Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 11th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham. Our spirits, battered by the dreadful war in Ukraine, were lifted last week on learning that meaningful technical talks have finally resumed on efforts to resolve the dispute between the Government and the EU on the protocol. Of course, we all wish them well. None of us here is saying that the present situation with customs and the movement of goods between GB and Northern Ireland is not a problem on the ground for many Northern Ireland businesses and for even more Northern Ireland consumers. In that spirit, thanks must go to the noble Lords, Lord Dodds and Lord Morrow, for organising the briefing on this with Peter Summerton today.

However, what many of us are saying is that the Bill is a barely legal, dangerous decoy in the efforts to find a solution to those problems. It also puts in jeopardy the Good Friday agreement. Should the Bill ever become law, it would unilaterally disapply provisions of the agreed Northern Ireland protocol in domestic law. It would give Ministers extraordinary delegated powers to change whichever bits of the protocol they just do not like, as my noble friend Lady Chapman said in her forceful contribution. As many noble Lords have said, the Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is so concerned about the sheer scope of these powers that it recommends their removal from the Bill.

The Government are of course aware that the Bill will lead to a shirking of their international legal obligations, but they maintain that this is justified in international law by the doctrine of necessity—rather than invoking Article 16, as the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Howard, my noble friend Lady Kennedy and others have said. The doctrine of necessity has been invoked before, in Pakistan in 1954, to validate the extra-constitutional use of emergency powers. It was invoked in Grenada in 1985 to legalise a court that was trying people for a coup against Maurice Bishop. It was invoked in Nigeria in 2010 to create an acting president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Are we really saying that the situation in Northern Ireland, however problematic, justifies a doctrine used in the past for coup breaking and the instigation of martial law? I do not think so, and neither do most people and businesses in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The committee on common frameworks—our chair, my noble friend Lady Andrews, is here—looks at building the new UK single market post Brexit. When it took evidence from businesses and farming organisations operating in Northern Ireland last year, the messages we received were mixed. Yes, we heard about great frustration with the hold-ups and the lack of certainty on the movement of goods from GB to NI, leading to real logistics costs and investment difficulties. But we also heard acceptance of the economic model of the EU single market operating in Northern Ireland to protect that precious land border. We even heard some acknowledgement of the benefits for Northern Ireland businesses of being in the unique position of having access to two major worldwide trading markets, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, powerfully pointed out and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, has just decried.

Since the publication of the EU Commission’s non-paper of October 2021, which was dismissed as irrelevant by this Government, we have seen very practical examples set out by the EU to find solutions to the needs of Northern Ireland business—examples informed by EU discussions with those businesses and a willingness to move quite far on inspection reductions and certification. However much we want to ensure that the businesses and consumers of Northern Ireland are dealt with fairly and with justice, this wretched Bill will not do that, and it needs go no further.