Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns]

As a courtesy, I thought to update the House briefly before the substantive business before us. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that talks between the Government and the Commission to make the changes necessary to the protocol to make it work for all the people of Northern Ireland are ongoing and intense. Those discussions will continue until we get to a satisfactory conclusion. If we do not, the Government’s position has been clear: we will take the necessary steps available to us to act unilaterally.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Conor Burns]

If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not; the business of the House that we are dealing with is Lords amendments.

I thank the other place for its scrutiny of the Bill. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend Lord Caine for guiding it through the other place and to my noble friend Viscount Younger for his work in assisting him during the Lords stages of the Bill.

There are two Lords amendments to consider this evening, both of which deal with the commencement clauses of the Bill. Both here and in the other place, the Government were clear that we would consider early commencement if the political situation in Northern Ireland were to warrant it. We listened to the strength of argument put forward by the political parties of Northern Ireland in both Chambers and agreed to make this concession.

Lords amendment 2 will allow for provisions in the Bill to come into effect on the day of Royal Assent. To ensure that there is no ambiguity over whether the provisions of the legislation apply, Lords amendment 1 allows for the relevant provisions in the Bill to apply retrospectively if Royal Assent coincides with the resignation of a First Minister, thus triggering the existing seven-day Executive formation period.

In practice, that means that if Royal Assent is given by Thursday this week, the relevant provisions of the Bill will apply retrospectively, and instead of the seven-day period for filling the offices of First and Deputy First Minister applying, the new period of up to 24 weeks will apply, as agreed under New Decade, New Approach, which was negotiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), who is sitting behind me. I therefore urge the House to agree to the Lords amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Kyle]

I am going to make some progress, because I am coming to aspects of what we have been commenting on that I think the right hon. Gentleman will want to intervene on more pertinently.

We are here to talk about Lords amendments, but I will stray on to other areas simply because of the lack of availability of Ministers to answer questions in this place.

[John Redwood]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Kyle]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; your protection is always welcome. I try my best to defend myself and to embrace as many interventions as possible, while bearing in mind that other Members from Northern Ireland also need to speak in the debate.

Power sharing is a fundamental outcome of the peace process. The Belfast/Good Friday agreement is not an abstract. Strand 1 details the envisioned day-to-day functioning of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive.

The support for power sharing among the public in Northern Ireland is resolute. As Professor Tonge said in an evidence session on this Bill:

“Devolved power sharing is overwhelmingly a preferred option that comes back from each of those surveys—never larger, it should be said, than in 2019, which might be seen as remarkable given the hiatus in devolution from January 2017 until just after the election in December 2019. So the public have never lost faith with devolved power sharing. They have continued to support it.”––[Official Report, Northern Ireland (Ministers, Elections and Petitions of Concern) Public Bill Committee, 29 June 2021; c. 7-8.]

People in Northern Ireland are now emerging from a profound health crisis. Constituents in all parts of the United Kingdom are facing a cost of living crisis and huge public service challenges—multiple crises. For all political leaders in Northern Ireland, these are priorities that people want to be addressed in the coming weeks, in addition to valid constitutional issues, which must be resolved, as a result of the protocol that this Government negotiated and signed.

Lords amendments 1 and 2 allow the Bill to have an immediate commencement and for its provisions to apply if it receives Royal Assent during the seven-day Executive formation period following a First Minister or Deputy First Minister resignation. The Labour party fully supports the Lords amendments, but it is disappointing that the optimism of the New Decade, New Approach deal has not been realised.

[John Redwood]

In the light of these Lords amendments for a crisis, does the hon. Gentleman not think the crisis has been brought on by the EU interfering in the internal market of GB and Northern Ireland and diverting trade, and would he urge the EU to step back so that we can get back on track?

