Brexit: UK-Irish Relations

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I was not a member of the Select Committee on European affairs that produced this excellent report but, as the last surviving member of the 1972 Whitelaw mission and a survivor of the 1973-74 Sunningdale agreement, I thought it might be helpful to your Lordships to bring some reflections and memories into the discussion when, as we all know, memory is such a vital part of Irish politics, and when the Government sometimes frankly seem a little short of memory. As I say, it is an excellent report and was superbly introduced by my noble friend Lord Jay, who I congratulate. It is reinforced and marginally overtaken by the position paper issued by the Government in July.

I shall touch on three issues. First, as regards the unionist community in Northern Ireland, it is worth remembering—as some people clearly do not—that the unionists of the period, in the 1960s and 1970s, in the House of Commons always voted with the Conservatives almost regardless. This was so even though over in Northern Ireland, where we worked as a team, Willie Whitelaw and others were constantly accused of being somewhat anti-unionists and too biased in favour of the minority parties. This was particularly so when it was revealed that we had talked in secret to the Provisional IRA leaders themselves. In fact, the unionist support at Westminster made not the slightest difference to our policy in the Province, and I do not believe that the Commons support by its unionist descendants—that is, today’s DUP, which is a very different thing from the old hard-line DUP all those years ago—makes the slightest difference to our policy now. Anyway, as I understand it, the DUP is just as much against replacing border controls of any kind as are the nationalists and republicans and the south. There may indeed be questions about why Northern Ireland needed an extra £1 billion to carry on with its usual support at Westminster but I refute entirely the suggestion that it need affect the Government’s impartiality or the balance of policy in any conceivable way.

Secondly, I want to say a word about the integrated and ingrained nature of the economies of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which I believe is far greater than even the report acknowledges. As the report and the position paper confirm, the preservation of the common travel area for all Irish citizens coming to the UK, and vice versa, together with the full rights it confers, is absolutely vital and central; that we all believe to be so. Even Monsieur Barnier—who has been involved in these affairs in the past, as we have been rightly reminded—appears fully to accept that fact.

What is less realised is that the bulk of the Republic’s goods traffic, via roll-on, roll-off HGV container traffic, actually goes into the EU markets via British ports and British infrastructure, whether first through Northern Ireland ports or direct to England. There is a brilliant paper, which I strongly commend to your Lordships, by Marcus Fysh MP, who puts the percentage of Irish traffic this way through Britain as high as 90%. That figure—which seemed to me when I first read it extremely high—is in fact confirmed by the Irish maritime port authorities and organisations. Even if it is, in practice, becoming less than that, it means that in effect we in Britain are Ireland’s land bridge to the European Union and to northern European distribution centres in France, Belgium, Holland, et cetera.

This makes two things absolutely essential: first, there has to be absolutely no interruption or barrier to any goods moving between Ireland and the United Kingdom, whether across the land border with Northern Ireland or direct to Britain, regardless of whether they are for the British market or onward transit to the continent. Secondly, it becomes essential for the British and Irish Governments to work very closely together in ensuring there is minimum transhipment disruption at either English Channel ports or cargo airports in trade with the European Union. In effect, we and Ireland will have a common trade border with the rest of the EU, and since Ireland, like us, is not a party to Schengen, a common travel border as well. So any change in north-south open border arrangements is totally unnecessary and can be avoided. The increasingly close financial links between Dublin and London cement the situation even further. This means that we have an overriding common interest in ensuring a frictionless UK-EU border with complete customs co-operation, common transit conventions, zero tariffs, VAT netting and all the rest, for free trade to continue between the whole UK-Irish common area and the UK mainland. We obviously should move towards that as quickly as possible and build the customs partnership which the government position paper describes.

My third point concerns north-south co-operation in the island of Ireland. I am very fond of the people of Ulster and have worked and served there with great pleasure and enjoyment. I hope the Province remains a full part of the United Kingdom as long as its people want it to, as is prescribed by law. I also see big opportunities for growing co-operation with the Republic as the modern digitalisation of economic life proceeds and technology opens up completely new possibilities. A common energy market for electricity and gas is one area where integration can go forward, as the government position paper and report suggest, and of course railway network integration is another. I very much hope the work of the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference and the North/South Ministerial Council continues with new initiatives vigorously, particularly in agriculture, education, environment, tourism and transport. I also hope that the growing interest of the Republic in association with the modern Commonwealth network will help bring the two parts closer together. The Royal Commonwealth Society, in which I declare an interest as president, also has a very lively Dublin branch—one of our liveliest.

We hear so much that is negative in comment about the United Kingdom becoming more divided and separated and the British Isles less united. On the contrary, in this age of total connectivity, I see the long, bloody and sad saga of Irish-British relations finally fading into history. I look forward to a new era in British-Irish relations of increased harmony, co-operation and combined impact on the international scene. I believe that that can be achieved.