United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Bambos Charalambous and Dave Doogan

Monday 21st September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The Bill is objectionable in a very broad sense, and my colleagues and I will not rest in detailing its egregious impositions on Scotland and our people. Like others, I look across the Chamber and I cannot see a single Scottish Tory MP in here. Perhaps they are not worried about how goods will move freely between Scotland and Northern Ireland, but I can assure the House that I and my colleagues are.

As we debate part 5 of the Bill, like many other hon. and right hon. Members I focus on clauses 42, 43 and 45, which would see comprehensive powers afforded to Ministers to disapply wide-ranging elements of the protocol and the withdrawal agreement, therefore breaching established international obligations and international law. All this would essentially be applicable unilaterally and without the burden of impasse having been established beforehand between the EU and the UK, which also dismisses the obligations to unblock any such disputes through arbitration as set out in article 68 of the withdrawal agreement—another distinct breach of faith.

This calamity is not some unconventional wheeze, such as fantasy extra funding for the NHS as a Brexit dividend, or describing this deal to the exhausted UK public as oven-ready just before an election. This is breaking international law: it is in a different league altogether. If the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) were still in his place, I would say to him that amendment 66 is a slight improvement on where we were a number of days ago, but he has warned the Government that it is not a green light—it is certainly not a red light and it is barely an amber light, because with a majority of 80 the Government will have no difficulty whatever in getting it approved by willing Tory Members.

Clause 42(3)(b) is binary, if not wholly myopic in its abstract assertion that there exists uniquely the need to maintain the integrity and smooth operation of the UK internal market, as though that works in one direction only. Without an agreement, the EU will, of course, have every legitimate claim to protect the completeness and integrity of its single market, so what is the takeaway from that? It is border checks.

The Northern Ireland protocol agreed by this Prime Minister in this Parliament in January this year is now to be rowed back on by this Bill. At one stage, we were told that a border in the Irish sea would be the solution to this, and now it turns out that that is as unlikely as it sounded. Brexiteers championed hollow assurances about technological solutions for the movement of goods, but could not identify a single instance around the world where that existed at scale. We were told this would be achieved with good will on all sides, but I suggest that good will is a resource that the Government have now thoroughly exhausted. The Government stand ready to sacrifice any country in the UK, to jettison any basic measure of international responsibility and to compromise the UK’s international reputation, such as it is, to their ideological thirst for the purest of all Brexits.

As regards the EU establishing checks on the border, that too would appear to be in contravention of the protocol, which states that the UK and the EU made a guarantee of avoiding a hard border, including any physical infrastructure or related checks and controls. But make no mistake, when a customs infrastructure goes up, it will be the United Kingdom and this Government who will be found to be delinquent and not the EU. The EU is not legislating to renege on the withdrawal agreement, but the UK is. A border between Northern Ireland and the Republic—how can it have come to this, many ask. I do not know how familiar the Minister is with border installations in Northern Ireland, but I recall very well what a menacing scar they were on the Irish countryside. I say that with all due deference to my Northern Irish colleagues, whose lived experience I cannot even hope to comprehend. The irony is not lost on those of us with a closeness to that corner of these islands that the erasing of that border and the securing of peace in the 1990s was a product of real statesmen and women who possessed and deployed political courage, wisdom and foresight. Contrast that with the reckless disregard of this Prime Minister and—let us call them—his associates, who would not be fit to carry the bags of people such as Mo Mowlam, John Hume, David Trimble, Senator George Mitchell and many more. What will the clauses in part 5 of the Bill, so enacted, mean for people in Northern Ireland—in not just the Six Counties but the neighbouring counties in the Republic, with cross-border economies? What hardship and anxiety awaits the people and businesses in counties such as Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal?

The pride of all British nationalists is the alleged strength of the Union but, as we see in the Bill, Northern Ireland is, like Scotland and Wales, important to the British state only when it can further a British ambition or generate a British receipt. The toll that takes on our peoples is merely collateral, and it was ever thus. It is hard to know which is the less competent: signing a treaty that stymies their own Brexit ambitions or trying to defend and protect their precious Union by tearing up the basis of devolution and smashing the principles of subsidiarity asunder with the Bill. The further disintegration of the UK was always going to be a consequence of Brexit and the Bill merely hastens the essential crisis that the UK now faces. Although this is in step with my own ambitions for the UK’s demise, Scottish independence is close at hand with or without the immediate impositions of the Bill, which my colleagues and I will continue to oppose.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

I shall speak against clauses 42 and 45 standing part of the Bill.

When five out of the last six leaders of the Conservative party and all five living Prime Ministers are on the same side of the argument, it is time to sit up and take note. It is not often that I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), but her remarks earlier in the debate were absolutely right. The Bill’s attempt to enable the UK to break an international agreement made in good faith is both reckless and damaging. There have been protestations that the measures in the Bill would be used only if an agreement cannot be reached, but their price is the trashing of Britain’s reputation as an honest broker. The Bill will forever allow those regimes that flout international law to counter any criticism and point a finger back at the UK. Is that really a price worth paying? Of course it is not.

How did we get here? The withdrawal agreement clearly made reference to the state aid rules in article 10 of the Northern Ireland protocol. The clue was in the title of the article—it was there in black and white: “State aid”. Did no one notice that section? Did no one read that? If not, the Government are grossly negligent. We have learned that article 10’s impact was made fully known to Ministers at the time. Even if it was not picked up in October, it was certainly referred to in those January days when Parliament debated the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill at length before passing it into law. If state aid was such a big deal, I am surprised that Government Members who were so ebullient in their support of the withdrawal agreement Bill are now so eager to say it was flawed and explain why we must pass this Bill instead. Why did they not kick up a fuss at the time? Where were they?

Many from the Conservative party will say that the measures in the Bill will be invoked only as a last resort, but even passing the Bill and allowing the Government to break international law is doing untold damage to this country’s reputation. The United Kingdom is a signatory to and has ratified the Vienna convention. One of the principles that underpin that convention is negotiating in good faith. Passing this Bill will fly in the face of the Vienna convention and give a green light to other countries wishing to break agreements. With the Government having taken this step, how will anyone ever trust anything that they say in negotiations ever again? Far from making trade deals easier, this legislation has made negotiations much harder, with the United States leading the outcry as it sees renegotiating the Northern Ireland protocol as a gross act of bad faith.

The former Conservative leader Lord Howard was right when he asked how the UK could reproach Russia, China and Iran for their actions when the UK itself was willing to break international law, as he lamented the damage to Britain’s reputation for probity and respect for the rule of law. Perhaps the Bill’s intention is to ensure that we leave the transition period without an agreement. Perhaps it is a negotiation tactic, or perhaps it is designed to be a big distraction. Whichever one of those it may be, saying that the Bill breaks the law

“in a very specific and limited way”—[Official Report, 8 September 2020; Vol. 679, c. 509.]

has diminished Britain’s global reputation.

Just as conspiracy offences carry the same maximum sentence as the original offence itself, even if the powers in the Bill were not used, the fact that the intention was there to do so is proof enough of bad faith. If the Bill passes, even if the power to disapply is not used, irrevocable damage has been done to Britain’s international reputation. Once that reputation is lost it will be very hard to get back.