[Peter Kyle]

What is holding us back is people continually re-fighting the battles of the past. We need to build a better future, and we can do that only if we are facing the future, unlike the right hon. Gentleman. Instead of a break from the past, the Government have dragged us back into the Brexit quagmire, as he and others seem hell-bent on doing, which has directly led to the Bill being needed with immediate effect.

Northern Ireland has often been a secondary issue for this Government. When the consequences of decisions taken by Ministers have played out in Northern Ireland, the Government have behaved as though they found themselves at the scene of an accident over which they had no control. This bystander effect peaked last week. The Northern Ireland Secretary and the Foreign Secretary both pretended that the Northern Ireland protocol was purely a matter for the Executive, but in reality it was part of a deal drafted, negotiated and signed by the Prime Minister, and the legal duty to uphold that deal rests with the EU and UK Governments. Ministers cannot wash their hands of it as easily as they pretend.

Now the First Minister has resigned, with the protocol and broken ministerial promises playing a central role. The manner and impact of the resignation raise serious questions that must be addressed. I have sympathy for the position in which the Democratic Unionist party has been placed. The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson), in frustration, revealed that the Prime Minister told him that the current protocol negotiations have only a 30% chance of success. If that is the case, do the Government have a plan B? Have Departments worked up impact assessments and action plans for the eventuality or possibility of article 16 being triggered?

The people of Northern Ireland and the political parties have been given promise after promise by the Prime Minister and his Ministers, some of them fundamental and existential, such as the promise of no border in the Irish sea. It is no wonder that frustrations have boiled over, that trust in this Government is at rock bottom and that we find ourselves in this moment where hope seems so distant.

We have just discovered that the Northern Ireland Secretary is flying to Washington tomorrow. That is right: the Secretary of State will get in a plane and fly right over Northern Ireland on his way to Washington. That says everything we need to know. There is no one with the stature required in this Government, so he has to go to America to find a grown-up to be the honest broker they need.

While the Labour party welcomes this legislation and has supported its progress at every stage, we cannot pretend that it has an answer for how the Executive will be reformed if more progress is not made in protocol negotiations. It is hard to know whether the ongoing negotiations with the EU are a priority, because after three rounds of negotiations there have been no statements on progress made to the House. Considering the vital importance of those negotiations to the immediate circumstances in Northern Ireland, I hope the Foreign Secretary can come here and make a statement without any more delay. The political parties in Northern Ireland deserve such an update on the record—we have had enough nods, enough winks and enough back-handed promises that are never met and do nothing more than destabilise the fragile political settlement.

The Bill was supposed to deliver greater resilience in the institutions established under the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday agreement, but once again their fragility has been highlighted. Too often, Northern Ireland has been overlooked and the work to deliver on the promise of peace allowed to stall. While the Labour party supports the Bill and hopes it receives Royal Assent in time to be effective, it is worrying how much of it may already be obsolete. The provisions of the Bill alone cannot enable stability. To do that, Ministers must take responsibility for their words and actions, which have shaken faith within Northern Ireland. It is time that this Government, from the Prime Minister down, are seen to care about their words, promises and actions in a vitally important part of our United Kingdom, and to directly work on a way back for the Executive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. If the European Union insisted that the personal belongings of Conservative Members’ constituents were searched every time they moved from one part of the United Kingdom to another, would those Members hear about that from their constituents? Might those constituents have cause for complaint? Yet that is what my constituents will be subjected to if the European Union has its way and the full and vigorous implementation of the protocol is taken forward.

At Christmas, a constituent—a lady who lives in Lisburn and who is the former principal of an integrated college in my constituency—received a Christmas card from her sister, who lives in Llanelli, in Wales. On the envelope was a customs stamp with a customs fee of £3—a customs fee of £3 to send a Christmas card from one member of a family in one part of the United Kingdom to another member of the family in another part of the United Kingdom. My constituents and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends are being subjected to this kind of thing.

[John Redwood]

But is it not the case that the EU is breaking the protocol? The protocol clearly protects the UK internal market and says that communities’ consent is needed and that trade must not be diverted.