United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Baroness Meyer Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meyer (Con)]

My Lords, of course the Government’s Bill has my support. It is sheer common sense. If the EU continues its obstinacy over fisheries and the level playing field, we are unlikely to have in place by the end of the year an agreement on the future relationship. It would be the height of folly not to have an insurance policy against that possibility. That is what the Bill provides—no more, no less. Without such insurance, we could find ourselves in a situation where the EU is able to tell us what we can and cannot do throughout the United Kingdom by way of state aid. That would be to continue to submit to the authority of the European Union and the European Court of Justice. How on earth is that compatible with the decision taken by the British people in 2016, which politicians across the spectrum committed to honour? It would also be in breach of the Act of Union 1800 and the Good Friday agreement.

Our American friends must understand that any threat to the agreement comes not from London but from Brussels. The EU has for four years sought to exploit the Good Friday agreement to its negotiating advantage. To change the terms of trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland without the explicit consent of the people of Northern Ireland is to violate the Good Friday agreement. Those in Washington and Brussels who profess concern for peace in Northern Ireland would do well to also consider that, without a UK-EU agreement, the only authority that could conceivably want a hard border between the north and the south is the European Commission—to protect what Brussels calls the integrity of the single market. The UK has no intention of erecting a hard border.

The withdrawal agreement and its Northern Ireland protocol do not stand in isolation. They are organically linked to the intended agreement on the future relationship through Article 184 of the withdrawal agreement and the political declaration. As was confirmed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in his letter to the Times of 15 March last year, without such an agreement we would be entitled, under Article 62 of the Vienna convention, to terminate the withdrawal agreement. Article 184 obliges the signatories to negotiate the future relationship in good faith. The EU has failed to show good faith and thus is itself in breach of the withdrawal agreement. There is no other way to describe a negotiating position which, to take one example, insists on the historic pattern of fishing quotas—the common fisheries policy by any other name.

There are two falsehoods here: that the UK is in breach of international law and that the British Government would violate the Good Friday agreement. The reality is precisely the opposite. The internal market Bill seeks to remedy a situation where, thanks to the EU’s bad faith and intransigence, the Good Friday agreement and the British constitution are imperilled. Can the Minister reassure the House that the Government are making an intensive effort to explain to our friends and allies around the world, including and especially the United States, the true state of affairs?