Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I appreciate that I am a relative newcomer to this House, but I had understood that in Committee discussion is supposed to focus on the amendments before us. What I have heard today is very much a rerun of the discussion we heard in this place last week, with repeated invocations of issues of principle around this Bill and the protocol, which are extremely important but might not be resolved in this debate simply by repeating the points over and over.

I have been trying to follow the detail of this on my electronic device, with my documents in front of me—I know the technique may not be familiar to everybody in this House, but I am trying my best. I was not intending to speak but, as some points of principle have been raised, I feel it is right to put certain circumstances on record.

I will make three brief points. First, I feel we are having a highly abstract discussion about a very concrete and real situation. Noble Lords all know what is happening in Northern Ireland at the moment and what has happened over the last year and in recent months: the constant, gradual deterioration of the real political situation in Northern Ireland, the undermining of the institutions of the Good Friday agreement, and the degradation of some of the habits of co-operation and working together that we have seen over the years. This is a real situation, which must be dealt with. This Bill is a way of dealing with it and the Government—rightly, in my view—believe it is the best way of doing so.

We have to engage with that. We have to take real-life action to deal with the problems that exist on the ground in Northern Ireland. Important though discussions of international law and a reinvocation of why we signed this agreement may be, they do not deal with the real situation on the ground now. The Government are the Government of this country, and they are right to put forward proposals that deal with this situation. The best way to deal with it would be to expedite this Bill, not to delay, defer or withdraw it. The best contributor to stability in Northern Ireland would be to get this on the statute book and enable people to know what they are dealing with.

Secondly—

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Frost (Con)]

No other noble Lords have taken interventions, so I will complete my points if I may.

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dodds, who made the points I was about to make about Article 16. When I was on the Front Bench here, I repeatedly stated that the conditions for meeting Article 16 had been met but we would prefer to proceed by negotiation. I was looked at as some sort of barbarian by many people in this House, and elsewhere, for daring to contemplate such a possibility. Yet it now seems that it is what many people would wish to do to resolve this situation—the natural way of doing so. I am very glad that is the view, but I am afraid that my view is that the situation on the ground in Northern Ireland has gone beyond that and Article 16 will not be the best way to resolve that.