United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 19th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds [V]]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and look forward to her future contributions to this House. I fully endorse the arguments set out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. I concur with the concerns set out in the report cited by other noble Lords earlier. I even welcome the commitments articulated by the Minister, but I question how they can be trusted, given the underlying ethic of the Bill—and it is absolutely right for archbishops to ask questions of such matters.

Relations with potential partners usually depend on integrity. Trade, security, migration and so on all rest on fundamental trust. Trust cannot be one-sided, or it is not trust at all. Respecting one’s interlocutors is essential. This is inevitably evidenced in language. The Bill before us assumes that our interlocutors cannot be trusted and will behave in bad faith, and that we need to be protected from them. If they do not give us what we demand, we are free to do our own thing, including breaking the law and reneging on agreements made less than a year ago that were said at the time to be “oven ready”—a good arrangement that required “no more negotiations”. What the Bill does not ask is why our word should be trusted by others.

Integrity and morality matter at the level of international relations and agreements—unless, of course, we are now agreeing to reduce all our relations and transactions to some sort of utilitarian pragmatism. Morality also applies to how we remember history and establish what will shape the national mythologies that future generations will inherit. What story will be celebrated or commemorated next year, the centenary of partition on the island of Ireland: one that chose to end violence and respect difference, including different perspectives on identity, justice and unity, or one of a conscious abrogation of agreements built from bloodshed and courageous willingness to stem the wounds of grievance? Ireland, both the Province and the Republic, needs some certainty and shape in the future narrative, but what sort of certainty is built on a broken word, the negation of trust or the arrogance of exceptionalism?

Irish church leaders are surely right to be concerned about what the Bill implies for relations between the devolved institutions and with the UK Government. These leaders are not talking into fresh air; they straddle the border in Ireland and their deep concerns about a breach of the Good Friday agreement need to be listened to, not simply dismissed with a wave of boosterish optimism from Westminster.

Others will speak about the implications of closing an illegal route to challenge the Government’s implementation of the protocol, but let us be clear: parliamentary sovereignty does not translate easily into executive sovereignty. A decision to prefer short-term pragmatism over long-term ethics will lead to a future in which a question mark will hang over any statement by those whose word and adherence to the rule of law cannot be trusted. More is at stake here than economics.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Lord Bishop of Leeds Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 5th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 9th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD) [V]]

It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Empey, who always speaks with such authority, experience and, as we heard this evening, force on these matters. I will speak in favour of Amendment 163, to which I have added my name, and against all clauses in Part 5 of the Bill. Amendment 163 is a cross-party amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Ritchie and Lady Altmann. It calls for the trader support service to be extended to become a long-term commitment for trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.

In response to a similar amendment during Committee on the Trade Bill on 13 October, the Minister, the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, confirmed that the future of the trader support service will be reviewed after two years. Can the Minister confirm that, if after two years it is seen as a positive initiative for businesses in Northern Ireland, it will continue indefinitely?

I will concentrate the remainder of my brief remarks on the deletion of Part 5 of this Bill. The arguments are well rehearsed. We have heard them made very eloquently, particularly in the most thoughtful speech from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, and the powerful speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Howard, and my noble friend Lord Newby. As other noble Lords have said, unless Part 5 is deleted, it risks diminishing our global reputation and jeopardising the substantial progress made on the island of Ireland since the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday agreement.

The Government sometimes give the impression that the protocol was somehow imposed on them, whereas earlier this year they were claiming it as their great success. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, demonstrated clearly in his speech, the Northern Ireland protocol is not perfect, but it is the consequence of the Government’s insistence on a set of incompatible promises and on leaving both the customs union and the single market. For all its imperfections, the protocol is a carefully constructed compromise to try to maintain peace and stability on the island of Ireland.

The uncertainty which Part 5 of this Bill provokes has also—in my view, unforgivably—wasted scarce resources and valuable time. This is precious time when businesses could and should have been preparing for the end of the transition period in just over 50 days’ time.

Last week, the National Audit Office said in its report, The UK Border: Preparedness for the End of the Transition Period:

“It is very unlikely that all traders, industry and third parties will be ready for the end of the transition period … There is a risk that widespread disruption could ensue at a time when government and businesses continue to deal with the effects of Covid-19.”


If the arguments against Part 5 remain the same, the political context in which we now find ourselves has very substantially changed. As my noble friend Lord Newby said, President-elect Biden has made it very clear that he will not support any measures that would result in breaking commitments made in the Northern Ireland protocol or that would risk destabilising the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. Yet in the media this morning, the Government made it clear that they do not intend to change their mind on Part 5.

There is a time when sticking to a position looks like strength, and there is a time when it looks out of touch with political reality. I urge noble Lords to vote against all clauses in Part 5 and I call on the Government to think again.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Suttie. I endorse completely the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, at the outset of this debate. I hope the Government will listen carefully to the advice from the noble Lord, Lord Empey, on the alternatives to what is before us. This is not an either/or situation.

I have read every word of the Second Reading and Committee debates and the reports—especially from the Constitution Committee. I have even reread Tom Bingham’s book on the rule of law. I ask myself whether I am missing something, but I still come back to the point of principle. I accept the Government’s intention in this Bill, but not the means. We were given pragmatic answers to questions of principle, particularly in the responses to the Second Reading debate. These will not work. At Second Reading, the Minister dismissed the ethical argument which I tried to set out succinctly in my speech. Yet even in today’s debate, we have heard moral language used. To speak of suspected bad faith by others is to speak of ethics. Ethics must form the basis of political principle. Objections to other countries breaching international law have to be set in moral considerations.