Northern Ireland

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the leader of my party, said in January that any protocol deal struck between the UK Government and the EU would, by definition, mean real progress in mitigating the problems caused by the original deal that they negotiated. He pledged that, in those circumstances, Labour would support such a deal. We will honour that pledge today. While the Government have once again been distracted by rebellion and infighting within their own party, thanks to the Labour party they can be sure that the national interest will be served today.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an important point. For the last quarter of a century, the House has proceeded in relation to the peace process in Northern Ireland—and today is about the peace process, let us be quite clear about that—on the basis of bipartisan or non-partisan politics. For that reason, my party will be joining his and the Government in the Lobby.

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for coming to a similar view to the Labour party. He is a Scottish MP, and I want to express my sympathies with those affected by the incident that is unfolding in Edinburgh, where a ship has capsized, injuring, we believe, 15 or more people. Our sympathies are with him and with the people of Scotland today.

The Government have said that today’s vote is the main vote that the House will get on the Windsor framework. My speech will focus on why Labour supports the deal overall, but I will begin with the Stormont brake, which is the subject of the regulations before us today.

The democratic deficit was always one of the hardest parts of the protocol deal to reconcile. Of course, businesses and most people in Northern Ireland want to continue accessing the European market as well as the internal market, but the cost of this access was having no say on the rules that had to be followed. The Stormont brake will give representatives a say once devolved government is restored. It is impossible to argue that this is not an improvement on the current situation.

Thirty MLAs from two parties will be able to trigger the brake, but just as important is the new Committee of the Assembly that will scrutinise new laws affecting Northern Ireland. There are understandable concerns about how the brake will work in practice, but the best way of stress-testing it is through experience, and we can get that experience only by restoring Stormont. We all want to see Northern Ireland’s devolved Government back up and running—I know that is what DUP Members want to see, too.

I will state the obvious before going further: Northern Ireland’s economy has huge potential and is doing well. The Prime Minister eloquently explained why on his last visit to Northern Ireland, but he did not need to do so, because everyone who lives in or runs a business in Northern Ireland already knows. The challenges posed by the protocol go much deeper than market access, and that is what needs the most attention during this period of tortuous renegotiation.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I can confirm those points 100%.

This is a short Bill, and I propose to time my remarks accordingly. I will merely outline the Bill at this stage and save my discussion of the mechanics of its two clauses for Committee, which I hope will commence shortly. Having said that, I hope the House will permit me to pause and express my gratitude to Opposition Members and, indeed, everyone involved for their continued cross-party approach to delivering key legislation in Northern Ireland. I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Hove, for engaging thoughtfully with me on a number of occasions ahead of the Bill’s introduction.

The Bill will provide for a one-year retrospective extension to the Executive formation period from 19 January 2023, which means that, if the parties are unable to form an Executive on or before 18 January 2024, I will again fall under a duty to call for an Assembly election to take place within 12 weeks. However, as I said earlier, I believe flexibility is the order of the day if we are to play our part in encouraging and facilitating the return of the institutions.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Chair of the Select Committee prompts me to reflect that I am one of the handful of people here who had an active part in the last period of direct rule, in about 2004 or 2005. It was just about the most inadequate procedure imaginable, which is a high bar to clear in this place. Ultimately, without a functioning Assembly, and without direct rule or joint authority, the people who lose out are not the politicians, but the people who rely on public services.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The right hon. Gentleman is completely right that the people of Northern Ireland end up suffering from not having functioning institutions working for them.

The Bill provides me, as Secretary of State, with the important ability to call an early election, provided that offices have not been filled. Taken together, these provisions represent a delicate balance. Eventually, if the political impasse in Northern Ireland continues, people in Northern Ireland will rightly expect to return to the polls to have their say. However, the prospect of forcing an election when it would be unwelcome or unhelpful runs contrary to our goal of providing the time and space we need for our negotiations with the European Union on the protocol to continue to develop, and for an Executive to form.

Members with a keen eye for detail will no doubt have noticed that, unless an early election is called, the extension provided for by the Bill will run past the date on which the decision-making provisions contained in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2022 lapse, namely, 5 June 2023. During the Act’s passage late last year, we were clear that the current governance arrangements were not a sustainable long-term solution. I am therefore keeping those arrangements under review, in the continued absence of fully functioning devolved institutions, but I sincerely hope that an Executive are in place before those arrangements expire.

