Brexit: UK-Irish Relations

Earl of Kinnoull Excerpts

Tuesday 5th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, who spoke with her usual clarity and authority on this most difficult area. I associate myself with her comments on our staff, who have worked so hard in the past year during which we have produced 19 Brexit reports. I also add my good wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, and wish him a very speedy recovery. He has a bottomless pit of anecdotes which keep us going very well.

I too am a member of the European Union Select Committee. This was the very first inquiry launched after the Brexit vote, and rightly so given the context and history between our two nations. Published as it was on 12 December last year, I note with regret how little progress has been made since then. As has been observed, the government response finally arrived at lunchtime today. An update report would have been thin. It would have recited the sorry tale of the current lack of a Northern Ireland Executive and the fact that the Davis/Barnier negotiating structure has yet to produce anything concrete. More encouragingly, it would have mentioned the UK position paper package of 16 August. I will make two points today. The first concerns people, corresponding to section 2 of the UK position paper, and the second concerns commerce, which corresponds to section 3.

Turning first to people, the position paper package estimates that 110 million personal crossings of the Northern Ireland border take place every year. There is inspiration in the EU local border traffic regulation 2006. This specifically does not apply to either the UK or Ireland, arising as it does out of the Schengen acquis. It does, however, show in a practical way how the EU deals with neighbourly relations and borders with third countries. The regulation regime covers,

“the regular crossing of an external land border by border residents in order to stay in a border area, for example for social, cultural or substantiated economic reasons, or for family reasons, for a period”,

and it does not cover,

“access to and exercise of economic activity”,

or “customs and taxation matters”.

Given that there are 110 million personal border crossings a year, the regulation regime itself would not quite suit the Northern Ireland border, but would do with some tweaking. The principles work well already in other EU and third-country situations. I cite as evidence Ex Borea Lux, a report into cross-border co-operation on the EU’s eastern border, published in November 2012. This careful report details the experience of a number of successful situations where local border traffic agreements have been concluded, particularly between Finland and Russia and Poland and Russia. A similar regime would go a long way to smoothing out the people side of things on the island of Ireland. It would also fit well with paragraph 31 of the position paper, which seeks to find a solution,

“consistent with the European Commission’s Directives”.

Therefore, I ask the Minister whether he will comment on this thinking.

On my second point concerning commerce, I urge the UK and Ireland to work together overtly to make progress on commerce and the like matters in line with our recommendation at paragraph 261. This represents a departure from paragraph 74 of the position paper, which states:

“The UK proposes that it should work intensively with the EU over the coming months to address the issues”.


I—I think with many—fear that this simply will not happen. In any event, and as we argued in our report, I feel that our two nations know best about the totality of the situation and are thus vastly better equipped to design new arrangements that are as,

“seamless and ‘friction-free’ as possible”.

A concern voiced to us in Brussels on one of our committee visits since the Brexit vote was that Ireland might become some sort of gushing conduit for trade in goods that somehow avoided EU duty, tax and regulation. I firmly reject that as being a material concern. I note that at the height of summer there are only seven ferries a week from continental Europe to Ireland, and that this drops to four in the depths of winter. Therefore, I cannot see how a trade in goods would work. Thus bad behaviour of a material nature would be instantly visible. I feel that the problem is reduced, therefore, to whether the UK and Irish commercial counterparties can be trusted to comply with a new reporting regime. In other words, the innovative approach foreseen in paragraphs 50 and 51 of the position paper seems to me to have a high probability of success. Therefore, I am very sorry to disagree mildly with our acting chairman on that point.

Our two countries enjoy strong regulatory, auditing and tax compliance regimes and I fail to see how a material amount of bad behaviour between commercial counterparties could exist. The great thing is that, were I to be wrong, the UK and Ireland, whose Exchequers would presumably suffer, would quickly become aware of this and could—and, I submit, would—work together to sort matters out. In any event I feel that a solution put to the EU 26 by a joint UK and Irish team would carry great moral weight and thus, in the absence of political chicanery, I think would win favour. I ask the Minister to comment on that thinking as well.