Official Controls (Amendment) Regulations 2024
Lord Morrow Excerpts(2 days, 1 hour ago)
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Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I strongly agree with everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, has said. The whole rationale for the Irish Sea border was that there could not be a hard border in the island of Ireland. It was never that there could be no border, not least because the Good Friday agreement confirmed that the international border remains where it is unless a majority of people in Northern Ireland vote to leave the UK for the Republic and a majority of people in the Republic vote to absorb Northern Ireland, which of course has not happened. The international border is clearly present, not least in relation to tax, excise, legislation, et cetera. These regulations, however, demonstrate to us that a border without a permanent infrastructure can provide an acceptable way of managing SPS goods coming from the Republic and wider EU into GB by means of pre-notification and SPS checks on the border.
In doing so, they remove the justification for moving the SPS border from the international border to the Irish Sea. In so doing, they remove the attempted justification for its many injustices. The methodology of these regulations makes it impossible for the UK Government to justify keeping the border in the Irish Sea. In doing so they, first, abdicate their biosecurity responsibilities in relation to Northern Ireland. Secondly, they effectively expel Northern Ireland from the UK biosecurity identity. Thirdly, they disenfranchise the people of Northern Ireland, at least in relation to SPS legislation. Fourthly, they disrespect the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom by allowing 27 other states the right to make the laws of part of the United Kingdom in this area.
These regulations highlight a better way but then fail to follow through on their discovery by needlessly keeping the border in the wrong place. They must be rejected and the Government must come back with new legislation, such as the mutual enforcement Bill currently before the Commons, that at least places the SPS border, along with the tax, excise and legislative border, on the international border.
In making this case, I ask the Minister to recognise the basic injustice that underpins these regulations and not to try to justify them on the basis that—notwithstanding the fact that these regulations demonstrate it is unnecessary to have the Irish Sea border dividing our country in two—we must continue to stand by the division of our country because of the UK Government’s agreement with the EU.
In making this point, I remind the House that international law, as has already been referred to, is very clear that treaties are not inviolable because they are treaties. There are laws about what makes a treaty valid quite apart from when the parties of the treaty are happy to sign up to them. For example, the UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, censures anything
“which would dismember or impair, totally or in part, the territorial integrity or political unity of sovereign and independent States conducting themselves in compliance with the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”.
It further states:
“Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other State or country”.
Lest anyone should be in any doubt about the importance of these principles, the declaration also affirms:
“The principles of the Charter which are embodied in this Declaration constitute basic principles of international law, and consequently appeals to all States to be guided by these principles in their international conduct and to develop their mutual relations on the basis of the strict observance of these principles”.
Furthermore, it states:
“Where obligations arising under international agreements are in conflict with the obligations of Members of the United Nations under the Charter of the United Nations, the obligations under the Charter shall prevail”.
When we have at our disposal a means of avoiding our division, whether it be through an alternative expression of these regulations that apply their methodology to the international border or through the mutual enforcement Bill currently in another place, it is simply unconscionable that we should entertain anything less.
In this context, I was very pleased to see that these regulations were voted against in the Division in another place by none other than the leader of the Opposition, the shadow Chancellor, the shadow Defence Secretary, the shadow Business and Trade Secretary, the shadow Transport Secretary, the shadow Culture Secretary, the shadow Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, the shadow Science, Technology and Innovation Secretary, the shadow Scotland Secretary and the shadow Welsh Secretary. That is quite a conglomeration of people who see this for what it is.
I would like to go on the record to thank them and the other Members of another place who voted against these regulations—and again, here tonight, I would urge all noble Lords to do the same. May I say this? I will say it very gently. These regulations in the main, in Northern Ireland, are welcomed by those who have united Ireland aspirations. It suits their political ideology and agenda, but we are more interested in fairness—and we think that this House, this place, should give us that at least.
Lord Frost (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support the regret amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. She has made most of the main points in her remarks and I can only endorse them. It is getting late and it is not right to rerun the bigger arguments about Brexit at this moment, but I want to respond briefly to the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. If we are quoting polls about public opinion, I saw a poll tonight saying that 52% of Brits were ready to leave the ECHR now. So, perhaps you pay your pollster and take your choice about the state of public opinion, I guess.
However, it is important to focus on the fundamentals of the situation we are discussing tonight, which these regulations give rise to. The regulations testify to something we always feared, which is that differential arrangements for Northern Ireland, in which it remains closer to EU laws and rules, would end up becoming semi-permanent, contributing durably to separation between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is what is happening. That is at the root of the problem.