In the meantime, the provisions of the 2022 Act and its accompanying guidance provide Northern Ireland civil servants with the clarity they need on how and when they should be taking decisions. The decisions they have been taking under the 2022 Act are being published to ensure complete transparency. I am truly grateful for the work of Northern Ireland civil servants in making use of those provisions to maintain public services in Northern Ireland, but, as I have said many times, the right people to take those decisions are locally elected politicians, who should be doing their jobs in an Executive. The current arrangement is not and can never be a substitute for fully functioning devolved institutions.

I know everyone in this House has been deeply moved by the courage shown by a very young man, Dáithí Mac Gabhann. He and his whole family have fought for the implementation of organ donation changes. I recently met Dáithí and his family, and I met them again this morning. I am incredibly moved by his story and by his family’s dedication to seeing this important change to the law on organ donations in Northern Ireland implemented as quickly as possible.

I am a bit of a stickler for how we do things in this place, and I would never want to go against “Erskine May,” but Dáithí and his family are with us in the Gallery today. I am sure hon. Members will wish to join me in welcoming him and commending the whole family for their valiant efforts. They should not need to be here today to see this change, as the Assembly could and should have convened to take this across the finish line.

As I said in my letter to the Northern Ireland parties, they continue to have it within their power to recall the Assembly and deal with secondary legislation such as the regulations in this case. That would only require Members of the Legislative Assembly to work together to elect a Speaker—not necessarily to nominate a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister—but I was disappointed that the opportunity to do that was not taken during the Assembly recall last Tuesday. However, I recognise this issue is exceptional both in its sheer importance and in the cross-party support it commands, both in Northern Ireland and in this House. On that basis, the Government spent a lot of time with the lawyers. We have been able to table important amendments to this Bill to facilitate those changes, to be taken forward in the Assembly in the continued absence of a Speaker.

Northern Ireland Elections

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am new to my glasses and when I looked up as the hon. Lady was talking about the people in front of her, I saw the Lib Dem Member here, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), and I thought, “I am so sorry that you have been holding up so much progress in Northern Ireland for some time.” He is a great man so he will understand the point. I hear what the hon. Lady says. I will not be stopping any debate on anything. The one thing I have learnt quickly in Northern Ireland is that it is impossible to stop any sort of conversation or debate, so I will not even be trying.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to the Secretary of State for missing the start of his statement. I promise him that when I have the sort of influence that he ascribes to me he will certainly know about it.

I cannot believe that an agreement that involves the operation of the d’Hondt formula and community designations was ever intended to be permanent. We all knew, however, that everybody would sign up to it because it was the best workable solution at the time. When it has stopped working, it is difficult to see how we can still call it the best workable solution. That is why, surely, if we cannot restore the good faith that is necessary to see the operation of a functioning Executive, we have to look at it from first principles again.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I have been reading up on the history of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. The right hon. Gentleman will know this, and I do not mean it glibly, but it was not a very easy process to get to the point it got to. It did involve huge sacrifices of personal and political capital by some very well-respected and great men, some of whom have been honoured internationally. But I really think we can get the institutions up and running again. There is a problem we have to solve to help that, which is the reformation of the protocol, and hard work is ongoing to try to achieve that.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I will just make a bit of progress and then take some more interventions.

Drawing its core principles from the important work and principles of Stormont House, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, this legislation focuses on effective and timely information recovery, and the answers and accountability that come with it, for both families and survivors, as well as aiding reconciliation and helping society move forward.

The Bill will deliver on our manifesto commitment to the veterans of our armed forces, security services and the Royal Ulster Constabulary by providing the men and women who served to protect life in Northern Ireland with the certainty they also deserve. Many of them, of course, are also victims, or friends and family of victims.

No longer will our veterans, the vast majority of whom served in Northern Ireland with distinction and honour, have to live in perpetual fear of getting a knock at the door for actions taken in the protection of the rule of law many decades ago. With this Bill, our veterans will have the certainty they deserve and we will fulfil our manifesto pledge to end the cycle of investigations that has plagued too many of them for too long.

I acknowledge the many hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House, particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois) and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer), as well as my right hon. Friends the Members for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who have campaigned tirelessly and with great dignity on this issue. Indeed, I recognise that many victims and veterans groups more widely across Northern Ireland and Great Britain have campaigned for a long time for better outcomes for victims and survivors.

