Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the chairman of the Democratic Unionist Party, the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and to listen to his words of real experience. I hope that some of that gets back to the Secretary of State.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Empey, I listened to a lot of the debate in the House of Commons earlier, and I was pretty horrified by the Secretary of State’s short and contemptuous speech of less than two minutes to introduce the Bill. Like others, I thought the shadow Secretary of State tried very hard to deal with some of the issues. It was as if he genuinely understood the issue and the problem. I did not necessarily agree with his final analysis, but at least he made an attempt. The Secretary of State has continued to show contempt for unionists, unionism and the very important issue of why we are here.

Let us face it; it is not about money. The DUP was perhaps rather short-sighted in getting the money aspect and the constitutional issue linked. But I agree with all those noble Lords who said that it is disgraceful that the Secretary of State, knowing that the money is there to solve and to end the public sector workers’ strike, has refused to do that and simply said no. He probably thought, “Great—all the trade unions will now blame the DUP”. Of course, from the headlines—even yesterday in one of the Northern Ireland papers—we have seen the trade unions fairly and squarely blaming the Secretary of State. So that has backfired very much on him.

The contempt shown today has been going on for some time. All the things it was said that the Windsor Framework and the protocol were going to solve have proven to be nothing: there has been no real change. Northern Ireland is in the UK customs union, they said—but then of course we have to apply the EU customs code. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, mentioned something that happened last week. It was very nice to see the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, moving the amendment, which clearly showed that, once again, a Bill that we were saying extended to Northern Ireland—most people would think, “Great, Northern Ireland is part of it”—in fact does not apply to Northern Ireland. That is quite disgraceful.

Again, there is an attempt to hide things with words and flannel, almost as if the Secretary of State feels that Northern Ireland people are not clever enough to understand and see through some of these words—for example, saying the framework removed the Irish Sea border. What nonsense. That contempt now continues with the fact that there is no transparency whatever in what is going on. Even very active members of the Democratic Unionist Party probably do not know what is in this so-called deal.

I expect noble Lords will be very relieved to hear that the Public Bill Office ruled out my two amendments because this is a very narrow Bill—probably designed very carefully to make sure that we could not extend the discussion too much. However, when it comes to discussing Northern Ireland, we all find ways of hammering home some of the issues and points that so many noble Lords have not engaged with. I was trying to table an absolutely crucial amendment that was a real indictment of how the Government behaved right at the beginning of all this when they changed, in a statutory instrument, the mechanism at the end of this year for the Northern Ireland Assembly to approve or disapprove of the protocol from cross-community consent to a straightforward majority. Nothing else gets through via a majority, but suddenly, somehow, the Government felt that it was fine to change that from cross-community consent.

I was also trying to move that we should absolutely ensure that, when there is something in writing—I do not even know whether there is anything in writing being discussed—it should be published within a very short period of time. If there is any draft legislation, we need it as early as possible. We need clear answers from the Government on how long they will continue with these kinds of discussions. We keep hearing, “There’s progress and we just need a little bit more”. I have no idea what that “little bit more” is and neither do the vast majority of people in Northern Ireland—but we should know more about what is happening and what the Government are offering. Deep down, we all know that they have not been negotiating with the European Union. The EU has not been involved and, therefore, it is very unlikely that anything in the Windsor Framework will change sufficiently to satisfy the DUP’s seven tests.

So let us not try to put the blame on the DUP or say that it created the problem that we are dealing with today. This problem was created squarely by a United Kingdom Conservative and Unionist Government who decided that Northern Ireland was expendable when it came to leaving the European Union. As I say every time, we had the same ballot paper and the same discussions; it was a United Kingdom vote, but Northern Ireland has not got Brexit.

Forget talking about the Act of Union—the question for me is whether, at the end of all this, Northern Ireland will still be under EU law for substantial parts of its trade agreements. Everything coming to this House and the other place now needs additional bits about not applying to Northern Ireland. The one that is quite disgraceful, which we will discuss in a few weeks’ time, is the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill. Hardly any live animal exports go from Great Britain to the European Union, while lots of live animal exports go from Northern Ireland and the Republic to the European Union. Yet the one area being left out is Northern Ireland, because the EU does not have the same law and we quite rightly want to keep the flow between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Government have now used the excuse that the WTO will not allow it. Why have they not tried even to challenge it? That is perhaps an issue for another day.

I want to say one more thing about how the Government have handled and are handling this issue. Without doubt, a former Secretary of State has been ringing round senior DUP people, senior unionists and others, making suggestions about how they might be rewarded or that they should definitely begin to think about giving in.

I think that is absolutely shocking from any ex-Secretary of State, who has probably been brought in by the current Secretary of State because they feel that he knows quite a lot about what is going on in Northern Ireland. Those kinds of threats in a nice way will not work with people. We have seen some of the things that have been done in the past by Secretaries of State who did not listen, and perhaps in the whole working of New Decade, New Approach, who handled it in a way that was seen to be more in support of the Irish Government than our own Government. That is something that I hope the Minister—who knows Northern Ireland very well—will take up.

Obviously, I condemn any threats to Sir Jeffrey, and any other threats. However, all of us who come from Northern Ireland or have relatives in Northern Ireland who are involved politically or are living there now have all had threats of different kinds. It is important that, while we condemn that, we do not think that it is just one person who is being threatened. Threats come in different ways and in different strengths and are taken very seriously by the PSNI.

Everyone says that this Bill is inevitable. It is not inevitable. The Government could have said that they were going to go along with what they have said, that if by such and such a date, the Assembly was not back, there would be an election. They do not want an election, because they know that the mandate that the unionists—the DUP, in particular, and the TUV—would get to stay out until the seven tests are met and until we are back as an absolutely integral part of the United Kingdom would be bigger. That is why they do not want an election, and that is why, in a sense, the Bill is something that could have been solved by simply having an election. However, I am afraid we may well be back in a few weeks’ time because a two-week gap is pretty ridiculous.

In the end, the Government will realise that from day one they have handled this extremely badly. They have not stood up to their commitment to be Conservatives and unionists. Probably very soon, we will see a new Government, who I hope might take a slightly different approach from the way they have been handling unionists—pro-British people in Northern Ireland.