Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Ian Paisley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

The right hon. Gentleman is completely right that the people of Northern Ireland end up suffering from not having functioning institutions working for them.

The Bill provides me, as Secretary of State, with the important ability to call an early election, provided that offices have not been filled. Taken together, these provisions represent a delicate balance. Eventually, if the political impasse in Northern Ireland continues, people in Northern Ireland will rightly expect to return to the polls to have their say. However, the prospect of forcing an election when it would be unwelcome or unhelpful runs contrary to our goal of providing the time and space we need for our negotiations with the European Union on the protocol to continue to develop, and for an Executive to form.

Members with a keen eye for detail will no doubt have noticed that, unless an early election is called, the extension provided for by the Bill will run past the date on which the decision-making provisions contained in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2022 lapse, namely, 5 June 2023. During the Act’s passage late last year, we were clear that the current governance arrangements were not a sustainable long-term solution. I am therefore keeping those arrangements under review, in the continued absence of fully functioning devolved institutions, but I sincerely hope that an Executive are in place before those arrangements expire.

In the meantime, the provisions of the 2022 Act and its accompanying guidance provide Northern Ireland civil servants with the clarity they need on how and when they should be taking decisions. The decisions they have been taking under the 2022 Act are being published to ensure complete transparency. I am truly grateful for the work of Northern Ireland civil servants in making use of those provisions to maintain public services in Northern Ireland, but, as I have said many times, the right people to take those decisions are locally elected politicians, who should be doing their jobs in an Executive. The current arrangement is not and can never be a substitute for fully functioning devolved institutions.

I know everyone in this House has been deeply moved by the courage shown by a very young man, Dáithí Mac Gabhann. He and his whole family have fought for the implementation of organ donation changes. I recently met Dáithí and his family, and I met them again this morning. I am incredibly moved by his story and by his family’s dedication to seeing this important change to the law on organ donations in Northern Ireland implemented as quickly as possible.

I am a bit of a stickler for how we do things in this place, and I would never want to go against “Erskine May,” but Dáithí and his family are with us in the Gallery today. I am sure hon. Members will wish to join me in welcoming him and commending the whole family for their valiant efforts. They should not need to be here today to see this change, as the Assembly could and should have convened to take this across the finish line.

As I said in my letter to the Northern Ireland parties, they continue to have it within their power to recall the Assembly and deal with secondary legislation such as the regulations in this case. That would only require Members of the Legislative Assembly to work together to elect a Speaker—not necessarily to nominate a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister—but I was disappointed that the opportunity to do that was not taken during the Assembly recall last Tuesday. However, I recognise this issue is exceptional both in its sheer importance and in the cross-party support it commands, both in Northern Ireland and in this House. On that basis, the Government spent a lot of time with the lawyers. We have been able to table important amendments to this Bill to facilitate those changes, to be taken forward in the Assembly in the continued absence of a Speaker.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

It is commendable that Dáithí and his family are here, and it is wonderful that the Government are doing the right thing. This law will now be in place faster than if the Northern Ireland Assembly were sitting, which is one of the peculiarities of the politics in which we live. We should not make political points on this. It is right and proper that it has been done for children across the United Kingdom who need organ donations, for which I thank the Secretary of State .

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. He is right that this is not a matter of politics. I know it is the family’s wish that the Bill is operational by the spring and that is what we will be able to achieve.

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[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on that. He rightly says that at the heart of this is the need to take Northern Ireland forward on the basis of a cross-community consensus and that that consensus was broken down by the protocol, because not a single Unionist Member of the Assembly supports it. Therefore, we did not have a basis for moving Northern Ireland forward. That is important because the Executive and Assembly have important roles to play in the implementation of the protocol. I had Ministers, members of my party, who were in Departments and being required by the protocol to implement key elements that they felt were harmful to Northern Ireland. That was simply not a sustainable position. I do not want to be in the place again where I have to appoint Ministers at Stormont to Departments where they are required to implement measures that harm Northern Ireland’s ability to trade within the UK.

