European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Eames Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard continued) & Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard continued): House of Lords
Tuesday 14th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Eames (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to those proposing these amendments. There must be times when your Lordships’ House feels, “Northern Ireland comes again with a special pleading for special treatment”; were I to come from elsewhere in the United Kingdom, I would have great sympathy with that view. On this occasion I want simply to put two realities to this debate and appeal to the Minister, who has often, if not always, listened with sympathy to the voices from Northern Ireland.

The first reality is that the business community of Northern Ireland has been suffocated by the uncertainty over the Brexit debate, which has been the result as much of its geographical position as of political factors. That uncertainty is now manifested in the debate we had earlier today on the protocol. We are left wondering as a community what unseen consequences could come from the sort of debates that will take place on future trade agreements once we leave the European Union.

The second reality is what I call the reality of reassurance. That reassurance can come only when we listen on the one hand to the repeated assurances of the Prime Minister that we will leave Europe as a United Kingdom. If that is followed up, I beg to suggest that the reality we face from the uncertainty surrounding the business community in Northern Ireland is that, when we leave as a United Kingdom, there will definitely be problems unique to Northern Ireland. If he can assure those of us who support these amendments that the Government will at least listen and not just give us trite phrases or slogans to live with, and that very definite attention will be given to the particular sensitivities of doing business in Northern Ireland post Brexit, many of our fears will be answered.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I will speak to this group of amendments, so forensically and comprehensively addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. The underlying problem that many of us have with it is the following. I served as a Trade Minister for a number of years, and I was able to set up InterTradeIreland, the body designed to promote trade between north and south, and which still exists. It has not been as successful as I would have liked; nevertheless, there is still huge potential there to grow trade. However, our problem is what we are told, not only by the Prime Minister but by the Government more generally, as against our experience with the reality of doing business across boundaries and between different economic units.

Whether we like it or not, from 2 October of last year, when the Prime Minister produced the first phase of his proposals with the European Union, it was obvious that Northern Ireland would be in a different regulatory environment, and once that was conceded, the customs environment was added to it. While there are reassuring words and undertakings, people like me and the businesses that have been referred to cannot just reconcile the aspiration to have free movement without any inhibitions or difficulties and the practical realities of being engaged between the European Union single market and an economy no longer in the single market. We are therefore in this kind of hybrid, of which there is no current example that I am aware of, and where there is the potential, as time passes, for the gap to grow.

We start off the negotiations early next month in the transition period with exactly the same regulatory environment that we have all become used to—there are no differences. That distinguishes the United Kingdom in its negotiation with the European Union from other examples, whether Canada, Mercosur or whatever. We have exactly the same regulatory environment as the rest of the European Union. However, the Prime Minister and others have said that they see things changing over time. The single market, which was invented by this country, is a noble idea, but to retain the integrity of that single market, the consumer protection requirements and standards must be verified in some way.