European Union (Withdrawal Arrangements) Bill

Debate between Iain Duncan Smith and Jim Allister

2nd reading
Friday 6th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jim Allister]

The EU has behaved not as a friend to Northern Ireland. The EU has behaved as a sovereignty grabber in respect of Northern Ireland. That is where it caused, and continues to cause, the offence. If hon. Members think it is a good thing to back that up and endorse it, they obviously do not think very much of the territory of Northern Ireland.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

We are moving slightly into the ridiculous; may I bring us back to the main point? The purpose of the Bill that the hon. and learned Gentleman has drafted is simply to provide a solution for what is currently an unworkable position. I say to Government Members that it is not about 27 nations hating the UK; ultimately, it is about function. Sir Jonathan Faull, who was the director general of the EU internal market service directorate, ended up as director general of the taskforce for strategic issues related to the UK referendum, and he and his team came to a simple conclusion: the only way to make the situation workable was to have, in essence, what is in the Bill. He has put out a statement today to say exactly that. It is a practical issue, and those who knew and understood the difficulties at the time said there was a way to do this, but they were ignored.

[Jim Allister]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Those of us who are looking for a solution are supporters of this Bill, because we cannot go on as we are. Those who think that it is okay to subjugate part of their own territory are opposed to this Bill. They are quite content with the colonisation of part of our territory. In constitutional terms, where we have ended up is that Northern Ireland is no longer a full part of the United Kingdom. Why? It is because we are not our own masters in 300 areas of law and that a foreign jurisdiction makes those laws. What does that create? It creates what is called, in constitutional terms, a condominium: Northern Ireland is ruled in part by UK laws and in part by foreign laws. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) finds that hilarious—sorry, it is not hilarious to be subjected to that.

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[Jim Allister]

No, I am going to make some progress.

I strongly refute the fallacy that to depart from the Windsor framework is to breach international law. On the contrary, to perpetuate the infringement of our territorial integrity is to breach international law itself and, indeed, the Belfast agreement, which was built on consent, of which there has been none in respect of the current arrangements. The correct application of international law is to the effect that agreements that contradict the regulating principles, including respect for territorial integrity, are themselves the villains of the piece.

Having set out everything that is wrong, let me come to the solution. The Government have always told us that we cannot conduct sanitary and phytosanitary checks away from the border. It cannot be done, so we must have a border—in our case, in the Irish sea. But this week a statutory instrument was laid before this House that does exactly that. It does it for goods that come from the EU, via Northern Ireland, to GB. It says that the goods can be checked wherever they arrive, such as at factories or other premises; they do not have to be checked at the border. If we can do that for goods coming through Northern Ireland to GB, why can we not do it in reverse? Of course we could check goods without tampering with sovereignty; we could do so anywhere within the territory of the United Kingdom. It is not the impracticability of carrying out the necessary checks that is the problem; it is the fact that under the surrender of sovereignty it has been insisted that they are carried out in the Irish sea border.

That brings me to clauses 16 to 18 and the concept they would permit of mutual enforcement. I readily accept that the clauses draw heavily on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill 2022—which found the approval of the previous Parliament—but they are none the worse for that. What they do is simple: they say that two respecting neighbours—that is what I hope the United Kingdom and the EU are—with the necessary trust between each other can operate a system where they mutually check the goods flowing through their territory to ensure they meet the standards of the recipient territory. That is a fundamental tenet of much of international trade. It is something that can be built upon in respect of this matter that the United Kingdom says, “Yes, we know the EU wants to protect, it tells us, its single market and, yes, we want to protect our single market, so we will undertake, by virtue of criminal sanction for those who do not, to check that goods flowing from our factories to your consumers, from our territory to your territory, meet the standards you set, and we expect you to do the same.” That can be done without any of the paraphernalia that we presently have.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

On this particular point, it is worth pointing out that the EU already does it. In its agreements with New Zealand, for example, it trusts that specific veterinary practices to check lamb and other products arriving in the EU are done at the point of departure. By the time they get to Rotterdam, they are cleared straight through on the basis that they respect the checks done by those veterinary companies. They already did it for 40 years with UK companies where any subsequent checks had to be done. All this is already being done. The question is: why is it not being done for the arrangement we have at the moment?

