Draft Radio Equipment (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2024

Debate between George Freeman and Jim Allister

Tuesday 12th November 2024 General Committees

[Jim Allister]

The Brexit referendum was a national vote, and it asked a simple question: “Do you want the United Kingdom to leave the EU?” It did not ask the question, “Do you want GB to leave, and leave Northern Ireland behind?” That is what we got, in that this United Kingdom surrendered control over those 300 areas of law to that foreign Parliament. The hon. Member may be comfortable with the fact that my constituents are disenfranchised in the making of the laws that govern them. I wonder whether he would he be so comfortable with that fact if it was his constituents who were disenfranchised in the making of laws, in those 300 areas, that govern them—I suspect not.

All I ask is that my constituents have the same rights —the same enfranchising rights—as everyone else’s constituents in Great Britain. Is that too much to ask? And yet, in the making of this regulation, this Parliament is answering that question: it is too much to ask, because Northern Ireland, we are told, must be subject to foreign colonial rule. That is what it is. When we say to an area, “You will be governed by laws, not that you make, or that your Parliament makes, but that a foreign Parliament makes,” that is the very essence of colonial rule, and that is what we are subjected to.

The degree to which the Government—of course, this was done under the previous Government—have abandoned sovereignty over Northern Ireland is illustrated by the explanatory document that accompanies these regulations. It says that there will be limited impact, but that the Government did not conduct an impact assessment. Why not? Well, paragraph 9.1 of the explanatory document tells us:

“A full Impact Assessment has not been prepared…because measures resulting from the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 are out of scope of assessment.”

So laws that will affect my constituents are “out of scope” of assessment by this Parliament, and this Government, because the right to make those laws was given away to the European Parliament.

This is not about whether, in itself, the type of USB is controversial or not. It is about the constitutional point that Northern Ireland has been disenfranchised—robbed of the right to have its laws made in its own country, and robbed of the right, now, to even have an impact assessment, because those 300 areas of law are beyond the scope of assessment. That is why, for this proposal, there is only an EU impact assessment—no UK impact assessment. That, in a way, says it all.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

The hon. and learned Member is making a powerful and coherent argument. I think what he is saying is that this may or may not be a good law, but that he would have liked its impact to have been assessed properly and the people of Northern Ireland to have had a say on it—the say that he has in the Committee today. Does he think, overall, that this is a good law, albeit one that, constitutionally, he would have preferred to have been passed a different way?

[Jim Allister]

I said that what type of USB is used is not particularly controversial. But how it is made and imposed could not be more controversial, because it is imposed through the avenue of disenfranchising the people of Northern Ireland and saying, “You will have no say over whether it is a good or bad law. It is someone else’s law, and it will be imposed upon you.” That is the mischief that I am addressing. In that mischief lies the reason why this Parliament should not be a nodding dog to someone else’s regulation.

The Minister tells us that the Government will probably bring the same requirements into GB. That is well and good, but it should have been the Government—not a foreign jurisdiction—that were bringing the prescription for the type of USBs into the whole of the United Kingdom. They should not have surrendered control over that to a foreign power.