European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 25th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, for introducing this topic and other noble Lords for their contributions. I had a very pleasant cup of tea with the noble Baroness yesterday and I was pleased to learn that she hails from the Kennedys of Fermanagh, which was an interesting discovery. But it was not just a pleasant cup of tea; it was more important than that. We touched on what I believe are some of the key elements that have motivated these amendments, and they are, at heart, necessary to confront. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, somewhat surprisingly, reminded me that I was indeed apparently the first person to give clarity on this issue, but I am very happy to reinforce the clear statement that there can be no racial profiling at a border, whether it be routine, quixotic or even accidental. That cannot be the policy or the direction; there cannot be even a hint of that going on at the border. I am hopeful that those further words might again give some contentment in that regard.

If I may turn to the amendment itself, the December joint report, at paragraph 54, confirms that the UK and Ireland can continue, as now, to work together on the movement of people. Building on this, the relevant chapter of the Commission’s draft withdrawal treaty text is green, confirming the policy is agreed. The key thing here is that the common travel area with Ireland is protected after the UK has left the EU. It is important to emphasise that this agreement is not just what we would like to see happen but actually what we have agreed so far. As a number of noble Lords will have noticed thus far, getting agreement is not always as straightforward as we would like. The Government are committed to turning the relevant chapter of the withdrawal treaty into legally binding text, so we will be doing that. This means that in the future, as now, the UK will not operate routine immigration controls on journeys within the common travel area. There will be no checks whatever for journeys across the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, nor between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. As I said earlier, this includes any aspect of what those checks might look like or be interpreted to look like. That is not what will be happening.

To touch on some of the elements raised, I think it is important again—and I will commit to writing to the noble Baroness—to set out the elements of the withdrawal agreement treaty and how they protect the common travel area. I will place a copy of that letter in the Library of the House so that all can read it and see exactly what we are stating.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Forgive me, this is not facetious, but the words that the Minister is using are so much clearer than those that have been used by his colleagues in government that I just wonder if there might be an internal seminar, so that we can get some of this clarity on the record more often.