This was entirely foreseeable, ever since the joint report between the UK and the EU in December 2017, which the noble Lord, Lord Bew, referred to. I would agree with him, except to say I would regard it not as international law but more as a political agreement between parties. But that is history now. Nevertheless, it was that that made the original commitment to align Northern Ireland with the EU single market and customs, in default of any other solution. Of course, it then became inevitable that the EU would never try to find any other solution, and the UK has never been able to escape from the consequences of this rash and damaging commitment. It was that that led to the agreement of the original Northern Ireland protocol in 2019—under duress, as I argue—as the only way of delivering the referendum result, once Members of this House, and of the other, had closed off the option of leaving the EU without an agreement.
The Johnson Government, both when I was responsible for this issue and under my successors, did their best to deal with the unsatisfactory nature of that protocol, culminating in the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, so intensely disliked in this House, too. That Bill fell, and soon that Government, having promised one thing, then did another and agreed the Windsor Framework. This has done little to improve the situation in practice. But the big change it did make to the political situation was that, instead of trying to remove them, the British Government were now actively committed to defending these arrangements, based on the protocol. That meant defending EU interests rather than UK interests in areas covered by the protocol in Northern Ireland. This is at the root of the political problem that these regulations symbolise. In my view, as I have said many times and carry on saying, it was a serious mistake that caused profound damage to our national interests, and the Windsor Framework will one day need to be corrected.
Since then, we have seen a stream of regulations implementing the Windsor Framework, one set of which we are discussing tonight. Most of them have contributed to reinforcing the division between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and so it is with today’s regulations designed to reinforce the SPS border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, is absolutely right to point out that the effect of the Windsor Framework and these regulations is that HMG are abdicating their biosecurity responsibilities for Northern Ireland to the EU. I agree with her that this can hardly be consistent with Article 1.2 of the protocol, which supposedly respects the essential state functions of the United Kingdom. Others have asked him, but I also ask the Minister whether he agrees that biosecurity is an essential state function of the United Kingdom. If so, how is it compatible with these regulations?
Movement of Goods (Northern Ireland to Great Britain) (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Transitory Provision and Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2024
Lord Morrow Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I support the regret amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Dodds—hardly surprising, I suspect. The Government have a problem. These regulations mean one of two things, and neither will be easy for them to explain.
We have been assured by the Government that the Irish Sea border goes only one way—so goods can move freely without engaging a border if they move from Northern Ireland to GB. In this context, the intent is clearly that Northern Ireland-qualifying goods should be able to move freely without encountering a border, as if they were moving from Wales or Scotland to England. But there is a problem: how do they differentiate lorries carrying just Northern Ireland-qualifying goods from lorries carrying goods that are not Northern Ireland-qualifying or carrying a mixture of both? If they do so by means of random border checks to confirm that a lorry is carrying just Northern Ireland-qualifying goods, all lorries must potentially be stopped and checked, including lorries carrying just Northern Ireland-qualifying goods. If that is what the Government propose, they are proposing to move away from the Windsor Framework reassurance that there will be free movement without a border for Northern Ireland-qualifying goods moving from NI to GB.
Lest the Government seek to come back at this point and say, “Don’t worry—we will randomly stop only some lorries”, I gently remind the Minister that randomly stopping lorries is how borders work. Borders are not affected by a regime stopping all lorries because, if they were, everything would grind to a halt. So, if their intent is to randomly stop lorries—some of which will end up being shown to contain just Northern Ireland-qualifying goods—their purpose will plainly be to move beyond the Windsor Framework and introduce a border for goods moving from Northern Ireland to GB.
The sensible way to deal with this would be for the Government to require, by law, anyone bringing goods that are not Northern Ireland-qualifying across from Northern Ireland to GB to pre-notify and submit all the paperwork electronically before departure, and for the Government then to randomly require some of these lorries to attend an SPS facility for checks. In deciding to not randomly stop all lorries at the border but to depend on deploying a legal requirement, together with serious criminal sanctions, for anyone evading, the requirement to have the SPS facility actually on the border would be removed. It could be some miles from the border. No lorries would be stopped at the border, and only those randomly stopped would attend the SPS facility. This would mean, first, that lorries carrying just Northern Ireland-qualifying goods could move freely from Northern Ireland to GB, like lorries moving from England to Wales and Scotland to England, so that the internal market would be respected.
Secondly, it would mean that the border would be enforced in relation to non-Northern Ireland qualifying goods away from the border. This arrangement poses a huge question. If this sensible solution would work for goods moving from Northern Ireland to GB across the Irish Sea border then there is no justification for not having a similar soft border across the island of Ireland, along the international border.
Moreover, this question hits us with real force. If a soft border is effective, it makes the imposition of a hard border for goods moving from GB to Northern Ireland monstrous; its implications are the disfranchisement of 1.9 million people in 300 areas of law and the disrespecting of the territorial integrity of the UK in violation of international law. How could we have settled for an arrangement that disfranchises 1.9 million of our own people in 300 areas of law and then sought to justify this betrayal on the basis of an account of international law that does not stand up to scrutiny? In order for it to be a valid treaty, there is a requirement that it must respect the territorial integrity of the parties, which the Windsor Framework patently fails to do in making provision for the division of the United Kingdom into two by an international customs and SPS border.
