Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Position

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

The duty of good faith and to use best endeavours is a legally enforceable duty. There is no doubt that it is difficult to prove—[Interruption]—as I hear from a sedentary position, but that is not to say that it has not been proven. The case reports of the International Court of Justice, as well as arbitral tribunals throughout the world, have recorded decisions where tribunals have found breaches of good faith duties. There would need to be clear and convincing evidence that the breakdown of communication was due to bad faith—I fully accept that—but if the EU refused to engage with us, strung out negotiations in a thoroughly unreasonable way or failed to observe reasonable time limits, those would be hallmarks of a possible case of breach of good faith. It is a meaningful legal obligation.

I remind the House that we are dealing here with the United Kingdom on one hand and the European Union on the other. Their reputations in international forums, and their reputations as a question of international law, are at stake. If you put your name to a solemn legal obligation to negotiate something in good faith within a certain time limit, it is a very serious obligation of which to acquit yourself: it cannot just be played fast and loose with.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, I have the utmost and deepest respect for him in relation to his approach to these issues and the discussions that we have had, but he has said himself that the whole business is deeply unsatisfactory and unattractive, which makes me wonder why he is recommending the agreement. It seems to me that we are now reliant on our learned friends to take cases in international courts, rather than this sovereign Parliament being able to decide when we can get out of these backstop arrangements.

Can the Attorney General confirm what he said—that this is an indefinite arrangement that can be permanent in law, despite what some of his Cabinet colleagues are saying? I do not have time to go into all this, because, as other Members have said, we need to see the actual legal advice as requested by the House—that must happen—but can he also confirm that under article 15 of the Northern Ireland protocol, the Northern Ireland customs arrangements mean that Northern Ireland will form part of the EU customs territory and not the United Kingdom’s, although “a single customs territory” is established between the UK and the EU? Will he confirm that under article 4 of the protocol, there is a new right under international law—one that is not in the Belfast agreement of 1998—for the EU to oversee certain aspects of the implementation of that 1998 agreement?

I have added those detailed points, which I will follow up with the Attorney General in later discussions, but the overall context is, as he has said, a deeply unattractive, unsatisfactory agreement. Rather than recommending it, he needs to recommend that it be rejected.

[The Attorney General]

The right hon. Gentleman has thrown down the gauntlet in asking me to re-examine my support for the agreement. I do not mind confessing to him that I have wrestled with this question, because I am a Unionist and dislike any divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom; but I have had also to take into account first that this is an arrangement that we can avoid, and secondly that if we were in it, it would be as much an instrument of pain to the European Union as it would be to the United Kingdom.

I ask the right hon. Gentleman to think of what the European Union is now accepting. It accepts that Northern Ireland can have free circulation of its goods not only into the single market, but to Great Britain. No other single market trader will have that advantage. Hundreds of single market traders throughout the European Union are going to resent the fact that the goods of a Northern Ireland business situated one mile north of the border can flow smoothly into the single market and smoothly into Great Britain, while theirs cannot. So there are real reasons, which the right hon. Gentleman and I can discuss at greater length, why I do not believe that this will become a permanent solution.

Let us suppose, however, that those negotiations broke down or took an unreasonable length of time. All around the European Union there will be single market traders seeing the benefits that Northern Ireland can have, who will be induced by those benefits to ask, “Should we go on putting up with this uncompetitive arrangement?” And what are they likely to do? Why, they are likely to beat a path to the door of the Commission and the Court, and there to say, “Didn’t you say that article 50 is not a sound legal foundation for this arrangement?” And I tell you frankly, Mr Speaker, they are likely to win.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Attorney General]

The European Union’s original proposal, as the hon. Gentleman will know, was that Northern Ireland should reside in an entirely separate customs territory. The Government took the view that that was wholly and completely unacceptable. Why? Because there is virtually no sovereign state in the world that has separate customs and fiscal tariffs within its own sovereign territory. But there are many nations throughout the world in which different provinces and parts have regulatory divergence. The regulatory divergence in this case can be minimised to an almost, if not wholly, invisible extent. Furthermore, we do not wish, nor expect, to be in this arrangement. Under article 132 we can extend the implementation period, and if we are close to doing a deal, or even reasonably close, no doubt that is a choice that we will have to consider.

I say to hon. Members that I understand entirely their feelings of concern, even distaste, but this is a question affecting the whole United Kingdom and its interests. So vital is the fact that we should have an orderly exit from the European Union that, as people who hold the United Kingdom’s Union at their heart, I would urge them to consider supporting this agreement, for it is our means out of the European Union.

[Nigel Dodds]

For all of us?

[The Attorney General]

It is a means out of the European Union. The limited extent to which Northern Ireland would remain relates to goods only.

[Nigel Dodds]

Agri-goods?

[The Attorney General]

Agri-goods, yes—goods only. So I would urge Members to consider the interests of the United Kingdom. I fully understand the elements of this agreement that are dissatisfactory to them.