European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Dominic Grieve Excerpts

Committee: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman—or the hon. Gentleman; I just promoted him. That is not what I understood, so there is no point in putting up a straw man for me to knock down. I understood that the proposal that the Prime Minister took with her to Brussels was always to have been that the entirety of the UK should have the same alignment. The Prime Minister is no one’s fool. She has made it quite clear that she will protect the integrity of the whole United Kingdom. She had already ruled out having a border down the Irish sea. I therefore believe and trust that when she went to Brussels, she had always planned that there would be convergence throughout the United Kingdom, and that Northern Ireland would not be treated differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. That is the confidence that I have.

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

The hon. Lady may share with me a certain amount of bemusement. There can be no question for me, as a Unionist, of a separate regulatory arrangement for Northern Ireland, permitting it to have regulatory equivalence or convergence with the Republic. Convergence either applies to all of us, or cannot apply at all. I have to say that all of us having regulatory convergence with the Republic, and indeed the rest of the EU, strikes me as a very good idea.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend. Even though he sits on the other side of the Chamber, I have always regarded him as a friend. He has just summed up how I feel. I will not stand here and criticise our Prime Minister—she is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and I believed that her stance when she went to Brussels on Monday was that the convergence would apply to all of the United Kingdom. I did not believe for one moment that she would cast Northern Ireland off somehow to a regulatory framework and convergence on the island of Ireland, and not with the rest of the United Kingdom.

Of course, I do not want Northern Ireland to be treated any differently from the rest of the United Kingdom. We are all coming out of the EU—sadly—on 29 March 2019. The referendum result in Northern Ireland was in favour of remaining, but the UK-wide result will be honoured. The Prime Minister has said that repeatedly. As we move towards that, I urge and encourage the Government to adopt, in some form of words, new clause 70, because the principles of the Good Friday agreement, which I and the other Members who have put their names to the new clause are proud to support, must be protected in black and white on the face of that Bill. That is the assurance I need from the Government this afternoon, otherwise I will test the House’s commitment to the Good Friday agreement.

[Mr Grieve]

I do not intend to speak at length. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) and I completely agree with all the sentiments she expressed about the benefits that the Good Friday agreement has conferred on our country generally and on our international relations with the Irish Republic. It has been a step change in improving the quality of life for all citizens in this country, particularly those in Northern Ireland, about which the hon. Lady spoke so eloquently.

It is clear that the Brexit process is challenging in the context of maintaining those benefits. I regret that, during the referendum campaign last year, those of us who highlighted the consequences that could flow did not get as much register as we would have liked. In the cost-benefit analysis between staying in and leaving the EU, the Good Friday agreement was a factor that should have been taken into account properly, but I regret to say that some of the enthusiasts for our leaving the EU seem to have systematically ignored it.

However, we are where we are. It is clear that we will have to try to manage the Brexit process in a way that does not adversely impact on the Good Friday agreement. I listened carefully to DUP Members, and I can well understand that any suggestion that leaving the EU involves uncoupling Northern Ireland and putting it into a separate regulatory regime for the benefit of maintaining the Good Friday agreement, or regulatory equivalence with the Republic of Ireland, is a complete non-starter. It is totally unacceptable to me, and I did not understand the Prime Minister’s words and the agreement she reached as being indicative of her intending to do any such thing. If she was, all I can say is that she will not long survive her party’s views, which are unanimous on this matter, irrespective of whether Members most enthusiastically embraced Brexit or most vigorously sought to prevent it. We therefore need to park that on one side.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Grieve]

I have great sympathy with the approach of the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) in her anxiety about seeing the Good Friday agreement respected. That said, it is right that it is an international agreement and I have some difficulty seeing how that can easily be incorporated in a statute relating to another matter. It is either declaratory or it has some effect—one or the other. I simply say to my hon. Friend the Minister that this is an area where the Government may seek and need to provide reassurance, but whether the hon. Lady is right that it needs to be specific on the face of the legislation is, I think, more complex, because it raises as many problems as it may provide answers.