For us, the way to resolve the issues and move us forward lies in restoring Northern Ireland’s place within the internal market of the UK. Let me be clear that, as we have said from the outset, we are not looking to erect a hard border on the island of Ireland. I am not looking to create barriers to trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland; I do not want that for dairy farmers in Lagan Valley, beef farmers or whoever is wanting to continue with the arrangements that are there to facilitate cross-border trade. Coca-Cola is based in Lisburn in my constituency, and the Secretary of State visited recently. Some 80% of the products it produces in Lisburn are sold in the Republic of Ireland. I do not want Coca-Cola to have difficulty in trading both within Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Equally, I do not want the businesses in my constituency that have been impacted by the protocol to be inhibited in their ability to trade with the rest of the UK. The protocol inhibits that and that is the difficulty it creates.

[Ian Paisley]

This is an important issue. On Monday, my right hon. Friend, along with a number of Members from across the House, was able to attend the “Taste of Northern Ireland” event held in the Jubilee Room. Producers and food providers from all across Northern Ireland represented their trade there. One message that came out clearly from that was that trade in agrifoods is our biggest industry and it is being undermined by the regulations coming through from the EU. Those regulations must be shifted, and I am sure he welcomed the Prime Minister’s comments today that the regulations have to be part of this solution, if there is to be one.

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He has many farmers and some of the largest agrifood businesses in his constituency, and I know that some of his local farmers have had problems. They cannot bring seed potatoes from Scotland and that is having an impact on the potato sector in Northern Ireland. Some of his local farmers will have experienced difficulties when taking cattle to Scotland for sale and having to bring some of them back because they have not been sold at market; they face six weeks’ quarantine in part of the UK, in Scotland, before they can bring those cattle back to Northern Ireland. That is ridiculous, and those are the kinds of practical issues that we need to resolve.

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[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

I will say at the outset that the Bill going through the House today is an illustration and example of the futility of trying to use political blackmail to move my party from its principled opposition to legislation and to an agreement that is designed to take us out of the United Kingdom. I say to the Secretary of State that, to protect his own credibility in Northern Ireland, he had far better not listen to the anti-Unionist voices in the Northern Ireland Office, but use his political antennae to know what is the right thing to do.

This Bill illustrates that on four occasions the attempt to blackmail my party back into the Assembly by the threat of an election did not work, because the issues at stake are far too important simply to cave in to the threat of an election in which we might or might not have damage done to us, or to go back into an institution where, as Unionists, we would have been required to collaborate with an arrangement that was designed to, and will—as we have absolutely no doubt and as we have warned time and again—separate us from the country to which we belong. I hope the Secretary of State learns that lesson. We are not moving on an issue of principle.

The Secretary of State said in his remarks that he is disappointed that the Executive has not been re-formed. He should not be surprised. He and I campaigned to leave the European Union. We did so because we believed it was important that, as a country, we had the ability to make choices about the laws we had, the direction we took and the partnerships we made on trade, to do the best for the citizens of our own country. Yet, as a result of the protocol, Northern Ireland—and he knows it—has not gained the benefits that he and I campaigned for and that those who voted for Brexit wished to have. We are still left within the embrace of Brussels because of the imposition of EU law.

That fundamental problem is at the heart of the action we have taken. I have heard many hon. Members say today, as we will hear time and again, that this must be done to protect the Good Friday agreement. The fact of the matter, now clearly illustrated, is that the protocol and the Good Friday agreement cannot sit side by side. Indeed, one of the authors of the Good Friday agreement, the late Lord Trimble, made it quite clear that in order to keep the protocol intact, the Government would have to rip up the Good Friday agreement—and that, in effect, is what has happened. The leader of our party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), has made that quite clear.

The consent principle of the Good Friday agreement has been removed. Even the voting mechanisms that are allowed to make decisions about whether the protocol applies have had to be manipulated and changed, and the provision in the Good Friday agreement for cross-community support on that particular issue had to be removed. The Good Friday agreement and the protocol cannot sit in place side by side. One of the two goes. That is why, as a party, we have said there must be changes to the protocol.

