European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

You can please some of the people some of the time, but never all of the people all of the time. Like my noble friend Lord Hain, I should like to have seen more reference in the amendment to the customs union that has to be in some way adopted to ensure that there is no very hard border. I also agree, however, with the noble Lord, Lord Cormack: the fact that this amendment is before us at all is an indicator of the work of the Government, the Minister and his ministerial colleagues, including the Member for Worcester, who has been dealing with this. The Bill now refers to the Good Friday agreement, north-south ministerial bodies and the need to avoid a physical border with all its trappings. I am sure that in the months ahead the Minister will be able to find some answer to my noble friend Lord Hain in the Trade Bill that will come before us—it is a hugely important issue—but I very much take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey. He, the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgeman, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and I were at the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly in County Sligo last week meeting Members of Parliament not just from Ireland and the United Kingdom but from the devolved institutions, and there was unanimous agreement that Brexit is dominating British-Irish relations. No other country in the European Union will be affected like Ireland, and it is very important that we acknowledge that in Parliament as well as in government.

The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is also vital. The Government must concentrate their efforts on restoring the institutions in Belfast. Only this week, the Government announced extra money for the National Health Service. The Barnett consequentials of that for Wales and Scotland will be decided by Ministers and Parliaments. Who will decide where that extra money—hundreds of millions of pounds—will go in Northern Ireland when there is no Executive? More significantly in the context of this debate, there is no political voice from Northern Ireland in the negotiations dealing with these important issues. I am sure the Minister will have this uppermost in his mind in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, we accept that this amendment is not everything we wanted, but it is a lot of it, and I hope that the Commons will accept it when it goes back to them. There is absolute recognition that, 20 years after the signing of the Good Friday agreement, we must not allow Brexit to interfere with all the good work that has resulted from that agreement in 1998.

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My Lords, as ever on this issue, we have brought forward some of the key aspects that are important to our relations in Northern Ireland. I shall touch briefly on some of the points raised. A number of noble Lords stressed that there is a border between Ireland and Northern Ireland. There are different jurisdictions for taxation and various other aspects, but we have to recognise that we have made great progress in how that border is viewed and must recognise it going forward. We cannot create further infrastructure on that border.

I bring my points directly to those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who was disappointed that there was not enough of the specificity and designation that he felt needed to be there. In truth, when we talk about checks and controls we are not trying to be ambiguous; we are trying to capture all those aspects. When I spoke in one of the previous debates in your Lordships’ House, I addressed issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, about the checks that will not happen on that border. There will be no profile and no quixotic behaviour. We need to recognise that the border as is must remain as is. We shall not impose on the border, through either infrastructure or unintentional non-tariff barriers, any restriction that impedes the movement of people or indeed, we hope, of trade and goods. That will of course be developed and resolved in the Bills that come after; there will be opportunities in both the Trade Bill and the withdrawal implementation Bill to address these matters still further.

It is important to reflect on the points raised by my noble friend Lord Cormack at the beginning. This may not be where the razzmatazz of the afternoon is but what we have done here is bring together all sides of the House, I hope, in putting into the Bill that which was not there before: recognition of the vital importance of the Belfast agreement and recognition of north/south co-operation are now in the Bill because of the activities of this House and the other place. There will of course be opportunities to develop those aspects.

There will be challenges, I do not doubt, and it is right to reflect that the absence of an Executive in Northern Ireland is a detriment to the people of Northern Ireland at this critical moment. There are not only the Barnett consequentials on health but many other examples where, too often, we are calling on civil servants to do the job of Ministers. That cannot go on. Equally, there are times right now when the voices of the communities in Northern Ireland would be an asset to our engagement on the wider Brexit question but they are missing.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, said we should have more pith. Well, I am not going to take the pith any longer. I am going to conclude my remarks and say: I beg to move.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to listen to the wisdom and experience of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames. He helps put all this back into perspective for us. I shall speak to Amendments 215, 198 and 187A, to which I have added my name. All three tackle the issue of avoiding a hard border and of upholding the progress made in the last 20 years since the Good Friday Belfast agreement.

Whereas there is virtually universal consensus about those aims, as the debate this evening has shown, there is still scarily little consensus about how they can be achieved in reality, especially given the timescale we are now talking about. Various options are being floated for the Irish border issue, but every one of them is considered utterly unacceptable to at least one section of society on the island of Ireland. This has all been further complicated by the confidence and supply arrangement that the Government have found themselves in since last summer, and the hard-line position on Brexit taken by the DUP.

