European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Lady Hermon

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn).

I am conscious that we are at the end of a long process and that we are all very tired and very weary. We have also said some quite hard things about each other, including within our own political parties, so I would not want this evening to pass without acknowledging that those who come forward to argue that we should leave on these terms have a perfectly valid point. Indeed, in trying to honour the 2016 referendum result, they have a powerful argument.

My difficulty in considering this Bill is that I have tried to cast my mind a little forward to what this Bill can and cannot do. Although this Bill is undoubtedly needed if we are going, I think there is a slight tendency to lose sight of some of its realities. For example, I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Gloria De Piero), who said that she will vote for the Bill but that she wants to change it. We have to understand that, as this is an international treaty, the scope for changing the treaty is out of the question.

Of course we can provide some safeguards. We can put in a referendum lock and, indeed, I will vote for that in due course, but I do not want to burden the House with that this evening. We can try to change some of our domestic law, but that is a little like a letter of wishes to one’s children—there is no guarantee that the children will decide to carry it out.

If my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister wishes to follow the passage of this legislation with a general election, which I can understand—I, for one, will no longer be in this House—the new Parliament, over the next year, will have to reconsider the issues raised by this withdrawal agreement and this Bill, and nothing we do can fetter the rights of this House to change completely the expression of intentions that we may decide to enact.

What is clear is that this Bill reveals a number of things that can be described as truths. First, the intention of the Government, both in the treaty and in the drafting of the Bill, is to take us towards a free trade agreement that, in reality, is likely to be very hard to negotiate, and it will have to be negotiated in the next year.

As a consequence, the risk of our crashing out at the end of 2020 is very great, because otherwise we will have to lengthen the transition, which has been described, of course, as “vassalage.” Indeed, it is a form of vassalage, which is a rather emotive word, but the reality is that we will be bound by rules that we cannot influence.

I see a very great risk that, far from the argument that the Bill will bring our problems to an end, we are just postponing the issues in a way that will continue to divide us, even though I would very much like us not to be divided.

[Lady Hermon]

I am enormously grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. He has been a great friend to Northern Ireland for a long time, and he has been a great defender of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement since it was signed 21 years ago. I would be enormously grateful to him if he explained to the House his concerns, if any, about how this new Brexit deal, brought back in triumph by the Prime Minister, has caused such anxiety in Northern Ireland that it actually undermines the great achievement of the Good Friday agreement.

[Mr Grieve]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that, and I was coming on to the issue as my next point, because the other big impact of this legislation is on Northern Ireland. Of course, there is a lock mechanism, and I listened to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who said that it could “melt away” if there was a double majority—of both communities—to remove it in four years’ time, although that does mean that for four years Northern Ireland is locked into arrangements that the Government have decided are not desirable for the rest of the United Kingdom. But what was glossed over is that article 13.8 of the Northern Ireland protocol makes it clear that any future arrangements thereafter are a matter for negotiation. So the suggestion that we can get a satisfactory free trade agreement for ourselves and then insist that Northern Ireland be included within it is simply wrong.

I have to say that as someone who has always seen himself as a modern Unionist, wanting to recreate or help to develop the Union of the United Kingdom in slightly different ways from those traditionally stated in relation to both Scotland and Northern Ireland—I have family coming from both—this matters to me a lot. It seems to me that this is an extraordinary move for a Unionist party to make, because the reality is that the more we detach ourselves, through our own free trade or whatever other routes we take, or if we crash out, the greater the difference we are going to emphasise, and the stronger and harder the border down the Irish sea will be. There may be some in Northern Ireland who welcome that, for perfectly valid reasons of their own, but for Unionism this is a very odd thing to do. In the Scottish context, it raises a perfectly clear grievance, whereby Scotland would say, “If Northern Ireland can have these arrangements, why cannot we?”

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Lady Hermon

Committee: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 20th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Grieve]

I think that I am about to take up much more time than I wanted to. I give way to the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon).

[Lady Hermon]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. I agree entirely with his eloquent points about the power that schedule 5 transfers to Ministers of the Crown. Will he spend a moment reflecting on the definition of a Minister of the Crown that is set out in clause 14? The definition comprises not just Ministers, but

“also includes the Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”.

The power in schedule 5 is being given to a very broad range of individuals.

[Mr Grieve]

The hon. Lady is right. [Interruption.] Next to me, from a sedentary position, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is saying, “It’ll only be used for technical matters.” Indeed—let us be clear about this—I strongly suspect that that is the intention, but this is a very extensive power and, as it is worded, it goes way beyond technical amendments. As we are in Committee, it seems perfectly proper for me, as a Back-Bench Member of Parliament—it does not matter which side of the Chamber I am sitting on—to ask my hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench to explain to the Committee how the power will be used. I gently say to my hon. Friends that the problem with this debate is that the heat that starts to come off very quickly goes into issues of principle about what has been going on over the past 50 years. Could we just gently come back to focus on the issue at hand?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Lady Hermon

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.

John Downey

Debate between Dominic Grieve and Lady Hermon

Wednesday 26th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that cases are not being pursued simply because they might be old. That is not the case. Indeed, if that had been the case, Mr Downey would not have been picked up at Gatwick airport.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I have enormous regard for the Attorney-General, and this Attorney-General knows perfectly well that the European convention on human rights guarantees an effective remedy for every breach of the rights guaranteed in our convention. I am sure that the Attorney-General and others in the House would agree with me that the right to life is the most important right of all. I am absolutely disgusted, and extremely upset and angry, that we now discover that successive British Governments have secretly, wilfully and intentionally deprived families of an effective remedy when their loved ones have been murdered by the IRA. How this Government can hold their heads up and talk about respect for human rights and the right to life and the rule of law beats me, but I am sure the Attorney-General will assure me and the House with very nice words that in fact that is the case.

[The Attorney-General]

I am not sure whether I can use nice words, but I shall do my best to answer the hon. Lady’s question honestly. Had the scheme operated in the way that was intended, then I have to say that I do not think there was any prospect of anyone, relatives or otherwise, being denied justice in relation to anybody who received such a letter. But that is on the basis that the scheme operated properly. It is quite clear that in this case it did not operate properly because Mr Downey should not have been sent this letter. We will have to wait and see whether this is some wider failure, which applies elsewhere, but certainly from the information that I was given when I looked into this matter at the outset, there was a system in place to try to ensure that every nook and corner was looked at before such letters were sent.