC World Service for Britain’s soft power influence around the world when I was our ambassador to the UN from 1990 to 1995. That was the period when Mikhail Gorbachev, rightly or wrongly, attributed the failure of the hard-line coup against him in 1991 to the BBC. It was also the period when the first post-communist Albanian ambassador to the UN arrived in New York speaking perfect English despite having never travelled outside his country before. “How did you do it?”, I asked. “Oh, I listened to the BBC every day,” he said.

The BBC was influential because of its global network of reporters, because it is fast and accurate and because of its journalistic professionalism; it is never simply an apologist for our Government. Since that time, now 30 years ago, the value of that national asset has increased both overall and relatively, as other feeders of our soft power—our aid programme and the British Council—have been cut back.

Moreover, the need for its qualities in a world awash in misinformation and disinformation, much of it purveyed by authoritarian regimes that are our adversaries, has increased. It is needed to counter the jihadist propaganda of terrorist organisations such as IS and to provide a window on the world to oppressed groups such as Iranian women. The absolutely disgraceful harassment by the regime of BBC Persian’s journalists and their families is, in an odd way, a back-handed compliment to the BBC. It is needed, too, to set out the facts during a world crisis such as that in Ukraine. The reporting of BBC journalists such as Lyse Doucet, Jeremy Bowen, Steve Rosenberg and many others is something of which we can all be proud.

I argue that it is a time for doubling down, not cutting back, but that is not what is happening. That is why I greatly welcome the success of my noble friend Lord Alton in securing this debate. I also welcome the contribution of my noble friend Lord Hampton, who put the issues on a much higher level.

I believe the root of the problem is the decision to fund the World Service from the licence fee—a clever trick by a clever Chancellor of the Exchequer, but a fundamental mistake all the same. Why on earth should we expect the BBC to find the right balance between its domestic and overseas services when the latter are an integral part of our foreign policy? Does any other country do that? No. Is it effective and efficient? Not really, since the FCDO is now having to top up the resources available to the BBC’s overseas services by an increasing amount each year.

Surely it would be better to go back to the old system of bearing the cost of those overseas services on the FCDO budget, paid for out of general taxation like other parts of our overseas expenditure. Would that not prejudice the impartial reputation of the BBC? I do not believe so. I doubt whether one person in a million among the BBC’s viewers and listeners knows or cares a thing about the origin of its resources.

The key to impartiality is the professionalism of the BBC’s journalists and the prohibition on any meddling in its editorial freedom, which was as rigorously observed when its resources came from the Foreign Office budget as it is now. So it is for the BBC to decide the allocation of resources and its editorial policy, which is why I will not enter into the argument as to whether it is getting the balance right between digital and audio services.

I am of course aware that this is hardly a propitious moment to be making the case that I have put forward, but the present financial arrangements are neither sustainable nor, I suggest, beneficial to the national interest.

Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Hannay of Chiswick Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

I very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, and add that it seems quite astonishingly narrow-minded and short-sighted to want to be rid of the European court in these circumstances. We heard at length last week about the effect on electricity, but there is a wider effect.

May I just put in a word of defence of the European court? I happened to visit it on numerous occasions. It has made some extraordinarily sensible decisions that have affected this country and particularly women, which is one of the reasons I support it. It is quite extraordinary that a Conservative Government, who I always thought had a broad view, should be quite unbelievably narrow-minded, and that some quite erroneous view of sovereignty should be taking over from the crucial role that the ECJ has to play in the work we are considering.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

I echo, from a non-legal point of view, the points made by the previous two speakers but, when looking at the European Court of Justice and its role under the protocol, I imagine that even the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, would not contradict the point that I am about to make, which is that the properly constituted British Government, supported by the properly constituted British Parliament, entered into a treaty that gave a role to the European Court of Justice. That is a simple fact. It is there, written. It is another simple fact that there is no provision in the protocol to remove that role of the European Court of Justice—none.

What we are talking about is a breach of our international commitments. I am sure one of the noble Lords on the Front Bench will again hotly deny that this is the case because, like the Red Queen in Alice, their only argument is, “It is so because I say it is so”. Fortunately, that is not a terribly convincing argument in this place, where occasionally—not all the time—reason has a way of prevailing. I should like to suggest that we recognise this reality, which is that the Government’s attempt to remove the European Court of Justice unilaterally from two international treaties, which they entered with the consent, support and approval of Parliament, is a breach of our international commitments.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, we had a brief debate on matters relating to the European court last week, which largely focused on the earlier parts of the Bill. It is helpful to have this opportunity to deal with some of these issues in more detail.

The agreement reached with the EU on the status and role of the CJEU in relation to the protocol and other parts of the withdrawal agreement was carefully crafted and informed part of the oven-ready deal the Conservative Party was proud to call its own. There is some logic in what Clause 20 seeks to achieve. If the protocol no longer functions as intended, the legal processes cannot either, but that is only if one accepts that it is acceptable to tear up a binding international agreement in the first place.

The power for Ministers to introduce some form of referral process is interesting and a little surprising. It seems to contradict the earlier power in subsection (2). From a practical point of view, would not any referral scheme work only if the EU and European court agreed to engage in the process? Would this point not need to be negotiated?