Why is this Bill necessary? The Secretary of State made it clear that he did not believe that an election would change anything. Why would an election not change anything? It is because he knows in his heart, even if the officials who advise him do not know it, the suppressed anger within the Unionist community at being pushed out of a country that many Unionists died, during a terrorist campaign, to remain part of. Thousands of them refused to be intimidated by threat of violence to vote in the way Sinn Féin and the IRA wanted. He knows that that anger and that determination have not changed.

All the talk about the impact of the Assembly’s not working on the day-to-day lives of people has to be measured against whether the Assembly was functioning to deal with those issues anyway. No, it was not: we had a black hole in our budget during the time the Assembly was sitting. Some of the increases in waiting lists in the health service occurred while the Assembly was working, and many of the other problems have not emerged since February last year; they are long-term problems that were not dealt with even when the Assembly was working.

Even with some of the decisions that people would like to see made, the majority of the Unionist population now realise what is at stake, and they would not find it acceptable for their Unionist representatives to go back into an Assembly even under the threat of calling an election. We have had a lot of different threats. We were told that the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill could not progress in this House unless we got a Speaker. We were told the electricity payments could not happen unless Stormont did them. All those threats have been made in the past. I must tell the Secretary of State that this problem is not going away, and this party is not going to collaborate in an Assembly where we are expected to implement that very protocol until there are changes made.

What kind of changes could avoid legislation such as this having to be made again? I think that is very clear. Some people have presented this as some kind of trade problem, saying, “If only you could do away with the trade issues and have trade flowing freely, the issue would go away.”, but it is much more fundamental than that. The trade issue only occurs because there is a different law applying and a different lawmaking body in Northern Ireland from those in the rest of the United Kingdom.

We are not subject to British law anymore—we are not subject to laws made by institutions set up in the United Kingdom. We are subject to laws made in Brussels. Those laws are imposed on us; we have no say on them, and if they are detrimental to our country, we cannot change them. If we try to not implement them—if we try to ignore them—there is a foreign court that will drag us into the dock to make sure that we do.

[Ian Paisley]

Would my right hon. Friend agree that the issue is not only about the laws? A raft of regulations is coming upon Northern Ireland daily and impacting on our principles and the practical issue of how we do business. For example, at the end of this week, regulations that affect the organic seal on eggs will put our egg industry effectively out of business. Those regulations will cut off our market here in Great Britain. We will not be able to market those eggs in GB, because a regulation from Europe says our organic egg products must be produced in a particular way that appeals only to the European market, where we do not have any sales.

[Sammy Wilson]

There are lots of different examples of that happening.

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[Ian Paisley]

I hate to come back to this point, but article 6 of the protocol states that there should be unfettered access to the UK internal market. Twice so far in this debate I have raised the matter of organic eggs produced in Northern Ireland. Our market is the United Kingdom, not the Republic of Ireland, yet as of Friday this week, because of EU regulations applying to Northern Ireland, our farmers cannot sell eggs to the rest of the United Kingdom. How is that helping the hon. Member’s case?

[Stephen Farry]

My first response is that I did not advocate Brexit. The protocol will never be a clean solution to these issues. There is no perfect outcome when a single market is broken up in the way that has happened. This is about managing and mitigating the fallout.

The hon. Gentleman may well be pleased to know that I recognise his point about eggs. I have written to a Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to advocate for ongoing flexibility on that. For some agricultural products, Great Britain is our main market, but for others—particularly milk and the wider dairy sector—the Republic of Ireland and beyond is the key market. There are a lot of subtleties there that we have to work through.

There is frustration at the moment about the fact that we are almost in danger of re-treading a lot of old arguments that I hoped had been put to bed, but which seem to be resurfacing. With reference to Brexit and Northern Ireland, there are essentially only three choices available to policy makers. The first is to go for a soft Brexit, minimising diversions between the European Union and the UK or Great Britain, and that would ease tensions particularly in relation to Northern Ireland. The second is to go for a hard border on the island of Ireland, which, for various reasons, is politically and economically unviable. The third is to have some form of special arrangement for Northern Ireland—we could call it a “protocol”, or we could call it something else. That involves Northern Ireland being treated differently in certain respects, which is not new; it has been part and parcel of the Northern Ireland’s entire history from the early 1920s.

