European Council

Lord Lawson of Blaby Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware—I am sure she is—that the two most important aspects of the Belfast agreement on Northern Ireland referred to were, first, the recognition by both sides of the existence of the border—the border is a reality and will continue to be a reality and a “hard border” is a meaningless phrase—and, secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, that it was agreed that there was a peaceful route to reunification of the island of Ireland through a referendum of the people of Northern Ireland? If anything is done in the European Union sense here to shed doubt on the primacy of the referendum result, this will be disastrous for Northern Ireland.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I can only reiterate to my noble friend there remain real differences between us and the Commission on Northern Ireland but that we are absolutely committed to resolving them. We are all committed to working together to make sure that there is no return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic and that we maintain the constitutional integrity of the UK.