There has been a wide-ranging debate on these issues, but it seems that there are some very practical consequences of trying to put into place a new referral process while at the same time needing to negotiate with the organisation one has just torn up a formal agreement with. How would that work in practice?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 56 deals with the

“Duty to seek an agreement on outstanding issues with the Northern Ireland Protocol”.


This amendment would make it a statutory requirement for the Government to seek a negotiated outcome with the EU and to exhaust legal routes under the EU withdrawal agreement before availing themselves of the powers in this Bill. The amendment would also require Ministers to provide regular updates to Parliament regarding the ongoing UK-EU negotiations.

In this amendment, we seek to bring together two issues in a single text: the negotiated settlement and the regular updates. This would ensure that the extraordinary measures in this Bill could not be used until all legal routes are exhausted. We know that the Government will say this amendment is unnecessary, yet the very existence of this Bill highlights the lack of good faith displayed by Ministers. We have been asked to trust in the new negotiations, but we have not yet had an update from the Foreign Secretary—although we are told we may get one later this week, and I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that. Colleagues such as the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Kerr, often remind us of the Commission’s duties to the European Parliament, so why, after all this time, does the Conservative Party continue to sideline what they call the mother of Parliaments—this House? If the Government really are acting in good faith, they should take no issue with this amendment. It is a restatement of their own policy, coupled with a request for further information. I beg to move Amendment 56.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I have spoken on a number of previous occasions about the fact that we are fumbling around in the dark. The noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, made a noble attempt at an earlier stage in today’s debate to say something about what was going on but I am sorry to say that, if I was being impolite, I would say that what he said was the square root of nothing. Are we going to get something more than that? We ought to. That has been the practice of previous British Governments in negotiation as a third party when we were outside the European Union and in many other negotiations. I think it is pretty shocking that we are not getting that.

It also underlines a point which all our debates illustrate: that the Government have put the cart before the horse. Surely the right sequence would have been for the Government to enter into a serious process of negotiation from last February onwards; but they did nothing—absolutely nothing. We now know that nothing happened after February. As that process went along, they should have reported it to Parliament. At some stage or another, it would have been perfectly reasonable for the Government to say that we cannot go on like this for ever and, if we cannot get a negotiated agreement to sort out the implementation of the protocol in order to cure it of some of the imperfections which none of us contests, then we may have to go down a unilateral course.

If the Government had done that, I suspect that we would have had an agreement by now—but the lady who was Foreign Secretary at the time and who had her eye on higher things, which, alas, turned out to be a flash in the pan, went down another course, which was to put the cart before the horses. And that is where we are: with the cart firmly before the horses. Here we are, spending hours and hours discussing what we are going to do if this process of negotiation, which the Government say is their preference, fails. Well, the time to do that is when it has failed, when the Government have made a full and detailed report of why it had failed, and when we can see what the other side in the negotiation says about whether those reasons for failure are justified. Then Parliament can take a view on what to do next.

Instead of which, we are being asked to do all this now in the, alas, totally futile belief that this will somehow put the frighteners on Brussels. Well, it does not look to me as if Brussels is terribly frightened; nor has it been for many months. So I wish we could just get away from this and leave the process of deciding what we do if the Government’s preferred option fails, and then we will deal with that when we get to it. We will cross that bridge when we get to it.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support my noble friend’s amendment. When we look at this pointless and rather daft Bill, we realise that it has achieved absolutely nothing. They would have been more influenced by the man in the moon than by this Bill.

The Bill might have done something, but so far has done nothing, to achieve progress in Northern Ireland. I would be very interested if the people negotiating on the European Union’s behalf looked at a video of the last couple of hours’ debate in this Chamber. They would then realise that these are not the “technical issues” that we are told are being resolved at the moment. It is not about oranges, sausages and the rest of it; it is about people’s identity in Northern Ireland, whether they be unionists, who feel that their own British identity is threatened by the protocol, or nationalists, who feel that they are threatened in some other way.

The first thing the Government should understand is that in some ways the negotiations now have to be parallel: a negotiation between the European Union—with, as I said earlier, a much bigger involvement by the Irish Government—and the United Kingdom Government on the protocol itself, in parallel with negotiations to restore the institutions of the Good Friday agreement. Those institutions have effectively collapsed and there is a case for looking at them again. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, referred to the Taoiseach’s comment about changing the rules on the way the Assembly and Executive operate—remembering, of course, that the St Andrews agreement changed the rules of the Good Friday agreement. But they were changed by agreement. That is the issue: they were not changed unilaterally by one side or the other.

In the next six months—I will come to that in a second—there should be a structured negotiation on the one hand with the European Union and on the other between the political parties in Northern Ireland and, where appropriate, on strands 2 and 3, with the Irish Government. I do not think that has entered the Government’s head over the past eight to nine months. For all sorts of reasons, which everybody knows about, they have not really been bothered; they have let things drift. There have not been proper negotiations. It seems to me that one of the Government’s most important responsibilities is to ensure that Northern Ireland does not go backwards 30 years—and it is quite possible that that could happen.

I think the European Union sometimes does not understand the absolute uniqueness of the Northern Ireland situation, of the Good Friday agreement and of the identity issue. There is no comparison anywhere within Europe, perhaps even in the world, with what has happened in Northern Ireland, and it seems to me that that has not been appreciated by the people doing the negotiating.