[Jim Allister]

I absolutely agree. The fascinating point is the very concept was articulated from and originated within the EU itself.

During the early stages of the negotiations, Sir Jonathan Faull and academics Daniel Sarmiento and Joseph Weiler came up with that proposition. It is not my proposition. It is not a United Kingdom proposition. It was an EU proposition. They said the answer is mutual enforcement. Today we have a statement from those three gentlemen, which has been made public. It says, “On Friday of this week, the House of Commons will be debating a Bill which attempts to address some of the difficulties resulting from the Brexit divorce agreements between the EU and the UK, which might be of interest to readers. In 2019, we proposed a solution which would have obviated any need for these complicated and divisive legal manoeuvres. The UK and the EU could have respected each other’s positions and saved everyone a great deal of time and effort. The Financial Times characterised the proposal as a ‘win-win solution’. Regrettably, it was not followed.” I echo that: regrettably, it was not followed. Why was it not followed? Because the politics took over. Instead of looking for a workable, practical border solution, the politics of making the United Kingdom pay for leaving the EU took over. That is how we got into this morass of a pernicious imposition through the border.

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[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The real point is getting rid of the Irish sea checks; it is anathema that one part of the United Kingdom is now treated separately from the rest of the UK. That is surely a reasonable idea and if it is in this Bill then the Government should want to take it through to the next stage and debate it. This is what the Bill does. Mutual enforcement does not of itself remove customs duties; neither does it harmonise or require mutual recognition of standards. It works by inverting the usual approach to customs enforcement; duties may, for example, be imposed for anti-dumping reasons or due to subsidies that one party claims are injurious to itself or to companies as a result of goods failing to qualify for zero duty under rules of origin. That is what the Bill does. All the rest that has been talked about is not in this Bill; it is very simple and very practical. The trade and co-operation agreement between the EU and the UK already has an agreed mechanism, which is very important for identifying and addressing these distortions. If we are able to allow that and make changes, that is how it will work.

There are other areas, too, which I will speed through as quickly as possible. Mutual enforcement can also under these terms accommodate the collection of customs duty. The detailed procedures are obviously beyond the scope of briefing papers and the Bill, but the reality is that we could have a system whereby an order of goods from the UK to the Republic of Ireland triggers a UK export declaration and an EU import declaration such that in terms of the EU’s customs data any sums owed are put into the goods invoice and paid by the importer to the exporter. There are many other ways ahead that can be facilitated, particularly now that almost all of this is done using modern technology, not large sheathes of paper and with a man standing at the border with a ladle to check whether the brandy being imported or exported tastes like brandy. That does not happen any longer, but from some of the debates it would seem somehow we have not moved on from 17th-century customs requirements.

To ensure compliance with this regime, a penalty in this arrangement would apply to those parties who failed to follow the procedure. The penalty would apply to both exporters and hauliers, therefore incentivising all parties involved in the carriage of goods to ensure that appropriate EU customs duties are paid. By the way, the same would be required in the Republic for its importers. It should be noted—this is the important bit that has gone missing—that an analogous system would in any event be required for the red and green lane approach prescribed in the Windsor framework.

Is this going back? No. It is using what we have and ultimately making it better. That seems to me the practical principle behind this idea of mutual enforcement. We should have started in this place, but we now have an opportunity to look at this issue and decide if there is a better way to do it that will take some of the good stuff already there and improve it by saying to the EU that we want a smooth process between the EU and the UK, because everything else then follows. Many EU members already agree; I have heard their discussions.

I cannot remember who it was, but somebody got up and said, “Did we not think they were allies? Did we not think they were friends?” It is because we think they are allies and friends that we want to get rid of the things that make us have rows and arguments about the most practical issues that could be dealt with. That is the point of this mutual enforcement process: to get rid of the ludicrous arguments about who we are and who they are. We can then be very good allies and friends, which we are and will need to be over the next few years, as we enter arguably the most dangerous time that I can remember.

I have a point for the Government. Given that almost identical rules apply in the EU and the UK, the EU could, and arguably should, negotiate an SPS equivalence agreement with the UK, as it has done for countries as far away as Canada and New Zealand, as I have said before.

[Jim Allister]

Given the right hon. Member’s experience of international affairs, what does he think are the prospects for the present arrangements? Are they an incentive or a disincentive to securing a trade deal with the United States of America?