Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Public Health, Marketing and Organic Product Standards and Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 2023
Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Moylan
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate, but I think it is important to follow the lead of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and examine the wider context. Incidentally, I strongly support the views of the DUP, which is a credit to the people for whom it speaks. I particularly note the comprehensive and detailed evidence it presented to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which I have read but not necessarily inwardly digested.
Noble Lords might know that I served for a year or so as special adviser to the then Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. I knew more than I could possibly have wanted to know about phytosanitary issues. We have to look at the wider context here: this is about not just the de jure decision of the UK as a whole to leave the EU but the de facto bifurcation of a sovereign country. It is not just about granular and technical issues relating to groceries and agricultural goods; it is about the fundamental right of a group of people to elect and dismiss representatives who are accountable to their electors.
The wider issue is quite obvious to those of us who have followed the European Union’s behaviour. Incidentally, the wider context of the Windsor Framework specifically is that the EU was effectively in breach of the TCA because it used the non-agreement of the Windsor Framework as a means to prevent the UK securing a deal on the successor to Horizon Europe. That was blackmail, frankly—but we should not be surprised by that because Martin Selmayr, who was chief of staff to Jean-Claude Juncker, stated way back in 2016 that the strategic geopolitical interests of the European Union were in making Brexit as difficult as possible for the United Kingdom and making sure that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland did not have a long-term economic advantage over the EU. So it was always the case that it would weaponise Northern Ireland to cause as much difficulty as possible. That is the wider issue. In fairness, I agree that Tony Blair and John Major warned of these potential difficulties—although they were coming at the issue from a different angle, in opposing the Brexit vote.
I am not surprised about the passion of my noble friends in the DUP because this is a fundamental issue about the governance of our country, and we would not nonchalantly seek not to debate a similar proposal if it were about Devon, Surrey, Northumberland or Birmingham. Why should we effectively treat our citizens in Northern Ireland, who have decided to remain part of this sovereign nation, in a different and less advantageous way? For that reason, I welcome the regret Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey.
It is important to note, as I did earlier, that proposals that would have solved this issue were put forward. If noble Lords remember, there was the Malthouse compromise, a backstop and the Karlsson report on smart borders 2.0 and 2.1, which the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, referenced. There were opportunities to leverage technologies, such as CCTV, warehousing away from the border and trusted trader schemes, in order for there to be a mutually beneficial trading relationship that would not bring a hard border back or threaten the integrity and viability of the Good Friday agreement. But these were dismissed by the EU and, through Messrs Varadkar and Coveney exerting pressure day by day and week by week on a weak Government without a majority—the May Government—their position was allowed to succeed. We missed that opportunity. This gentleman is not some esoteric policy wonk; he was in charge of the customs of Sweden and did work all over the world, including the Middle East. He had great expertise and offered it to the Commission and the British Government. As I mentioned, he produced a comprehensive and practical report to the appropriate committee of the European Union, but it was dismissed.
For those reasons, I believe it is important that we continue to debate the Windsor Framework in the future because this issue is much more fundamental than the minutiae of trade, HGV movements and other issues—though they are important, as noble Lords have said. If this is pressed to a vote, I am afraid that, for the first occasion in this House, I will support the regret Motion from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey.
Lord Moylan (Con)
My Lords, I will be brief. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, referred to this instrument as a “humiliation”. I am not sure whether he meant a humiliation for the country or something else, but we can be in no doubt that it is a humiliation for Parliament that a foreign Parliament should send us an instrument—a law made by it with no reference to us—and invite us to cut and paste it into the form of a statutory instrument that we are required to rubber-stamp.
I cannot think of another democracy, inside or outside Europe, which would be willing to have laws made for the internal trade of part its own country and for part of its own territory by a foreign Parliament on this basis, with no participation or representation, and be expected to accept it and hand it on in this way.
We are told that the justification for accepting this humiliation—although this has not come up in the debate, as such—is that it is the price of maintaining the Good Friday agreement. That would not be an argument wholly without merit, if it had substance—but it has no substance, because the Good Friday agreement is not being maintained. It is not being maintained in its internal arrangements or on its east-west strands, or north-south. It is largely defunct; the only part of the Good Friday agreement that is still fundamentally alive is the question that Northern Ireland will remain part of the United Kingdom unless and until there is a vote that supports transferring it to the Republic of Ireland. That part of it remains alive; the rest is functionally dead.
So we are not actually achieving our objective in doing this, but meanwhile we accept the humiliation, which no doubt in a moment my noble friend is going to rise at the Dispatch Box and defend. With a name like Harlech, if he were proposing this in relation to Wales, I imagine that he would resile, and resile firmly from doing so, but in the case of Northern Ireland it appears to be acceptable, despite the manifest evidence that the claimed benefit of doing so is not actually arising. I look forward to hearing what my noble friend on the Front Bench is going to say.
But I look forward almost with more interest to what the noble Baroness on the Labour Front Bench is going to say. I have to take cognisance of the fact that I understand, or am told by outside interests, that there is the prospect or possibility of a Labour Government in the next year or so. I do not countenance it myself, but to hear what the Labour Party has to say about what it will do about this in government—and the noble Lord, Lord Weir, is correct that we need to look forward—is absolutely crucial on this matter. In my view, it will find that, if it thinks that this is going to be solved in some way by greater alignment of the whole of the United Kingdom with the European Union, it will quickly run into the fact that there is a price to be paid. The European Union will regard that there is a price to be paid for that alignment, in loss of opportunities elsewhere. Those hard decisions—and of course I am not expecting to hear the answer to those decisions today—will land very firmly at the feet of any incoming Government who might arrive in the next 12 months. The Windsor Framework and the arrangements put in its place are absolutely central to how any incoming Government respond to them. So in some ways, the most interesting speech of the day, I am sure, will come from one of the two noble Baronesses—I am not sure which—sitting opposite, and I look forward to it.