In the absence of a credible policy from the Government and the current policy vacuum, various myths and assumptions have started to take hold. The first and most popular myth is, as my noble friend Lady Doocey has so clearly spelled out, that this problem can somehow magically be solved through “technological solutions”. The proponents of this myth have somewhat ironically given enormous credence to a paper written by one researcher for the Constitutional Affairs Committee in the European Parliament. As my noble friend said, and as the disclaimer in the document makes clear, that paper has no official status. People have perhaps been so keen to promote it because it is more than the Government themselves have been able to produce.

But even if such technological solutions were indeed feasible, as the noble Lord, Lord Browne, said, it is highly unlikely that they could be fully implemented within the next decade, never mind by next March. We just need to look at the track record across Whitehall to know how long it takes to introduce new technological systems, and how often there are severe technical and teething problems. On giving evidence to our EU Committee, a senior Swiss customs official acknowledged that on the 120 border crossings between Switzerland and the EU, even with technology some hardware has to be installed, with CCTV cameras, number plate recognition, drone technology and so on. Any such hardware could be very vulnerable to vandalism, so people on the ground would be required to protect it. It is not hard to see how this could quickly be ratcheted up to become a physical border. The chief constable of the PSNI, George Hamilton, has expressed publicly his concerns and warned that border posts and security installations created as a result of a hard Brexit would be seen as fair game for attack by violent dissident republicans.

The second dangerous assumption is that because the Irish have the most to lose economically as a result of Brexit, they will have to sort out the problem and fix it in Brussels. There are even those who say that the inevitable consequence is that Ireland too will have to leave the European Union. But Ireland is a sovereign state and the Irish people overwhelmingly continue to support membership of the European Union. This is particularly true among young people. They did not have a say in the Brexit referendum in 2016, so it is deeply unreasonable to say that it is now down to them to sort it all out.

The third key area of debate is that somehow or other the issue of the border has been exaggerated; some have even used the word “weaponised”. However, just two days before the EU referendum the Prime Minister, Theresa May, said:

“if we were out of the European Union with tariffs on exporting goods into the EU, there would have to be something to recognise that between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. And if you pulled out of the EU and came out of free movement, then how could you have a situation where there was an open border with a country that was in the EU and had access to free movement?”

On this I agree with the Prime Minister.

During an EU Select Committee visit to Ireland and Northern Ireland in January, we heard many people voicing concern about the differences in interpretation in London and in Dublin on the joint agreement reached between the EU and the UK on 8 December. In Dublin there is understandably a firm belief that it was an agreement that was to be honoured by both sides.

The purpose of Amendment 215 is to give effect to paragraphs 49 and 50 of the joint report agreed on 8 December. Paragraph 49 of the joint agreement envisages three different scenarios for finding a solution to the Irish border issue. The second scenario envisages,

“specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland”.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, has already read out the details of paragraph 49, so I ask the Minister when the Government intend to come forward with these specific solutions, and why they have not yet come forward with proposals. I am sure the Minister will agree that this is becoming increasingly urgent, given the imminent European Council where these issues will be examined on 23 March.

I shall conclude by saying a few words about some of the unseen consequences of leaving the European Union, and the impact on the Good Friday Belfast agreement. Since we both joined the European Economic Community in 1973, Irish and UK Ministers have had the opportunity to sit around the table in Brussels on a monthly basis. They have sat around that table as equals. These meetings have provided an unseen but vital opportunity to discuss the issues of the day and to work around problems. This has provided a vital information flow which has had a not inconsiderable influence on the peace process. In his concluding remarks, can the Minister say what thought the Government have given to enhancing UK-Ireland relations in the absence of these hugely valuable diplomatic channels? On this, as with so many other issues surrounding Brexit, the full consequences are not yet fully understood, but we must do all we can to avoid any reversal of the hard-won peace and progress achieved over the last 20 years.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment so eloquently spoken to by my noble friend Lord Hain. I remind the House that we are three weeks away from the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Those two decades ago it was my privilege, as the political development Minister at the time, to chair a good part of those negotiations—but in 1997 I had been appointed by the Prime Minister to be the European Minister as well. There is a link between the two, which is why I wanted to speak to this amendment.

The committee of your Lordships’ House that looked at this matter some months ago concluded that common European Union membership had laid the groundwork for the development of the peace process. Indeed, the preamble to the Good Friday agreement says that the two Governments wished,

“to develop still further the unique relationship between their peoples and the close co-operation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union”.

