Northern Ireland

Ian Paisley Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It is the UK Government in that area.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Further to that point, in respect of paragraph 96 of the Command Paper, will the Secretary of State outline whether he expects further SIs in the pipeline to give full effect, impact and clarity to the issues raised in this wide-ranging document?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

We will give legal direction to the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs on these matters. We will use other legal instruments for the deal, but it is for us to give legal direction to DAERA on that point.

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[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I will certainly bear that exhortation in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker.

This debate has properly focused on the statutory instrument that will amend primary legislation through the powers of the 2018 Act, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) and I both spent a lot of time dealing with in its enactment. However, it is right to look again at what is outlined in the helpful annex A to the Command Paper, in terms of the history and the legal background to what the parties have been dealing with and why it is that many of the arguments from the naysayers do not pass close scrutiny at all.

I am delighted to see on page 53 of the Command Paper a clear exposition of the position with regard to the Acts of Union—I say the Acts of Union because, of course, there was more than the one in 1801. Since that time the Acts have been amended, and not just by the seismic events of 1921; they were amended right through the 19th century, and indeed beyond, to take into account the evolving position of Northern Ireland. Just as every other part of our United Kingdom has evolved, so has Northern Ireland.

It is right to pause and say that the arguments that were asserted, in particular in the Supreme Court, about what we can now call the old protocol being inconsistent with the Acts of Union are just wrong. That point was never at issue before that Court. The Court specifically said that it did not have to rule on it.

[Ian Paisley]

A lot of this is quite surreal, because it falls into the grounds of piffle. I remember sitting in the Select Committee on Northern Ireland, and the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), telling me, in October 2019, “This will all be light touch—you won’t even notice it.” We have spent the last four years now trying to unravel the heavy hand of Europe and still need to prise those fingers off what is happening in Northern Ireland. We have also been told that yes, there was a problem, and we all now know what the problem was: this House failed to stand up to Europe and allowed Northern Ireland to be a buffer zone to protect its single market and threw our single market down the toilet in the process.

[Sir Robert Buckland]

I feel the emotion and hear the proper points that the hon. Gentleman makes. The process became the legislative and constitutional equivalent of brain surgery, and the patient was Northern Ireland. Everybody was feeling it. This is not just an archaic debate: this is a debate about the business and economy of Northern Ireland. This is real and important for the businesses that right hon. and hon. Members represent—absolutely right —which is why the hon. Gentleman’s party should claim proper credit for the painstaking approach that he and his colleagues, including the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), have shown in this process. They have not taken no for an answer. They have actually sought to try to reach a solution and be part of that brain surgery process—that neurological change.

But I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that there is a distinction between the integral part that Northern Ireland plays in our United Kingdom constitution and our internal market—our single market—and the inevitable access that Northern Ireland will have to the EU single market. Why? Because of the nature of the border that exists in Northern Ireland, the unique nature of its status and all the history and, indeed, the reality that goes with that. That is why there is not going to be an elegant or perfect solution to all this. It was always going to involve compromise.

Compromise is a difficult word—it implies weakness and fudging; it implies a lack of clarity—but right hon. and hon. Members opposite have recognised that that is the world in which they operate, which is why we are able to be here today to debate important changes that will underpin not just declaratory words about Northern Ireland’s place within the UK internal market, but concrete actions that are set out in the Command Paper. I am thinking in particular of the operation of the Stormont brake. Yes, we need to see more guidance about its operation—we need to understand the evidential thresholds that will be required for MLAs to bring the brake to the attention of the UK Government to lodge their objections; that work has to be done—but today will allow it to happen.

In its judgment, the Supreme Court looked in particular at the question of the sovereignty of Parliament, and affirmed that—as article 6 of the Acts of Union itself recognised—it is the most fundamental rule of UK constitutional law. There is nothing novel, unexpected or controversial about that, which is why some of the language that emerged from that case was not just unhelpful but wrong. I know that the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, shares my view. It was time for leadership, and leadership means being straightforward and getting it right. That is why I commend the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues for the work that they have done: they got it right, and as a result of their approach we are able today, I hope, to pass this much-needed change. I welcome it warmly, I commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and I commend this measure to the House.

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[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He restates a point he made earlier to the Secretary of State and he will have heard the response given. It is the task of all DUP Members to ensure that the Government deliver, and we bank the gains we have made in this process and move forward on that basis, recognising not only that there is more to do, but that there are new opportunities to seek and secure change. The Secretary of State referred earlier to my detractors, who have been very vocal, even challenging me to a debate on these issues. My challenge back to them is clear and simple. As I said last week in this House, when they are in a position to set out clearly for the people of Northern Ireland what they have achieved, the changes they have secured to the protocol and to the Windsor framework, and the changes they have secured to safeguard our place in the Union, I will consider discussion with them. But what I will not do is accept their criticism of what we have achieved on safeguarding the Union—real achievements and real changes, which my party has long sought.

We were disappointed when the Government abandoned the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, because all DUP Members recognised that those proposals provided a way forward for Northern Ireland. We have sought to incorporate into these new arrangements many aspects of that Bill, but we have gone further and achieved more. We will come to this more fully on the second SI before us this afternoon, but that Bill, which was endorsed fully by my parliamentary party, proposed a green lane and a red lane as the means by which goods would move between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. What we have achieved is to remove the need for the green lane, because we have restored Northern Ireland’s place within the UK’s internal market. Under these new arrangements, goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland and staying within the UK will flow through the UK internal market system. There is no need for a so-called “green lane”. There is a need for only one lane, which deals with goods that flow through our Northern Ireland ports and onwards to the EU or that are deemed at risk of entering the EU.

The red lane was endorsed and supported by my party, and every one of my MPs voted for that proposal. That was my mandate and it is what I have secured. It removes the Irish sea border within our internal market of the United Kingdom, and it means the only checks we need to carry out are those on goods moving into, or at risk of going into, the European Union. That is what we stated in our response to the Windsor framework, endorsed unanimously by all our party officers. We made clear what we wanted, and I have gone further even than that response in removing the green lane from the new arrangements.

This is progress. Does it give us everything we want? It does not. My hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) has been assiduous in his pursuit of a solution on veterinary medicines. He has worked with the Government and campaigned alongside representatives of the Northern Ireland agrifood sector. As a result of that work, in the Command Paper we now have clarity on the position of the UK Government. In the absence of an agreement with the European Union that maintains Northern Ireland’s full access to UK veterinary medicines, the UK Government will legislate to protect our access to veterinary medicines in the United Kingdom. That is a commitment given by the Government and I commend my hon. Friend for his work. That is the business we are in—it is unfinished business. We will continue to work to ensure the Government deliver on their commitments in the Command Paper on veterinary medicines.

[Ian Paisley]

I thank the leader of the party for his comments. This is crucial: it affects every single person in Northern Ireland because it is about food security across the whole of the United Kingdom. The Northern Ireland food industry feeds about 17 million people, not only in Northern Ireland, but across the United Kingdom and the world. It is vital to our food security. Damaging it, as was happening under the previous agreement, is wholly destructive to food health and farming. I also welcome paragraph 22, which addresses the movement of cattle and livestock. That is significant for our farming industry. I agree that more needs to be done and I will hold the Secretary of State to account to get that legislation on the statute book if Europe does not move.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I need add nothing to the point made by my hon. Friend. We welcome the explicit reference in the Command Paper to Northern Ireland’s part in the economy of the United Kingdom, including the fact that we are within the customs territory of the United Kingdom. We are part of the UK internal market and it is important that that is maintained.