EU Relations

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 10th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his advice; I am certainly taking it, in that we should carry on negotiating—that is what we are trying to do, including this week and, I hope, beyond it. I repeat that Article 16 is a legitimate provision within the protocol. It has already been exercised once, and we cannot be in a position where it is not possible to exercise a legitimate provision in the protocol. That is simply not a reasonable position to take.

On the question of Ireland, we have made clear—I have said in this House on a number of occasions—that we do not wish in any way to threaten Ireland’s place in the single market. Nothing that we have proposed would do that. We have proposed measures that would protect the single market while allowing trade to flow freely throughout the United Kingdom. We have no wish to do that and nothing in what we have proposed can be interpreted as such; I want to be absolutely clear on that point.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord succeeds in his negotiations but, irrespective of how many times he triggers Article 16, should that happen, it in no way replaces the protocol. In other words, there is the feeling in some unionist quarters in Northern Ireland that if we trigger Article 16, we will get a new deal. We are not getting a new treaty or a new protocol; we are merely amending it. It is a negotiation within it, so it is a mirage that triggering Article 16 is a solution.

Will the Minister also consider the fact that those of us who live there and have our political background there are, effectively, totally excluded from this process when we have solutions to put in place, based on the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, which would avoid a lot of the problems that we have currently? Would he be kind enough to address that and confirm that no triggering of Article 16 replaces the protocol?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an extremely important point. I have said before, and say again, that Article 16 is not an on/off switch for the protocol. It is not a sort of self-destruction mechanism for the protocol; it is a safeguard. There are constraints on what can be done with a safeguard. The legal limits of it are to be defined but, if you use Article 16, it is clear that you are left with a protocol with safeguards operating. That is why we find it so difficult to really understand the volcanic reaction that we get to the suggestion of using the safeguards provisions. It is a safeguard, and it is designed to support stability and ensure that the protocol fulfils its task of supporting the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. If we do use the safeguard and Article 16, that will be the spirit in which we do so.