We were clear when we published our Command Paper last July that we would listen to feedback with an open mind, and my team and I have done just that over the last 10 months. We have heard the pain and perspectives of people from all viewpoints and communities. During those conversations, we repeatedly had to confront the very painful reality that, with more than two thirds of troubles-related cases now 40 years old, the prospect of successful prosecutions is vanishingly small, which is why this legislation marks a definitive shift in focus by having information recovery for families at its core.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

In all candour, I do not envy the Secretary of State’s task. He describes it as painful, difficult and sensitive. All those words are absolutely correct, but this is not the first time we have been in this situation. Since the days of John Major and Tony Blair, the only way we have been able to make progress is to get everybody together to build consensus and then introduce legislation. It is surely already apparent from today’s debate that the Secretary of State does not have that consensus, so what does he hope to achieve by introducing this legislation?

[Brandon Lewis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable point. As I said, it is widely acknowledged that this is a very difficult and painful area on which there has not been consensus. There was not even full cross-party consensus on Stormont House. That is why there are times like this when, having listened to everybody—the political parties, the victims groups and the veterans groups—it is sometimes for us in Government to take those difficult decisions to find a way forward that can deliver a better outcome for people.

Legacy of Northern Ireland’s Past

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), I do recognise the desire of colleagues to see legislation and they will see legislation before the end of the autumn. I would have liked to bring legislation forward earlier, but it is important that we are working with our partners, not just the Irish Government, as I have outlined, but interested parties and political parties in Northern Ireland, to find a way forward if we can. This paper is intended to inform those discussions in the next few weeks so that we can find a mutual way forward. I recognise my hon. Friend’s point about who will and will not come forward with the information, but one challenge of the situation at the moment is that information is not coming forward. If we do not find a way of doing something different, we are, sadly, in a position where, because of time, that information will no longer be with us. We believe it is time to do something bold and different to find a way forward that can get to the truth, as far as we can, to get answers for families who have waited for far too long, as well as to help Northern Ireland to move forward.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The Secretary of State’s statement today is a quite remarkable achievement. I have followed Northern Ireland politics all my adult life and I can think of very few occasions when Secretaries of State in this place have been able to unite all five parties in Northern Ireland, but he today has achieved exactly that. They are, however, all united in telling him that on the question of an amnesty he is wrong. He stands at the Dispatch Box today and says that he makes no moral equivalence between those who broke the law and those who upheld it. Why then is he offering them all legal equivalence?

[Brandon Lewis]

I am sure people would have asked our predecessors those sort of questions with the equivalence that came from the Belfast/Good Friday agreement under the Labour Government at the time of that agreement and the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998 that followed it. That is the reality of where we are. As I have said, there is a difficult, painful reality of where we are and the situation where we are in: the reality of not seeing prosecutions and painfully being honest with victims about what is achievable. In the conversations that Operation Kenova and I have had, people have talked, as we have seen in the past 24 hours, about wanting to get to the truth, get to information and get an understanding in many cases of what actually happened. The current system is not working and we need to find a different way forward to do something that can make a difference to get to the truth. That is what we want to achieve with a proper, genuine, delivering information recovery process.

Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a genuine pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) and indeed, before him, the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood). It is at moments when the House has to debate matters relating to Northern Ireland and to Northern Ireland alone that the somewhat asymmetric nature of the Union that makes up the United Kingdom is most apparent. I think it assists the House enormously that we are able to hear now a variety—a multiplicity—of views coming from Northern Ireland. I thank those hon. Members, and indeed all hon. Members from Northern Ireland who have made their contribution to this debate today.

I also place on record my congratulations and the congratulations of my party to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) on assuming the leadership of his party. He does so at a difficult and challenging time, and I am sure that he has the good wishes of all parts of the House in taking on the task that he has undertaken.

My party, like those represented by everybody else who has spoken today, will support the measures in this Bill. I think it is perhaps worth reflecting parenthetically that, in a debate that has generated a fair amount of disagreement, the one thing in respect of which there has been universal agreement is that we all support the Bill. That just makes me wonder whether the measures in the Bill are the equal of the political situation that it purports to deal with.