There can be no doubt that throughout the whole of that agreement the three strands—strand 1, which dealt with the internal arrangements within Northern Ireland; strand 2, which dealt with the relations between the north and the south of the island of Ireland; and strand 3, which dealt with east-west relations between the two countries of Ireland and the United Kingdom—and all the other elements of the Good Friday agreement were underpinned by that common membership of the European Union.

In strand 1, much of the success of the last 20 years has been based upon the European funding in Northern Ireland, not least of which was the actual peace money itself, which helped to produce peace, stability and prosperity in Northern Ireland. In strand 2, where these bodies north and south come together, much of what they did relied upon the common membership of the European Union, again with regard to funding but other issues as well. Strand 3 set up the British-Irish Council and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference, both of which deal with matters affecting the European Union. In the paragraphs cited by my noble friend Lord Browne a few minutes ago, the Government themselves accept that the Good Friday agreement must be kept intact when Brexit occurs.

Another issue, perhaps not so legal but very important, is the fact that in my view the agreement would not have been successful if the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom had not entered the European Union together in 1973. That meant that time after time, day after day, even hour after hour, in Brussels and elsewhere, the two Governments could talk at ministerial and official level. That talking meant that the old bad relations between the two countries faded away, as, of course, did the border itself. The blurring of the border as a result of the events of the last 20 years has been hugely significant in not just economic and security terms but in psychological terms, because that border has gone in the minds of both nationalists and unionists. Its resurrection would be an absolute disaster. Whatever one’s views on Brexit, the idea of returning to what had been there before would be extremely backward looking.

The other issue to which my noble friend referred was that the Good Friday agreement is an international treaty. The two Governments of Britain and the Republic of Ireland are joint guarantors of the Good Friday agreement. The responsibility rests upon our shoulders to ensure that all the aspects of that agreement, which are as fresh today in my mind as they were 20 years ago, are guaranteed by the two Governments.

Senator George Mitchell, who will come over to Northern Ireland in a couple of weeks’ time to commemorate the Good Friday agreement, said a couple of days ago that there were 700 days of failure and one day of success in the talks which led to the Good Friday agreement. If we do not ensure that we deal with the border and respect all the aspects of the Good Friday agreement, we cannot allow the Brexit negotiations to put at risk the great worth and good that has come to Northern Ireland and, indeed, to Ireland and the United Kingdom, as a consequence of what we did two decades ago.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kilclooney (CB)]

My Lords, I want to comment briefly on one or two points. For example, the noble Lord, Lord Davies, in his historical analysis of Ireland forgot the Battle of the Boyne. I am amazed. Secondly, he forgot the fact that there used to be no Irish living in Ireland. They invaded the island. The Scotti lived on the island originally. The Irish invaded our island and drove the Scotti out, and they went 20 miles away to a country now called Scotland. That is where it gets its name from—the Scotti who were driven out of the island of Scotia. When the Irish invaded, they changed it to Hibernia. Read Magnus Magnusson’s book on the history of Ireland.

I am the one Member here who lives near the border and I do not want to see a hard border. I want to see the common travel area preserved. I speak as one who was a very active European. I was chairman of the European Youth Campaign in Northern Ireland. I campaigned strongly in the EEC referendum. I then became an MEP for 10 years and, after that, I spent seven years in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. Likewise, living near the border, I was very keen on north-south relations at a time when the Dublin Government refused to even recognise that Northern Ireland existed.

When I became chairman of the Young Unionist Council—in the middle of the last century—I said we would meet people in Dublin to see if we could start improving relations. We arranged to have a meeting in Dublin with the central branch of Fine Gael. The Ulster Unionist Party went crackers. They said I would get expelled. We should not do it. How can you talk to somebody who does not even recognise that you exist? We went to Dublin and had our meeting. I looked at the Irish Times three weeks later and what did I see? “Party branch expelled”. I thought, “My goodness”, but it was the central branch of Fine Gael that had been expelled for meeting the unionists. That is life in Ireland.

I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, who was quite right to say that the southern Irish are petrified about the impact of Brexit. I see it every day where I live. Thousands of people now come every day from the Republic to Northern Ireland for the obvious reason. The depreciation of the pound sterling means that the ladies all come up to our border towns to do their weekly shop. Our border towns are now—“exploding” is the wrong word to use—absolutely thriving, and people along the border who think about the economics say what a great thing Brexit is. However, it is worse for the Republic of Ireland. The largest number of its tourists come from England and, because of the 15% depreciation, tourism is now going into decline.