It is impossible to reflect upon these matters without having regard to the beginning of the Second Reading debate on the European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill in another place, last Friday. This Bill provides a framework for a considerably more robust border than in this case, courtesy of its deployment of mutual enforcement. This compounds the ethical question facing the Government through these regulations to an even greater extent. I was appalled to read that a Member in another place responded to the suggestion that mutual enforcement provoked such a question of trust by reading—well done to him—from a scene from Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part 3”,
“For trust not him that hath once broken faith”,
as if trust was something that the UK Government owe only to foreigners. Their highest level of obligation is to their own, and it is in relation to their own that there is scope for the greatest measure of broken faith.
No one is talking about simply walking away from the EU without a conversation. The point simply needs to be made that, in a context where there are actually two ways of managing the border—one that involves disfranchising 1.9 million people in 300 areas of law and disrespecting the territorial integrity of the UK—there is a need for discussion between the UK Government and the EU, and the incoming Trump Administration, about finding a new solution to this very serious and vexed problem.
Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to speak to the amendment to the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, who has provided an excellent analysis of the issues facing businesses in Northern Ireland. Since the outset of the United Kingdom’s negotiations with the European Union, there has always been the potential for significant economic damage to be inflicted on one part of this United Kingdom and on the constitutional future of Northern Ireland in the union.
The root cause of the problems, with the Northern Ireland protocol and the Windsor Framework arrangements, is the continued enforcement of EU laws in Northern Ireland. It has been repeated in this House several times, and we will continue to repeat it, that in more than 300 areas Northern Ireland is subject to laws made not at Stormont or Westminster but by a foreign Parliament, which public representatives here in Westminster and in Stormont have no say over. Let us just get on with it and suck it up, they say, but we are not going to do that.
Windsor Framework (Non-Commercial Movement of Pet Animals) Regulations 2024
Lord Morrow Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, it will hardly come as a surprise to anyone that I will support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, as will my colleagues. In the debate on these regulations in another place, the Minister’s main defence was that they should be celebrated as an achievement because they represented an advance on what went before. There are two huge problems with that argument, as I see it, and I implore the Minister to be more sensitive to Northern Ireland—somehow, I think she will be—than the Minister in the other place was.
In the first instance, if these regulations were an improvement on what went before, they would be wholly unacceptable, because they are still a function of EU regulation 1231, which has already been mentioned tonight by others. It allows our country to be divided in two and hands the governance of that division, in the final analysis, to the European Union. In the second instance, they are not an improvement on what has gone before but a deterioration, because the marker against which the Government suggest that an improvement is being made is entirely theoretical, because the division to which they allude was never ever accommodated.
Let us, therefore, not play with words: these regulations confront us with a new level of division within ourselves from March 2025. I also appeal to the Minister not to confuse the issue by saying that Northern Ireland has always been treated differently for SPS purposes. There is a distinction, in my view anyway, between internal SPS checks within a sovereign country, on one hand, and the imposition of an international plant health border—I cannot think of any other way to say it—along with an international customs border, on the other, for the purpose of dividing our country into two. This is why people travelling from England to Northern Ireland have never before had to travel with a pet passport, border checks and the possibility of having their dogs remitted to an SPS facility. It is incredible—unbelievable.
I also appeal to the Minister not to tell us in Northern Ireland that we have nothing to worry about because the difficulties face those moving from GB to Northern Ireland and not the other way around. In the first instance, it is not correct that there are no burdens imposed on the movement of pets from Northern Ireland to GB. EU regulation 1231 makes it clear that pets must be microchipped, which is currently common only for dogs. In the second instance, however, and far more importantly, people who state that we have nothing to worry about because the burden is on east-west movements completely misjudge the situation and completely misunderstand us. Northern Ireland is the smallest part of the United Kingdom. If the Government impose any obstacles on people moving from GB to Northern Ireland, that necessarily makes the people of Northern Ireland feel more isolated and cut off, which is completely unacceptable.
The regulations confront us with exactly the same difficulty we confronted when looking at the Windsor Framework (Retail Movement Scheme: Plant and Animal Health) (Amendment etc.) Regulations 2024 in October. On that occasion we were forced to recognise that it was impossible to scrutinise the regulations without also scrutinising EU regulation 2023/1231, especially Articles 4 and 12. On this occasion, we have to look especially at Articles 12 and 14 of regulation 1231, as well as the regulations immediately before us.
