Windsor Framework (Democratic Scrutiny) Regulations 2023

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lawlor (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister for the efforts he continues to make to promote the peace process—as he did through a number of Administrations—of which these regulations are a step. But it would be curmudgeonly not to acknowledge the efforts of other Governments in promoting the peace process, of which the Belfast agreement, which your Lordships have mentioned across the House today, was a major step.

The fact that the Belfast agreement was accepted reflected two truths. First, it was accepted across the majority of parties who were party to the sad legacy of Northern Ireland—a legacy that was a historical inevitability, perhaps. But it was also a success because it built on recognition of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the UK, and that that status would not be overturned except with a majority vote of the people.

We have heard today how the Northern Ireland protocol has undermined the Belfast agreement in a number of ways. It has also undermined the economic integrity of the United Kingdom and the UK’s economic area. That it was signed or reached was the result of a determined plan by the EU from 2017 to play the orange card against the green, and to use that card to undermine Brexit and its success economically and politically.

While the negotiations leading to the Windsor arrangement and the Stormont brake are to be welcomed as a step in the right direction, I do not think we should forget that the real problem remains. It is the problem of the constitutional status of Northern Ireland and its part as an integral part of the UK’s economic area. Therefore, until the protocol itself is addressed, as noble Lords have acknowledged today and have urged my noble friend to take account of, these problems will remain. I therefore urge my noble friend to do all he can to address the constitutional problems that remain within the Northern Ireland protocol so that we can move to a position where the UK and the EU are not the sole parties—indeed, not the major parties—in this arrangement and the Dublin Government and the UK Government continue the process they reached in the Good Friday agreement in 1998 without the help, for better or worse, of the EU.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, noble Lords will remember that, in the course of debates on the retained EU law Bill, we have heard complaints from noble Lords across the House, largely from opposition parties but also from government Back Benchers, that it is outrageous to be asked to sign off legislation without a chance to scrutinise it in detail. We have been told that decisions on whether to retain or discard laws needs close parliamentary oversight and debate. I have to say that I was somewhat taken aback that, even before the publication of the Windsor Framework, the Opposition committed to supporting the Government. Since then, skeleton documentation has been enough to have politicians across all parties vote en masse for the framework, despite the fact that actually that equates to voting blind on yet-to-be-written laws that will apply to the UK that will not be scrutinised, let alone with an opportunity to be opposed, by the UK Parliament.

Today, what we have been asked to do is to nod through an agreement that allows the EU, which we have left, to draft brand-new EU laws to govern trade taking place solely within UK borders. There has been no outrage, though. We are just quite calmly accepting that the future rules on the movements of goods, plants, foodstuffs, medicines, parcels, pets and so on from Great Britain to Northern Ireland will be decided by direct regulation made in Brussels and voted on not here but in the European Parliament, all of which we will never get to scrutinise in the UK Parliament. You sort of could not make it up. It seems an ironic twist as well that the people who will have close oversight of UK laws are—wait for it—the EU. Under the framework, the EU is granted new rights through EU law to be consulted in advance on huge swathes of legislation on UK trade and tax legislation governing the UK economy, all to monitor the so-called competitive risks within the UK single market.

I think that we might suggest that something has gone a bit awry here. Certainly, the process should be scrutinised and our own process should be scrutinised. In this place, concerns are rightly often raised about the overuse of statutory instruments and the delegation of powers to the Executive, yet here we are faced with a statutory instrument and we are able to look at only one part of the framework in the Stormont brake. There is no feasible way of changing anything. That is why I welcome the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, because it gives us a chance to have a debate. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Hain, asked some important questions about delegated powers, but in the end, this House, the other House and Stormont —none of us—have no way of challenging an important document about the conflict about which legal authority will govern the UK. In the other place, the discussion was reduced to a derisory 90 minutes. We should remind ourselves that the whole framework was announced as a done deal at a press conference that put Ursula von der Leyen centre stage and the UK Parliament, never mind the public, was reduced to being a bystander.