A second point is that meat cannot be exported from the Republic to Britain because, again, meat prices are down by 15%. Farmers are now demonstrating outside supermarkets in the Republic because of the collapse in the prices. Furthermore, mushroom plants are closing down. Hundreds of people have already lost their jobs for the same reason: they cannot export mushrooms.

Of course, a special status is required for someone but not for Northern Ireland. It is offensive to suggest that it should have a special status. It is the Republic that needs it. We must keep the common travel area there, and we must get Brussels to recognise, as the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland has stated, that the Republic will be more seriously damaged than any other nation in the European Union. It will suffer badly. It is suffering already, but what will it be like in two and a half years’ time when the United Kingdom leaves the European Union? The Republic of Ireland needs special status and we should support it in its attempts to get that in Brussels. As one who lives on the border, I say: keep the common travel area.

I was involved in the negotiations on the Belfast agreement and I have an original copy of it here. There is not one mention of the European Union in any of the four articles at the end of the agreement. Of course, human rights are mentioned but that is in relation to the Council of Europe; it has nothing to do with the European Union. I will oppose the amendment.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate lasting almost two hours. I am making a guest appearance at this Dispatch Box as the Minister for Political Development who partly chaired the peace process 20 years ago. When I look around this Chamber—I cannot look behind me but they are there—I see a large number of noble Lords who took part in the talks on that agreement.

I do not accept that the amendments in my name are intended to frustrate in any way the passage of the Bill. Because I am sure that the Minister will give us proper undertakings, it is unlikely that I will move them. However, I think that noble Lords would agree that the quality of the debate and the number of people who have spoken indicate the importance of the subject. I do not think that there has been anything more important in my political lifetime than the Northern Ireland peace process, and the second most significant process is what we are debating today: Brexit—and I say that as a remainer. The interrelationship between the two is extremely important. I see today’s debate as a starter—a reminder to the Government that they have to address huge issues with regard to Northern Ireland and Ireland, and in the few minutes available to me I would like to touch on them.

In the debate in the other place some weeks ago, there was a speech by Owen Paterson, whom I regarded as a very committed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, but I disagreed with him on the following. He said that he wanted to correct the narrative that the European Union played a key role in the Northern Ireland peace process. When I was appointed as the talks Minister, I was also appointed Minister for Europe. That is no coincidence, because Europe played a huge and significant role in the peace process. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, that strands 1, 2 and 3 of the Northern Ireland talks referred to aspects of our membership of the European Union.

I will now comment on the remarks of my noble friend Lord Empey. He said, quite rightly, that it is not the legalities of this issue that matter but what produced the agreement, and it was the politics and the international treaty between the two countries that did that. There was a will on the part of the two countries and, above all, a commitment by all the political parties in Northern Ireland to come to the Good Friday agreement. It was our joint membership of the European Union, as opposed to any legalities or technicalities, that meant that Ministers from both countries were able to meet: the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister, Ministers at Council of Europe meetings, and Members of Parliament through the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly or its equivalent in those days. I remember taking the entire Northern Ireland Assembly to Brussels at the invitation of the European Union so that Members could see how important Europe was to the future of Northern Ireland. The excellent report produced by the House’s European Union Committee on British-Irish relations post Brexit says that joint membership has been a “vital ingredient” in those relations. Of course it has.

Money was important, too. Northern Ireland had Objective 1 status, and that was significant to the people of Northern Ireland. As noble Lords have said, there was also the peace money, which was unique in the whole of Europe. Money was designated by the European Union to help the process of making peace in Northern Ireland. However, it was not simply the money itself; it was how the money was distributed. I remember, as Secretary of State, going around Northern Ireland and talking to the groups which received the money from Europe and had to spend it between them. Unionists, nationalists, Catholics and Protestants met to distribute the money—and that in itself broke down barriers in Northern Ireland.

My noble friend Lord Hain made a very powerful speech. There is no question that over the last 20 years the border has diminished visibly and psychologically. I believe that the lack of a hard border allowed nationalists in Northern Ireland to develop a sense of common identity with their fellow European Union citizens across the border. In the same way, I vividly remember the meetings at Stormont House when there was a reluctance on the part of the unionist parties to accept devolution in Northern Ireland—that is, strand 1. However, as soon as we had in Great Britain as a whole a Parliament in Scotland, an Assembly in Wales and an Assembly in Northern Ireland, it meant that it was easier for the unionist community in Northern Ireland to accept it. We had to make these compromises.

