Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: Border Arrangements

Emily Thornberry Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs—who seems to have run away—to make a statement on future border arrangements between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland following Britain’s exit from the European Union.

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr David Lidington)]

Mr Speaker, I have been asked to reply.

The Government have been consistent in their commitments to Northern Ireland as the United Kingdom leaves the European Union. First, we will never accept any solutions that threaten the economic or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom. Secondly, we will not accept a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, which would reverse the considerable progress made through the political process over recent decades. That position has been consistent from the Prime Minister’s article 50 letter through to our position paper published last summer and the Prime Minister’s Florence speech last autumn.

Most recently, the Government enshrined both these commitments very clearly in the joint report we agreed with the European Union in December. That set out very clearly our

“commitment to preserving the integrity of”

our

“internal market and Northern Ireland’s place within it”.

It also included our

“guarantee of avoiding a hard border”

between Northern Ireland and Ireland, including any related checks and controls. These commitments were agreed collectively by the entire Cabinet, and I believe they have wide support across the House. Those commitments have not changed, nor will they.

[Emily Thornberry]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question, and while I am always pleased to hear from the Minister of State, I have to say that it is an absolute disgrace, and a huge discourtesy to the House, that the Foreign Secretary is not here himself to answer questions on the contents of his memo, especially given that we saw him in London a few hours ago jogging in the snow and stopping to answer questions from the media: if he can answer their questions, he really should be prepared to answer ours. What is he afraid of?

Perhaps the Foreign Secretary is afraid that these questions go to the very heart of his credibility and the credibility of previous statements that he has made in this House. On 21 November, from the Dispatch Box, I asked the Foreign Secretary whether he stood by the statement he made in February 2016—that a vote for Brexit would leave the border arrangements in Northern Ireland “absolutely unchanged”. He told the House in response—just three months ago—that he

“repeated exactly the pledge…there can be no return to a hard border…That would be unthinkable, and it would be economic and political madness. I think everybody…understands the ramifications of allowing any such thing to happen.”—[Official Report, 21 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 848.]

But last night, despite that clear public statement from the Foreign Secretary, we discovered his private memo to the Prime Minister on the same subject. In it he wrote:

“It is wrong to see the task as maintaining ‘no border’”.

The Government’s task is, he said, to

“stop the border becoming significantly harder. ”

But, he wrote:

“Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95 per cent plus of goods pass the border”

without checks.

Let us be clear what this memo reveals. Contrary to the Foreign Secretary’s previous statements, he accepts that there will have to be changes to the current border arrangements, and he accepts there will need to be border controls that do not exist at present; the only debate is their degree of hardness. Surely the Foreign Secretary has learned by now that you cannot just be a little bit pregnant: either there is a border or there is not.

My first question for the Minister is that the Foreign Secretary told the House that there would be no new border arrangements and no changes to the status quo, but this memo says the exact opposite, so which is the truth: what the Foreign Secretary said three months ago in public or what he said three weeks ago in private?

The Foreign Secretary has already said what we have heard so many times on this issue: that there is some magical technical solution which will allow goods to be checked, smuggling to be prevented, and points of origin proved as easily as paying the congestion charge and without—here is the truly magical part—even the installation of cameras. As I have pressed the Foreign Secretary repeatedly to tell us, how on earth is that possible, or is it just another addition to his ever-growing list of fantasies from ‘Boris island’ to the ‘channel bridge’?

I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary has already promised the media today to publish his leaked memo in full, and I hope that will provide some answers, but may I ask the Minister now—for the benefit of the House, and so that my colleagues can question him on his answer—to spell out in detail how this proposed invisible border will actually work in practice? If he cannot provide that detail, we are left with the conclusion that all of us on this side, and increasing numbers on his side, accept—that the only way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland is by staying in a customs union. The fact is that the Government know that—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are extremely grateful to the shadow Foreign Secretary, but she has now exceeded her time and we must leave it there.

[Emily Thornberry]

I have one further sentence, and then I am done.

[Mr Speaker]

Very well, but—[Interruption.] Order. I will be the judge of these matters; I require no assistance. The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) is always willing to help and I am grateful to her for that gratis voluntary offer of services, but I feel able to cope without them. The Minister will have a suitable period of time to respond, and the shadow Foreign Secretary can now add one brief sentence.

[Emily Thornberry]

The truth of this memo is that the Government are saying one thing in public while preparing for the reality in private, and it is about time the deception was ended.

[Mr Lidington]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Forgive me: I do not wish to be discourteous to the shadow Foreign Secretary, and certainly not to the Minister either, but, by the way, the Minister for the Cabinet Office is not a Minister of State; he is a member of the Cabinet.

[Emily Thornberry]

It was confusing as to who was going to be responding to this urgent question, and I apologise for having drafted one script only to find that a different Minister was in the Chamber to respond.

[Mr Speaker]

That was a nice try, and it was very generous of me to allow the right hon. Lady to make it. I call the Minister for the Cabinet Office.