United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Garden of Frognal and Lord Newby

Consideration of Commons amendments & Ping Pong (Hansard) & Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

Does anyone else in the Chamber wish to speak? No one does, so I shall go to the listed speakers. I call the noble Lord, Lord Newby.

[Lord Newby (LD)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, again in his amendments before your Lordships’ House. These amendments will remove the stain of illegality from the Bill, and we should be grateful that that is what we are going to achieve this afternoon—but in doing so, they also let the Government off the hook. Were it not for the ability of this House to ask the Commons to think again, and to give a pause, the Government would now still be wriggling on the hook, because this would not be a Bill any more, but an Act, and we would be stuck with those illegal clauses, which would have caused longer-lasting damage to the reputation of this Government, and of this country, than will, I hope, now be the case.

I am amazed by the coincidence that just by chance, yesterday, after months of toil, Minister Michael Gove reached an agreement. It seems like an extraordinary coincidence, but when we read what he says about it, we see that there is no coincidence at all. This so-called agreement, in which everything is allegedly resolved, is simply a point in the negotiations at which it was appropriate for the UK Government to announce some progress. Although a number of principles have been agreed, the letter that we received from the noble Lord, Lord True, says that

“The parties have also reached an agreement”


on the issues on which decisions have still to be taken

“before 1 January.”

That is the agreement in principle, on some quite significant things, including

“the practical arrangements regarding the EU’s limited and light touch presence in Northern Ireland when UK authorities implement checks and controls under the Protocol, determining criteria for goods to be considered “not at risk” of entering the EU when moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, thereby ensuring that the overwhelming majority of goods will not attract tariffs”.

So there is quite a bit of substance there.

Among the substance is, first, that there will be EU officials based in Northern Ireland, at the ports, checking that our customs officers are doing their jobs—something that, I believe, the Government said at an earlier stage they would never countenance. There will also be— because the letter says so—checks and controls on goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK. Indeed, one of the principles that has been agreed is the detail of the export declarations.

There is also the possibility—although obviously, this will apply only if there is no deal—of tariffs being applied to some goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and vice versa. If the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, thinks he has unfettered access, he needs to read what the Government are doing. Every declaration takes time. Every declaration costs money. Every declaration fetters trade.

The dilemma that a number of noble Lords have referred to, which this agreement merely seeks to amplify, is where we have the border. There has to be a border; it could be on the island of Ireland or in the Irish Sea. We as a country have decided, in the agreements that we have made, that it will be a border in the Irish Sea. There should be no question but that that border exists or that there are checks across any customs border —and they cost, which means that trade is fettered.

We will no doubt spend many happy hours discussing these detailed issues in future, but for today we should simply be grateful that the stain on our legislation, at least, if not the entire stain on our reputation, has been removed by the amendments tabled by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and accepted by the Government.