In coming to today’s debate we must first remind ourselves of the title of EU regulation 1231:
“Regulation (EU) 2023/1231 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2023 on specific rules relating to the entry into Northern Ireland from other parts of the United Kingdom of certain consignments of retail goods, plants for planting, seed potatoes, machinery and certain vehicles operated for agricultural or forestry purposes, as well as non-commercial movements of certain pet animals into Northern Ireland”.
This is a piece of legislation that relates not just to Northern Ireland but to the whole United Kingdom and it divides our country by an international border imposed by and governed by the EU.
Article 12 requires that if you wish to travel from Great Britain to see family in Northern Ireland with your pet dog, you can do so only if, first, you acquire a pet travel document validating that your pet is micro- chipped. Secondly, you have to sign a form renouncing your right to travel with your pet into the Republic of Ireland. Thirdly, your pet and its papers have to be checked on moving from GB to Northern Ireland—and you do so uncertainly, because you know that both you and your pet can be prevented from proceeding freely and may be sent to an SPS facility and not allowed to leave unless and until permission to do so is granted. In other words, you are made to feel like you are visiting a foreign country, and we are made to feel like we are foreigners.
In the last debate, the Minister sought to defend the imposition of EU regulation 1231, by which the EU not only imposes but asserts its sovereign right to govern the border in a way that is completely contrary to international law. The UN Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations does not tolerate any action such as that effected by the Windsor Framework and EU regulation 1231. It states that:
“Every State shall refrain from any action aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of any other State or country”.
How can we accommodate legislation, such as the Windsor Framework, that violates international law? No country can accommodate its division into two, especially when this also results in the disenfranchisement of 1.9 million people and the creation of a colony in 2024. The Government can kid themselves that all is well and that we can all live with this, but no country with an ounce of self-respect or commitment to its citizens, and any hope of a future, can accommodate this. They must wake up and adopt the EU (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill that is to have its Second Reading on 6 December in another place.
As my noble friend Lord McCrea has ably stated, we do not do majoritarianism in Northern Ireland. We have not been doing it for 50 years but, all of a sudden, in this instance, it is the acceptable way. If there was to be majority rule on other things in Northern Ireland, I suspect that those who are in favour of this regulation would be the first on their feet to say, “This is not the way we do things”. This is not the way it is done in Northern Ireland and the pending vote, which the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, has already referred to, is a departure from those who gave us the Belfast agreement.
Baroness Suttie (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her introduction to these regulations, and for all the hard work she is doing to try to resolve the extremely difficult issues, which have been raised so eloquently by so many noble Lords.
I have three brief points. Like the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, for the opportunity to discuss these issues. However, I am not going to disappoint her, and I am going to say what she predicted I would. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, and, as I have said on several occasions during these debates, I am afraid that we are in this situation because of the type of hard Brexit that the previous Government chose to adopt, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, eloquently said when he read out Boris Johnson’s memo.
In the rush to get Brexit done, incompatible promises were made in haste, which means that measures such as these regulations will keep on being introduced in order to make the system work. None the less, these Benches welcome these regulations because we believe they are a significant improvement on their previous requirement, as set out in the Northern Ireland protocol. They are a move towards a common-sense approach to these matters, allowing maximum freedom for pets between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, while recognising the need to maintain high biodiversity standards.
It is particularly welcome that the pet travel document will be valid for the lifetime of a pet, which I believe—indeed, I hope—will minimise the need for bureaucracy. However, I would like to follow the question asked by noble Lords from the DUP, although I will ask it in a slightly different way. It is about how these regulations will be enforced in practice. As I understand it, the pet owner will be obliged to confirm that the pet which has travelled from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will not then subsequently move to Ireland, and therefore the EU. However, given that there is no border on the island of Ireland, how will these provisions be checked and enforced in reality?
My second question is really one of curiosity: why are these regulations just limited to dogs, cats and ferrets? What happens to pets being transported from Great Britain to Northern Ireland that are not currently covered by these three categories? Perhaps there is a logical reason for it, but I am not quite sure what it is.
Budget: Implications for Farming Communities
Lord Morrow Excerpts(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate the concerns that farmers have. I think they should look accurately at the figures. My noble friend makes an important point that some large landowners have been using the APR relief as a tax loophole.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the DUP Benches now.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that the average holding in Northern Ireland extends to about 101 acres? In England, it is about 200 acres. Agricultural land at present makes between £12,000 and £22,000 per acre. Then take the farm dwelling sum, between £300,000 and £500,000. If you add those figures up, you get far in excess of £1 million. How can the Minister tell us that some 50%, or maybe 60%—I read somewhere it was 70%—would be caught in this valuation? Surely the farmers, particularly in Northern Ireland, are getting a very poor deal—it must be clearly understood. In England, there are many tenanted farmers; that is to a much lesser extent in Northern Ireland. Many of these farm holdings have been handed down from one generation to another, and that has to be taken into consideration.