People get exercised about the Acts of Union being breached, but no such arguments were made in 1920, 1949 or even in 1998 with the Good Friday agreement. In practice, a single-party Unionist Government in Belfast were more than happy to diverge from the rest of the United Kingdom whenever that was viewed as in their interests. That is before we even get to the current iteration of devolution.

I will focus in particular on the democratic deficit. As I have already said, that was not an issue prior to Brexit, when the UK had full representation at all levels of the European Union. Our biggest democratic deficit by far is the failure to have an Assembly or an Executive alongside the other institutions of the Good Friday agreement. Looking ahead, we need to drill down and see what is most important in terms of addressing the democratic deficit. I recognise that there is an issue, as did the European Union in its October 2021 non-paper.

The key issue is ensuring that Northern Ireland officials, businesses, civic organisations and political voices are able to get in at ground zero whenever a new EU law that may become applicable to Northern Ireland is being designed. As I am sure everyone in the Chamber will appreciate, the most important time to try to influence a law is before the final decision is taken, rather than while it is being ratified through the various structures, when it becomes much more difficult to change the course of action. The Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), made reference to Norway. Places such as Norway, Liechtenstein, Iceland and even Switzerland, which are outside the European Union but are part of the single market or within its orbit, direct most of their lobbying energy at Brussels. We do not at present have that route directly in Northern Ireland, and that is what I want to see addressed when we talk about a democratic deficit.

By contrast, the sign-off of EU law is a secondary issue. In practice, once those laws are developed, it is in our interests to go along with them to preserve dual market access. However, I have concerns about the tenor of the democratic deficit emerging from this deal. If we end up in a situation in which there is a lack of certainty about Northern Ireland’s ongoing compliance with the aspects of EU law relevant to us gaining access to the single market, that will have a detrimental impact on the certainty of Northern Ireland’s existing businesses that they can trade with the EU. That huge issue may well deter investors from coming to Northern Ireland. There is the danger of a big asterisk beside Northern Ireland, meaning that, although we have access to the single market, it will say between brackets that it is subject to whatever mechanism is used to try to cover up this non-existent issue. That very process creates uncertainty for businesses.

I do not want to see a situation whereby, in trying to fix one particular problem in the current stand-off, we end up perhaps inadvertently creating a wider problem that acts to the detriment of our current and future businesses and the future prosperity of Northern Ireland. People talk about the “sweet spot” of Northern Ireland’s dual market access, but that will only come to fruition if we do several things. We need to promote it politically and through our investment agency, but we must not create any uncertainty in that regime beyond what we currently have.

That also applies to the European Court of Justice, for example. Whenever people talk about the European Court of Justice coming in and imposing things on Northern Ireland, I say the opposite: the Court is a means to an end. If we are abiding by a certain aspect of EU law, the Court comes as part of it. If we want to put various layers in between, that is fine—nobody will object to that particular point. But the converse is that there may well be a situation in which there is uncertainty about the access of Northern Ireland businesses to parts of the single market, and in which we are wrongly blocked from access in investment decisions, procurement opportunities or things along those lines. In that context, the European Court of Justice becomes our potential ally, opening up those doors that have been wrongly shut in the face of Northern Ireland businesses. Again, it is important that we do not inadvertently throw that out and miss the wider point of what is in the best economic interests of Northern Ireland.

I will conclude on the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill. It is appropriate that the protocol Bill is parked or drifts away—or however that may happen. I trust that the Secretary of State, who has been at the coalface, will appreciate this point more than most. Progress has been made over the past number of months because, under this Government, trust has been rebuilt with the European Union. We saw that with the breakthroughs on data sharing and, just before Christmas, on longer grace periods for veterinary medicines. But we cannot build trust and, at the same time, retain the tool to break that same trust. That is not going to close this deal.

I wish the Government well over the coming hours and days—but hopefully not weeks—in concluding a deal, but that deal has to be one that works in the interests of all the people of Northern Ireland, not just those from a Unionist background, and that works for the future economy and prosperity of our region.