Northern Ireland Protocol Bill

Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

May I clarify something? My position is that there will be no progress with these talks until there is the involvement of high-level politicians from this country. I remember in the 1990s the attempt to move Congress from its support of the wrong side—in the British Government’s view—in Northern Ireland. I was ambassador and made a certain amount of progress, but the real progress was made only when Prime Minister Major and the then Minister of State, now the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, took an active involvement in helping me to see the people one had to convince on the Hill. We need the involvement of senior British Ministers. I strongly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that we need the involvement of people from Northern Ireland. This must not be an agreement, if one is achieved, that is imposed on Northern Ireland. It has to be one that is owned by Northern Ireland.

However, my view is that there is no chance of persuading the Council of the European Union that it should modify Mr Šefčovič’s mandate while technical talks are going nowhere and there are no signs of any movement, or even active involvement, by the highest levels of the British political establishment. I do not mean that I think the talks are bound to fail; I mean that, at present, they are not succeeding.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I maintained a Trappist silence throughout all the earlier debates on this Bill. I may be prominent among those wishing I had maintained it when I sit down in a moment or two because I recognise that I speak from a position of having less knowledge of the political and economic background to this debate than perhaps anybody else here—certainly less than anyone who has spoken.

What has driven me to my feet is what seems a striking absence of any reference to Article 16; again, we heard it in earlier debates but not today. To my mind—I speak in this respect simply as a lawyer—it is custom-built to meet any legitimate needs, which there are, to adapt processes in the Province today. What is required of the protocol by way of rewriting treaties is in doubt, but the protocol does not pre-empt the Belfast agreement obligations and commitments on all sides. On the contrary, Belfast is the primary one of these two treaties, which are enforceable under international law.

Those who know much more about this than I do emphasise—rightly, to my mind—the third strand of Belfast, which concerns east-west trade within the UK internal market. Far from the protocol pre-empting what we as the UK are entitled to insist on under the Belfast agreement, surely it accommodates the crucial argument—let the politicians in Northern Ireland make, refine, emphasise and urge this—that the regulatory controls that the EU currently exercises under the protocol, as well as the intensity of their policing, are in fact quite incompatible with its obligation to observe the Belfast agreement. You have only to look at the Belfast agreement to see that we, the UK, are duty bound to fight against the long-term alienation—I forget the precise language—of any community. We did it for the nationalists in respect of language in Northern Ireland. Now we owe the unionists some obligation to try to reinforce the critical importance of the east-west trade link here.

I therefore have no brief for this Bill. The unionists say, “You need this to get back into the Assembly”. That is nonsense. They open their mouths far too wide but their legitimate interests should be—indeed, must be—protected. Do it under Article 16, which meets any imperative need of the day, and let the people of Northern Ireland specify precisely what is required by way of adapting the processes under the protocol. If there needs to be any adaptation of the language, let them deal with that too. As the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said in an earlier debate, do not be too theological about the language—just get the agreement to do what is necessary.