Windsor Framework (Democratic Scrutiny) Regulations 2023

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Lords Chamber

Whatever happens in this House, that genie is well and truly out of the bottle. It will make itself felt in the future. In the meantime, I will support and vote for the fatal amendment.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

I very much regret the fact that we are not able to debate the Windsor Framework as a whole. I regret that we are having to debate these matters in a short space of time in relation to one statutory instrument. People have to question why the Government are behaving in this way.

It is clear that one of the reasons why this is happening is that the more the details of the framework are subjected to forensic analysis and detailed scrutiny, the more the claims of the Government for it are found wanting. A number of examples have been put forward this afternoon by noble Lords in relation to that matter. Specifically, this statutory instrument does not do what the Secretary of State claimed on BBC television that it would, in relation to a veto for the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is so convoluted and hard to operate that, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said, it is unlikely ever to be used. The fact of the matter is that not only has the statutory instrument before us been found wanting but a whole range of issues—claims about state aid having been dealt with; VAT and excise; red and green lanes to allow no checks—have all been found wanting and to be inaccurate.

The Government’s refusal to answer Parliamentary Questions, worded in plain and simple language and asking for facts, is frankly disgraceful in the way it has been dealt with. I urge noble Lords to look at Hansard: look at the Written Questions and the replies that have been given. They are a desperate attempt to reject transparency and not to give the full facts. When facts emerge they have to be dragged from the Government, and it is often from EU sources that you actually find out what is happening.

That makes people in Northern Ireland gravely suspicious, if they were not already suspicious, about what they have been told at every turn of the process. They were told first that the protocol was a wonderful invention and should be rigorously implemented. We were told that by the SDLP, Sinn Féin and many in this House. Now we find that the Government and all these parties are rubbishing it in terms that we in the DUP put forward at the time. It is just as when the St Andrews agreement came along: it rectified many of the issues to do with the Belfast agreement after many years of work and hard slog by unionists, who stood by their principles and demanded that the IRA should give up its arms, and at least support the police, if they were to be in the Government of Northern Ireland. We achieved that after many years; we were told at the time that it could not be done.

I have said previously in this House that the DUP has been prepared to go into government and say yes to agreements with people who are still eulogising the murderers of our kith and kin. We are still prepared to do that today, but what we ask for is a simple thing: that we should have the institutions of the Belfast agreement, as amended by St Andrews, respected in the way in which they were set up. That is to have cross-community support and consent for all matters of significance governing the internal affairs of Northern Ireland. That has been set aside; it is not addressed in the Windsor Framework or this SI, which allows us only to address a very small subset of changes to law.

The fundamental application of 300 areas of law by the protocol is still subject to a straight majority vote next year, in 2024, in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Government deliberately changed the cross-community voting consent mechanism of the Assembly to prevent one of the fundamental aspects of the Belfast agreement applying because they thought the result would not turn out right and would not be to the pleasing of the European Union.

So forgive us, noble Lords and noble Baronesses, if we take a cynical approach to now being told—and sometimes patronised—about our need to go into government. We will go into government but we will do so only when the Belfast agreement, as amended by St Andrews, is properly implemented and respected across all strands. You cannot elevate strand 2 of the agreement, which deals with north-south relations, and have a completely open border with no restrictions, yet at the same time put barriers on the strand 3 relationship between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. That will not work, because it does not have the consent of the unionist community.

I therefore appeal to noble Lords to back the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Morrow. Let us continue with the work of getting to a situation where both nationalists and unionists can give their assent to the post-Brexit arrangements, because we left as one United Kingdom. There were other parts of this United Kingdom that voted other than to leave and the overall vote of all its citizens needs to be respected, because the citizens of Northern Ireland are equal citizens to those of Scotland, England and Wales.