I think the political context is important here. Let us not ignore the fact that much of the political instability to which others have referred is a consequence of the Brexit deal that was done by the Prime Minister and of the Northern Ireland protocol. I suggest that the Prime Minister and his party have for the most part, with a few honourable exceptions such as the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), been careless in the custody of their duties under the Good Friday agreement. I have always felt that they never really understood the genuinely fragile nature of the peace that was created by the Good Friday agreement, and that it becomes acute at a moment like this as a consequence. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Down just said, the most obvious and sensible thing that could be done at the moment is the negotiation of a temporary veterinary agreement in relation to Northern Ireland. It would, I think, be something not that difficult to construct, but for reasons of dogma as much as anything else, the Government seem incapable of doing that.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you and I were both in this House in 2003 when it was necessary to cancel elections to the then Northern Ireland Assembly. That was a difficult and painful time. It led to the suspension of the Assembly and to business and legislation relating to Northern Ireland being conducted directly from this Parliament. It was a disgrace. I remember whole Bills going through in Committee Rooms upstairs in 90 minutes for all stages. The idea that there was any democratic scrutiny or accountability as part of that process is nonsensical. Therefore, at the very least, I welcome the fact that we are managing not to return to that. However, as I look around the Chamber, there are not many hon. Members who were here in 2003, so I remind them of what it was like under direct rule when the Assembly collapsed previously. It would not be in their constituents’ best interests to return to that.

As the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), the Chair of the Select Committee, said, this is not emergency legislation. Of course, in the technical, parliamentary sense of the term, it is not, but I suggest that it is still urgent. He also said that the Good Friday agreement was a process, and he was correct in that as well. However, as somebody who has observed and participated in the conduct of Northern Ireland business in this House for some time, I think that it is a process that we might have hoped would bring us further and faster than it has done. It established a framework for the people of Northern Ireland to deal with problems for themselves through politics rather than through violence. Although it sounds modest to say that now, it was a significant achievement. The process started actually under Margaret Thatcher and went through the Governments of John Major and Tony Blair.

In the course of the debate, many people, including the right hon. Members for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and the hon. Member for Foyle (Colum Eastwood), have reflected on the different ways in which devolution works, and unfavourable comparisons have been made about its operation in Scotland and Wales compared to Northern Ireland. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I was part of the process that saw the set-up of the Scottish Parliament. The Liberal Democrats were an active participant, along with the Labour party, the local authorities, Churches and other parts of civic Scotland, in the constitutional convention that constructed the blueprint for the Scottish Parliament. Those were the roots of devolution in Scotland, and we did that out of a concern that Scottish institutions and Scots law would be better protected and promoted through a devolved Parliament.

Devolution in Scotland and Wales was the product not of a peace process but of an aspiration to make democracy work better and make democratic politics work better for Scotland and Northern Ireland. To suggest now that a comparison can be made is, I am afraid, misleading. It is rooted in a misunderstanding of the process that has brought us to this point. An understanding of the process that brought us to devolution is important, because that reminds us of the consequences should we allow devolution—the democratic institutions in Northern Ireland—to fail.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Down spoke about designations and the difficulties now with the model of government set up under the Good Friday agreement. He is absolutely right. So much in that agreement created institutions that were never intended to be as enduring as they have been. The purpose of power sharing was to provide an environment in which the communities could work together eventually to achieve what we in the rest of the UK would regard as normal politics, where it would not be necessary to have an Executive constituted in the way that they are, where, in effect, everybody is in government and nobody is in opposition. That is why the one tiny point of disagreement I have with the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon is when he says we should be seeking to maintain the status quo. The status quo was never meant to be maintained, and I do not believe that in the long term it is sustainable as a democratic exercise. We need to be more ambitious than that, and for those in this House there must come a point when we decide whether we help the progress towards normal democratic politics in Northern Ireland by continuing to “help out” or whether eventually we will have to say that that is a problem for the Northern Ireland institutions themselves to resolve. For today, on Second Reading, this Bill has my support, but I want it to be clearly understood that in as much as it does sustain a status quo, it can do that only to create stability to ensure further progress. Otherwise, it is always going to be a waste of time.

Northern Ireland

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments on the violence, and he is absolutely right. The position that he has outlined that we need to get to is exactly where we want to get to. Obviously we want to do that in partnership and agreement with our friends and partners in the EU, and that work is what we are doing at this very moment.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

For years, the Government have been warned that peace in Northern Ireland was a delicate and fragile thing that was not to be taken for granted. The fact that we have reached this point illustrates sadly only too well the recklessness of the Prime Minister in particular with regard to the position of Northern Ireland and our departure from the European Union. This is not the first time in the past 23 years that we have found ourselves in peril. On previous occasions, it has taken the Prime Minister of the day to step up to the plate. The symbolism and demonstrating leadership are what is necessary. His predecessors have done it; will he do it now?

[Brandon Lewis]

For my part, that is absolutely the work that we are doing with the parties, civic society and business leaders in Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister and I have been involved in that all the way through. He has had a consistent focus on ensuring that we are delivering for the people of Northern Ireland over the entire period, and not just the past few days, although obviously he has been involved in the past few days and had conversations with the Taoiseach, rather like my conversations with the Irish Foreign Minister.

