Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Lord Inglewood Excerpts

Thursday 7th April 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in my few remarks, I first thank the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for having brought this debate forward. Like him, I have been thinking about the problems of Ireland since my time at Cambridge but, unlike him, this is the first time I have ever spoken about them in your Lordships’ House. I want to comment from the perspective of the union as a whole, rather than Northern Ireland itself. I live in the north of England and have considerable Irish family links—mainly of the Anglo-Irish “Protestant with a horse” variety. I actually live within sight of Scotland, so the possibility of the break-up of our union is much closer to home than anything else, from that perspective.

If you look at a historical atlas, it is remarkable how the boundaries of countries change. There is nothing immutable about what exists now and our systems of governance. We are all subject to that and I do not believe there is an absolute best in these matters. Just as I believe that England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are all stronger and better places together, that relationship can exist only if there is a shared and accepted equilibrium between them. If that is lost then the union, whatever its legal form, is likely to go with it.

I am a supporter of Northern Ireland as an integral part of the union of which we are all part for as long as Northern Ireland wants. It contributes to our way of life and we all benefit; the reverse is true, too. Inherent in these arrangements is a recognition that there is a link, in more than a merely mechanical sense, and that we are all in it together in a real way. It is for this reason that part of the way to accommodate different systems and strains of different places, across our union, is to set them in a frame of devolved or federal administrations, according to variable geometry. This, interestingly, is accepted by the present UK Government acting in their capacity for local government reform in this country. The only real judgment that can be made is whether it works and is accepted.

In our country, for better or worse, the dominant element is England and its relationship with the other three nations is inevitably the most important. Clearly, the character of Northern Ireland’s general relationship with England, and Stormont’s with Westminster, is crucial. If these do not work to both sides’ satisfaction then, sooner or later, the arrangement collapses. A successful union cannot survive a complete falling apart internally.

I chair the Cumbria Local Enterprise Partnership and business in Cumbria, across a range of sectors, took a very big hit from Brexit and all the economic consequences it entailed. That was true elsewhere, as well. The withdrawal agreement, of which the Northern Ireland protocol is an integral part, saved us from the considerable additional economic damage and chaos of no deal. Yet at the same time, as we know, there were enormous shenanigans—if I can use that word—over the agreed border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. I was surprised by how damaging that appeared to be and had not appreciated how strong the commercial links were.

Nevertheless, to those affected it seemed gratuitous, since everyone in this country was being taken out of the single market and suffering the pain that, we were told, was in the national interest. This simply made it worse. To us, this looked like self-obsession to the exclusion of everything else. After all, as I said, we are all in it together and this looked like exceptionalism from those who already receive much more attention, resources and support than we do in Cumbria.

This perception of exceptionalism is perhaps the greatest threat to the union and unionism. After all, unionism in Northern Ireland has to be more than simply not being in the south. Every union has at least two parties and if our union is to survive, every component has to recognise that it is part of the same larger team. If not, it is finished. The point of being in the same team is that we are better off together.