I am reminded, too, by my noble friend Lord Rooker of the milk travelling from Northern Ireland to the Baileys plant. I remember it vividly because I opened the plant many years ago—although I never appreciated the international nature of the milk. Of course, if you think about it, that applies not just to the milk but to the sheep, the cows and the whole of the agricultural industry, which straddles the border and has no match anywhere in the rest of the European Union.

So the issue of the border is hugely significant, and I know that the Government take it seriously. It is an issue that cannot be allowed to drift—it has to be top of the agenda. The brightest minds in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Dublin and in the Northern Ireland Office in Whitehall, not to mention the officials in Brussels, should be engaged in dealing with this very tricky issue.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, in my 40-odd years in political life, I have voted six times in referenda. I was on the winning side three times and I was on the losing side, including this one, three times. On all those occasions, I had to accept that, whatever my personal views, I would accept the views of the people in that referendum, and I willingly and happily—perhaps not happily but willingly—accept the views of the British people in this one. But that does not mean that there is no role for Parliament or for the House of Lords to consider the issues affected so dramatically by the single decision of coming out of the European Union.

The political landscape of the United Kingdom in the past 20 years has changed dramatically. Despite the decision of the Supreme Court not to allow the devolved Administrations their wish in this matter, politically Parliament and this House of Lords cannot ignore the issue of the devolved Administrations and what might happen in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I was never a Scottish Minister, but I was Secretary of State for Wales and for Northern Ireland, and I want to address a couple of issues with regard to those countries and how the Bill and subsequent legislation will affect them. In his winding-up speech, I hope that the Minister will be able to address these points. Next week, amendments will be tabled and debated with regard to the devolved Administrations.

Wales voted to leave. That does not mean that there are not issues in Wales that need to be addressed. Seventy per cent of Welsh exports are to member states of the European Union. The great Airbus factory in north Wales is heavily dependent on European business. Tens of thousands of Welsh farmers rely on European money and are wondering what will happen when it runs out. Hundreds, indeed thousands, of organisations and communities in Wales depend on European Union funding too, and they are concerned about what will happen. Our Welsh universities and colleges depend on European students, but also on a great deal of resource for research. I hope that the Government will take these matters seriously and discuss them with Carwyn Jones, the Welsh Government and the Welsh Assembly.

I turn to Northern Ireland. There, the situation is different. The people of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. The people of the Republic of Ireland are strongly in favour of their membership of the European Union. Yet that country, Ireland, will be affected more than any other European country as a result of our decision to leave the European Union. Billions of pounds every year are spent in trade between Ireland and the United Kingdom. The European Union Committee issued a great report on the issue which I hope we will be able to debate in the months to come. What about Northern Ireland? There, the issue of the border looms. There has been no border, other than at the time of the Troubles, separating North and South in Ireland. The fact that the Troubles disappeared and that the border went with them was a huge issue in bringing about peace in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Government are, with the Irish Government, looking extremely carefully at how to deal with the situation in practical terms.

There is more. I chaired many of the talks that led to the Good Friday agreement 20 years ago. It was based on the common membership of the two Governments —the two countries, Ireland and the United Kingdom—of the European Union. That common membership permeated every strand—1, 2 and 3—of those negotiations. Strand 2 concerned relations between the North and the South. Most of the bodies that have been set up between Ireland and Northern Ireland are based on Europe. Therefore, if we leave the European Union, that essential element of the Good Friday agreement is jeopardised.

Money came too, of course—not just Objective 1 money, important though it was to Northern Ireland, but peace money too. The distribution of that peace money from Europe to Northern Ireland meant that nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, worked together in distributing those funds in Northern Ireland in itself helping to bring about peace. The people of Northern Ireland in a referendum in 1998 voted for the Good Friday agreement. At the same time the public of the Republic of Ireland overwhelmingly voted for that agreement. The people of Northern Ireland voted to stay in the European Union and yet the people of the United Kingdom decided to come out. If that is not a huge dilemma for the Government, I do not know what is.

I will finish by simply quoting the preamble to the Good Friday or Belfast agreement of 1998. It says that the two Governments wish,

“to develop still further the unique relationship between their peoples and the close co-operation between their countries as friendly neighbours and as partners in the European Union”.

The European Union has been vital to the Northern Ireland peace process. It must not be jeopardised by the Brexit process.