Northern Ireland Protocol

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Ludford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the speech made by Lord Frost on 12 October 2021, what plans they have to change the Northern Ireland Protocol.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord Frost) (Con)]

My Lords, the objective of the Northern Ireland protocol was to support the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. It is now undermining it. I set out our proposals to change these arrangements to this House and in a Command Paper on 21 July. We expect written proposals from the Commission today in response to the current difficulties. I hope that we can resolve this situation by agreement but, if we are to do so, we will need to see significant change to the current arrangements.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I want to ask the Minister two questions. First, apart from with the DUP, what consultation have the Government undertaken in Northern Ireland to lead the Minister to threaten to breach the protocol? The chief executive of Manufacturing NI says that

“no one in business has raised the issue of the ECJ oversight as a problem … It is purely a political and sovereignty issue, and not a practical or business issue.”

Does ideology trump pragmatism and business in Northern Ireland?

Secondly, the Minister has trashed the political credibility of the Government and, indeed, its electoral legitimacy, given that the 2019 election was won on the basis of “Get Brexit done” triumphalism about the withdrawal agreement and the protocol. However, he is also trashing the UK’s international reputation. In the words of legal expert Professor Mark Elliott,

“the UK, if it wishes to be part of the rules-based international order, cannot pick and choose the international legal obligations that it honours”,

and to believe otherwise is “legally illiterate”. Does that bother the Minister?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, there is quite a lot in that question but I will try to deal with the two points. We talk to people of all opinions across the spectrum of political opinion in Northern Ireland. In doing so, I personally have heard quite a lot of concern about the imposition of European Union law in Northern Ireland without democratic consent; of course, the Court of Justice stands at the apex of that system.

On the second question, we set out our approach in the Command Paper. I do not think that there is much more to say. We have been clear that the threshold for using Article 16 has passed; Article 16 is a mechanism in the protocol whose use is legitimate if the circumstances require it. We would prefer to find a solution by consensus but Article 16 is there.