Northern Ireland

Lord Bew Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, first, I pay tribute to Lord Cormack, as have others in this House. He was a friend of mine. In 2015, I was asked by the then Lord Speaker to chair a Committee of both Houses along with Tristram Hunt, a Member of the other House, on the anniversaries of that year—mainly Magna Carta. It was also the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death. Lord Cormack was my senior adviser on that committee. He was an enormously well-informed historian, as everybody here knows. He prevented me from making many stupid, callow errors, for which I was really grateful. I extend my sympathies to his family on this very sad day. I will miss Patrick Cormack, as will many others.

I speak in favour of this humble Address. In my opinion, it ends an era of instability in Northern Irish affairs which has existed since the 2017 joint report—an international agreement with the EU, which, for example, had the British Government supporting an island economy on the island of Ireland. It corrects and ends an era of painful instability in Northern Ireland. This had to be done, but it takes time and negotiation is painful. I watched the debate yesterday in the other place. I had the feeling that one was looking at some of the acrimonious debates which have marked our life here for the past six years through the rearview window. I hope that we are moving away from those.

The point was made yesterday and alluded to briefly by the Minister tonight, about the definition of “joint authority”. I agree with the terms that he expressed on this. Yesterday, in the other place, it was stated that we do not have a definition. We have an official working definition. The New Ireland Forum Report from the Irish Government in 1984 states quite clearly that joint authority means shared responsibility by the two Governments for the administration of the affairs of Northern Ireland. It is clear to me that the humble Address closes the door firmly on this prospect. I do not think there is any ambiguity nor uncertainty about what joint authority is. We know what it is. The humble Address is absolutely clear-cut in this respect.

I have a sense that there is still a misunderstanding about what has been happening in the last few years, particularly around the standing of the Good Friday agreement. Members of this House will remember that there was a great dislike of the idea that the United Kingdom might ever tear up an international treaty. Quite apart from the protocol, the joint report of 2017 is also an international treaty. We would never unilaterally tear up an international treaty. Again and again, it was said to be the sort of thing that ill-tempered Putinesque regimes did, but certainly not the United Kingdom. What we witnessed instead was a long struggle in which the United Kingdom has said to the European Union, “You say you are also keen to support another international agreement—the Good Friday agreement. This is an international agreement lodged at the United Nations by the United Kingdom and the Government of Ireland, but there are tensions; for example, in the joint report and the protocol. We want to work with you to find the correct balance so that we can get back to something closer to the Good Friday agreement”. The Good Friday agreement states that the UK Government, being the sovereign Government, has a responsibility to deal with the alienation of one or other community. In this case, the alienation over the issues in the protocol is clearly within the unionist community. Every single unionist public representative made clear their alienation on that point.

At the beginning of this Parliament, the first letter that went from the UK Government to the European Union said that they were concerned that it had not got the correct balance of the Good Friday agreement. It was a delicate balance. A long labour to reach that point has now concluded. The important work on the island economy was part of that. The Good Friday agreement in no way mandated an island economy. I was present at some of the key discussions in the late 1990s. I remember the Irish Government, let alone the British Government, talking about co-operation between two economies on the island of Ireland.

I accept what the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, said about electricity and agri-food. I do not quite accept what she said about Coca-Cola, but I shall come to that. The slide towards something called the island economy is essentially an ideological concept which puts pressure on unionists and has played a major role in the negative public mood in Northern Ireland in the last three or four years. This is not to say that there are not elements of an island economy. The case of Coca-Cola, which the noble Baroness mentioned, indicates a deeper complexity. Coca-Cola has to work with two taxation systems and two currencies. You would not normally call that a simple operation of island economy logic. This is more usually the case. To a greater extent, the Northern Irish economy remains integrated within the UK economy. That the UK Government were apparently committed to working against that was one of the destabilising factors. This is now over. It was essential, as the Safeguarding the Union Command Paper acknowledges.

There are two communities in Northern Ireland which both have rights under the Good Friday agreement. It is impossible to imagine a solution which did not involve some kind of compromise—which this still is. It is not the full achievement of a unionist wish list, nor could it ever be. It is a restructuring, a rebalancing of a previously highly unsatisfactory state of affairs. It is not the achievement of a unionist wish list, which, to be honest, would not be entirely desirable, given the balance of the two communities and the commitment of the UK Government. There is no point is replacing the alienation of one community with the alienation of another.

I note that Irish nationalists were perfectly happy with the provisions I have talked about concerning the role of the UK Government in facing up to the alienation of one community, when it came to the Irish language Act, which went through in this House and not in the Northern Ireland Assembly. They were very relaxed about that, but there has been much complaint about the Safeguarding the Union document. I understand why there is irritation, but I have tried to explain what it is. It is all about restoring the Good Friday agreement and the centrality of making it work again in future. To do this, the institutions have to be functioning—which they now are.

