Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Lord Morrow Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morrow (DUP)]

My Lords, before I come to what I want to say today, I want to remind the House that on Saturday evening I attended a memorial service at a local border school to remember its former headmaster. He was abducted by the IRA while across the border having a meal with his wife and was found the next day with a bullet through his head. The memorial also remembered three former pupils of that small border college in Aughnacloy on the Monaghan border.

There were many people there that evening who had served in the security forces, and I looked across their faces and wondered whether I would have been as brave as those men during the Troubles, when more than 3,000 people lost their lives. Some 60% of those deaths are attributable to the Provisional IRA, 30% attributable to loyalists and 10% to the security forces—but, as I have said in this House before, when you drill down into that last figure, it is something like 1%, because the 10% includes incidents where the security forces intercepted terrorists en route to shoot or blow up something.

That was a very solemn occasion and it vividly reminded me of what went on in Northern Ireland during those years. We hope that is behind us. I have three colleagues sitting on these Benches today who have the marks of those years on their bodies. The IRA tried to murder them. Today, those same people are feted as great, courageous people. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Dodds mentioned that we took risks beyond what we should have ever been asked to take to bring us to the situation we have today.

Did we need to be here today discussing this Bill? If only government had listened to us when we said the protocol would not work. But who did they listen to? They listened to the rigorous implementers saying, “Get it done—implement it rigorously and vigorously”, until government then had to acknowledge. We would not be here today had government listened to us. For two years, we pleaded with the Government: “This is not going to do the job. This will not work”. It was only when Sir Jeffrey Donaldson removed the First Minister, and then removed his Ministers, that government started to sit up, listen and take note. I hope and pray that we never have to get to a situation again where government will just turn their heads, look the other way and listen to only one side of the debate.

I commend the three speakers who have spoken before me. They have hit all the right notes and all the issues. But, in looking at the Bill, which changes the date by which the Assembly election must be called, we must be real about why we are here. We are here for one reason and one reason only: the Northern Ireland protocol—now renamed the Windsor Framework; I do not know whether it will eventually come out like that —creates an injustice that is very simple. In 300 areas of law, it subjects the people of Northern Ireland to laws by a foreign parliament.

It thus effects the partial disfranchisement of 1.9 million people. Does anyone in that House care that that is happening? We in Northern Ireland certainly do. We need to see that fixed. Until the end of 2020, it did not matter what part of the United Kingdom you resided in; we could all stand for election to make all the laws to which we were subject. From 1 January 2021, that changed. Today, when UK citizens in England, Wales and Scotland can stand for election to make all the laws to which they are subject, people living in Northern Ireland are afforded the right to stand for election to make only some of the laws to which we are subject. To date, around 700 laws have been imposed on us; that figure will continue to increase as the years go by.

I am not going to debate the Stormont brake, as it has been mentioned here before, but what does it do? It cements this injustice rather than removing it. In the first place, it applies to only some areas of imposed law, and so falls at the first hurdle. In the second instance, even if it can be made to work, which many doubt, it does not restore to the people of Northern Ireland the right to stand for election to make all the laws to which we are subject. It just gives us the demeaning second-class—perhaps third-class—right to stand for election to try to stop laws that have already been made for us by a foreign parliament applying to us. As such, it is a far more humiliating provision than Poynings’ law—noble Lords can look up what that was; I did but I will not go into it—which is now regarded as a matter of shame by many people in GB. At least under Poynings’ law, the Irish Privy Council had the power to initiate and define legislation in the first instance.

In this context, we must be clear that it would not make any difference whether or not the Government removed every check on the green lane; let us remember that that pertains only to consumer goods that have a confirmed address in Northern Ireland. The fundamental injustice that is the protocol would remain. If we are not to find ourselves back here again in a short while with a similar Bill, the Government need to take responsibility for their own citizens and explain to the European Union that our votes are not tradeable—we are not some sort of a commodity—and that the integrity of our political system depends on treating all citizens as ends in ourselves rather than as a means to an end.

The Good Friday/Belfast agreement—whatever term you wish to place on it—ended a 60-year period during which the Republic of Ireland refused to recognise the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom. Its constitution claimed the north, as it would call it; however, as a result of the Belfast agreement, the Republic recognised the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom for the first time and ceased to claim “the north”, in return for the provision of a border poll in the event that polling suggested majority support for the break-up of the UK and Northern Ireland joining the Irish Republic. The agreement also contains cross-border provisions that then became necessary to facilitate a good working relationship in the context of recognising and respecting the reality of the newly recognised border. I emphasise that at no point does the Good Friday agreement say that there can be no customs border.

There is much more that I could say, but, before I sit down, I want to say this. A guarantee was given that Northern Ireland’s constitutional position would not change without a referendum and the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. I stand in your Lordships’ House today and contend that Northern Ireland’s constitutional position has changed, but we have had no opportunity to say anything. So do I now conclude that that guarantee in the Belfast agreement—that there will be a constitutional referendum—has now been pushed aside and is no longer relevant? I am fearful, and I would like the Government, the Opposition and everyone else from any party that sits in this House to declare where they are. Our constitutional position has been changed and we have had no say whatever. I will stop there.