Blood Safety and Quality (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con) [V]]

I thank my noble friend Lord Bethell for setting out these regulations so clearly. I strongly support all four sets of regulations; as he has said, they are vital to honour the withdrawal agreement. Indeed, that withdrawal agreement is at the base of the regulations we are considering. They essentially ensure that for the purposes of the quality and safety of organs intended for transplant, human tissue, blood and blood products, gametes, embryos and reproductive cells, Northern Ireland is still treated as if it were part of the EU and still a member state. Great Britain—England, Wales and Scotland—is to be treated as a non-member state. Current EU law will therefore remain in place in Northern Ireland, and Great Britain is a third-party state as far as Northern Ireland is concerned.

Initially, this will perhaps not create any day-to-day problems because there will be no initial divergence. However, paragraph 7.13 of the Explanatory Memorandum to these regulations sets out clearly that Northern Ireland establishments will consider Great Britain the same as a non-EU member state, and that Northern Ireland will ensure that there are “equivalent standards” for blood and blood products—those words are used—and for organ issues. Again, it provides for equivalent safety and quality standards. That perhaps is the answer: the standards could be divergent, but they must be equivalent, so there cannot be too much divergence from the norm. That is reassuring.

I do not have an issue with the purpose of these recognitions—I have no problem with that at all; it is a matter of practical common sense. I was briefly a Minister in Northern Ireland, and I saw that the invisible border meant that in practice, ambulances from one side of the border that were near the border would help out when needed on the other side. That was very sensible—it was pragmatic, practical common sense and it happened on a daily basis. However, the withdrawal agreement provided for the situation that we are dealing with here. Like my noble friend Lord Lansley, I ask: why, then, it is then a problem in relation to the United Kingdom internal market legislation? It does not make sense. What we are doing here is sensible and was foreseen—indeed, it was foreseen elsewhere. So why is it a problem with, as it were, the “mothership” legislation? I do not know whether the Minister will feel able to answer that, but it is a real issue for me.

As I say, I have no problem with this legislation at all, which seems very sensible for these purposes. It is a matter of geographic reality rather than anything else. I suspect that the problem is the same in relation to energy regulations that may well be coming forward. For these purposes, once again, if there is a problem with supplying energy on one side of the border because of a failure of supply, the first place one looks is the other side of the border: that is geographic reality and common sense. These matters are being dealt with pragmatically and sensibly, so why are we proposing to breach international law in relation to a broader front? It does not make sense. So I will be very grateful if the Minister feels able to deal with that issue, and I hope that he will. However, the regulations themselves are sensible and I certainly support them.