I will say a few words on the amendment and the issues around the Act of Union. The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, complains, and the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, complains around irrelevant references about whiskey taxes. Had the proponents of the argument that was put about the Act of Union said at any point that they were aware of the schedule in Article VI which lists all these taxes which provide an Irish Sea border, it would not have been possible in the last couple of weeks for the debate to develop in the way in which it has. Suddenly, it has appeared for the first time that there is an issue, and that Article VI of the Act of Union included a series of what would be called pretty strong Irish Sea border measures. The difficulty would not be felt quite so clearly. It raises the question: had the proponents of this particular argument actually read the full text of the Act of Union? They would not have been vulnerable to what has happened in the last fortnight. They are quite right to say that it is not of itself a decisive point, but they would not have been vulnerable to the point at all had they shown any signs of having read the full document.

In general, I have a feeling that the whole question around the Act of Union lacks any proper historical dimension—any proper respect for the history of ideas. Isaiah Berlin, once said, quoting Immanuel Kant:

“Of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made”.


We are dealing here with the crooked timber of humanity. In the last few days, I have been reading Pitt’s speeches introducing the Act of Union. In general, he calls for equality of treatment for the King’s Irish subjects but then says that there are “unavoidable necessities” which mean “we cannot deliver that”. Straight away we are into the crooked timber of humanity. There is a very important commitment to equal treatment. The Command Paper is an attempt to restore that basic commitment but, for 80 years—or 79, to be precise—there was no equal treatment.

One thing that also frustrates me is the lack of serious discussion of the Command Paper and its historical sections, and the quite trivial level of public debate. It is not just about the history of the Act of Union. It reveals that customs and duties were paid throughout the large life of the Stormont Parliament. Again, this is a function of something else. The Act of Union was designed to create one nation across two countries. It failed. After 120 years, what is now the Republic of Ireland left. The core project failed. On the other hand, it worked in economic and social terms for Northern Ireland, and it emerged that parts of Northern Ireland had been alienated from British rule. Some 120 years later, as Lloyd George put it very precisely in 1920, there is not one people across two islands, there are two peoples on one island.

The Government of Ireland Act comes in at that point. It absolutely specifies that trade is an international matter and not a matter for the Stormont Parliament. We may disagree with that and we may dislike it, but it is absolutely clear. In 1938, when the Anglo-Irish trade agreement was signed, the unionist MPs hated it. They said that it was unequal treatment of Northern Irish businesses. They were completely right in everything that they said in the other place in May 1938, but they also made it clear that it was a matter for this Parliament and we have to accept the will of this Parliament. There is no question of these trade matters being a matter for the Stormont Parliament.

That raises a question: what, therefore, is the pre-protocol status of the Act of Union? It does not have any. At that moment of great challenge, just as a matter of reality, no unionist MP even thought to refer to that Act. Why? It is because they thought the new reality was the Government of Ireland Act, reflecting the fact that there are two Parliaments on the island of Ireland. That is why they do not refer to it, and that is why it is quite difficult to talk about the pre-protocol status of the Act of Union. No unionist MPs seemed to have thought there was any status for the Act of Union at that point.

All this comes down to one thing. For at least 100 years of the union—perhaps more like 120 to 130 years—there was a fairly vigorous Irish Sea border and customs to be paid. The union survived. It tells you something: that the so-called Irish Sea border is not, however defined, and what is intended under Safeguarding the Union is really light compared with the actual provisions that had been the case for more than 100 years of the life of the union. What matters is the political will of the people of Northern Ireland. It is very simple in this respect.

I know it will be said that European law is a separate matter and complicates the issue. Of course it does, but it is also the case that the DUP’s seven tests cannot be made to include European law. When the history is written, the various arguments that they contain something to do with European law will run up against a very obvious problem: “EU law” is a small few words; if you wanted to be explicit about European law it would have been the easiest thing to include them in the seven tests. I know that people will say that this or that other test implies it, but it would have been the easiest thing to be explicit about. This is so obvious that it is an insult to the intelligence of the House to imply anything else. It was obviously a deliberate decision not to mention it in the seven tests. By the way, the idea is that the tests are based on commitments made by British Ministers. They are—they are all based in some way on things that Ministers had said that the people of Northern Ireland should get—but no British Minister said at the time the seven tests were announced, “We’re getting rid of European law”, which is the second reason why there is no possible argument that the seven tests are about European law.

It has also been said tonight that Sir Jeffrey Donaldson is saying some things that he did not say on platforms or during this long campaign. That is true, and a fair point, but the trouble is that people on the other side of this argument are also saying things today that they did not say during this long campaign. It is a game if we get to throwing around quotations. Personally, I do not think we should go there. We should move on. There is a moment now for a new, modernising unionism. I do not know whether the arguments at the weekend in the local press that the centre parties have peaked in Northern Ireland are correct—some of the polling suggests that—but it is certainly the case that a new, modernised unionism has opportunities electorally now that it did not have two weeks ago.