G7

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank my noble friend. He is absolutely right that a range of technical solutions are already being used. He mentioned a few. Others include trusted trader schemes, transit provisions, frontier zones and electronic pre-clearing for goods moving across the border. There is a lot of work ongoing, looking at how these solutions can come together in order to mean that we do not need the backstop.

My noble friend mentioned that there was no communique. France had said all along that it wanted to move beyond the standard format, which is why only a statement was published rather than a communique.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, may I press the Leader further on the backstop? She just read out, “any future agreement must include the abolition of the anti-democratic backstop—which is, by the way, opposed on all sides”. These are the words the noble Baroness used and which were presumably used by the Prime Minister earlier. Is it now the position that the Irish Government are opposing maintaining the backstop?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

That was in relation to the problems that the Government are having in getting the withdrawal agreement through the House of Commons and was in that context. It has been very clear that we will not be able to get the agreement through with the backstop. That has been one of the major issues that Members across the House of Commons have raised. That is why we are focusing on that issue with the Irish and our EU partners in order to ensure that we can remove it so that we can get the deal that we want and get agreement at the October Council.