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the Good Friday agreement. We always need to remind ourselves that the Good Friday agreement has three strands, and we must resist the temptation that some people have to see the Good Friday agreement through simply one strand of north-south. The east-west and Northern Ireland strands are hugely important. One of the things we have to do is make sure we are delivering on the east-west part of the Good Friday agreement, so that the agreement is applied and working in all its strands.

Northern Ireland Protocol

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD) [V]]

I have to say that it is far from clear to me exactly what the Government are trying to achieve in relation to the Northern Ireland protocol at the moment, but whatever it is, I have to think that it can only have been damaged by what we saw happen and the continued insistence on unilateral action here. May we just have a pause and a reset, and focus on using this grace period to achieve the things that will be necessary for the long-term creation of sustainable procedures? Primary among those, surely, must be the agreement of an EU-UK veterinary protocol. Will the Secretary of State update the House on what is happening on that—what barriers remain to an agreement of that sort and when we can expect to hear of its successful conclusion?

[Brandon Lewis]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We do want to work with the EU on a range of issues, and part of the issue around extending these grace periods was ensuring that we did not have a cliff edge and that we had that time and space for businesses to adapt and for us to work through some issues with the EU in a mutual way that works for everybody, as we have done this year. There were examples through January, on VAT on second-hand cars and other issues, where we worked through agreements with the EU that have worked to deliver on some of the issues for people in Northern Ireland, and we want to continue that way.

The reason we made the decision last week was purely that we were at this time-critical point. Because of the way supply lines and timelines work, if we had not made the decision last week, it would have been too late, even this week or next week, to prevent issues for supply lines into Northern Ireland. Going forward, we want to continue to work with the EU, including on issues such as that which the right hon. Gentleman outlined. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is working with his counterparts in the EU on those very issues now.

Patrick Finucane: Supreme Court Judgment

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Monday 30th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

We are absolutely committed to our obligations under article 2. That is why I have said that I will reassess this, following the work by the PSNI and the police ombudsman. On the question of scope, as a police-led investigation, this obviously has different connotations and different powers from those that Desmond de Silva had, and that is quite right. This is a matter for the PSNI, which is independent of the Government, and it will be for the Chief Constable to outline the remit and the process of the review. As I said, he intends to start that early next year. In fact, he told me that he hoped it would start in January. The PSNI will be engaging with the Finucane family around that work, and we will ensure that it does so ahead of the work beginning in early 2021.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

If I can accentuate the positive, I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State says that the question of a future public inquiry is not yet off the table. However, I have to tell him that his reliance on police and ombudsman inquiries as a justification would have a lot more weight if the case were new or recent. But it is 31 years plus since Pat Finucane was murdered. We have had the apologies for collusion, but as others have said, that can never be enough. Surely, those who seek truth and closure in other cases would find that their case for the same closure that the Finucane family want through a public inquiry was enhanced not diminished by holding a public inquiry.

[Brandon Lewis]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman appreciates that every case is different and has to be assessed on its merits. That is how the judicial process and the police process work. It is right that we allow the police process to do its work. We have seen that evidence, including some evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, from Operation Kenova, is bringing out information and understanding that was not there about things that happened many decades ago. There are good examples of new bits of information and evidence and of how evidence can be assessed differently as techniques have changed, which recent work has shown, particularly Operation Kenova. That is positive, but we will assess the matter after the processes are completed so that we continue to ensure that we fulfil our article 2 obligations.

Northern Ireland Protocol: Implementation Proposals

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and in fairness, it is right to acknowledge that some of the threat that she talks about has since been withdrawn. We must ensure that the EU meets its commitments—again, I return to the point about protecting people in Northern Ireland from the impact of the protocol on everyday life, and flows of food are incredibly important in that respect.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the Minister on a bravura performance today. It is absolutely without parallel, and Sir Humphrey himself would be proud of what we have heard from the Dispatch Box. Essentially, he is telling us that those farmers, business organisations and everybody else who say that they are not ready for this move are wrong and that he is right. If, come January, it turns out that they are right and he is wrong, will he resign?

[Mr Walker]

The right hon. Gentleman is typically charming in the way he asks his question. We all ought to focus on delivering what the protocol promised in the first place to the people of Northern Ireland and, accepting its unique circumstances, on delivering the flow of goods north, south, east and west, and protecting and respecting its place in the UK internal market. That is what businesses want, and that is what I want.