Withdrawal Agreement: Attorney General’s legal opinion on the Joint Instrument and Unilateral Declaration

Debate between Lord Goldsmith and Lord Thomas of Gresford

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Lord for repeating the Statement made by the right honourable Attorney-General in another place. The purpose of the Statement was to provide the Attorney-General’s opinion on the implications of the three documents produced following the Prime Minister’s dash to Strasbourg yesterday. The purpose was, of course, what the Prime Minister had promised to negotiate, referring to,

“not a further exchange of letters, but a significant and legally binding change to the withdrawal agreement”.

According to the Mail on Sunday—not a newspaper that I necessarily follow in any respect—the Attorney-General is reported to have said:

“I will not change my opinion unless I’m sure there is no legal risk of us being indefinitely detained in the backstop. I am putting my hand on my heart. I will not change my opinion unless we have a text that shows the risk has been eliminated. I would not put my name to anything less”.


Before considering the merits of what the Prime Minister has obtained it is worth considering what has not been achieved. As I predicted in the debate yesterday—was it only yesterday?—there is no change to the withdrawal agreement. Its 597 pages remain unchanged. That is not entirely true, because they have been reduced to a smaller volume. The text, however, is completely unchanged. So too are the 26 pages—I think now 28 pages—of the political declaration.

The result is that the legal risk remains unchanged. As the Attorney-General states in paragraph 19 of his latest opinion:

“The legal risk remains unchanged that if through no such demonstrable failure of either party, but simply because of intractable differences, that situation does arise”—


that is, the situation in which no new agreement is reached—

“the United Kingdom would have, at least while the fundamental circumstances remained the same, no internationally lawful means of exiting the Protocol’s arrangements, save by agreement.”

I had the opportunity to hear the Attorney-General’s Statement in another place this morning, and I understood him to be reconfirming that position in his answers.

It is also worth restating that—despite rumours to the contrary—there are no changes to the arbitration provisions and no new system of arbitration: it will still be lawyers who make this decision. It also follows that the statement in paragraph 16 of the Attorney-General’s opinion of 13 November 2018 still stands. That statement was as follows:

“It is difficult to conclude otherwise than that the Protocol is intended to subsist even when negotiations have clearly broken down. The ordinary meaning of the provisions set out above and considered in their context allows no obvious room for the termination of the Protocol, save by the achievement of an agreement fulfilling the same objectives. Therefore, despite statements in the Protocol that it is not intended to be permanent, and the clear intention of the parties that it should be replaced by alternative, permanent arrangements, in international law the Protocol would endure indefinitely until a superseding agreement took its place, in whole or in part, as set out therein”.


I understand that still to be the position and invite the noble and learned Lord to confirm it.

In his Statement, the Attorney-General focused particularly on other available remedies in the event that the European Union can be proved guilty of bad faith in not reaching an agreement. He says—this is important, and the noble and learned Lord repeated these words earlier—that the new documents are,

“not about a situation where, despite the parties properly fulfilling the duties of good faith and their best endeavours, they cannot reach an agreement on a future relationship”.

Again, therefore, I ask the noble and learned Lord to confirm that the Government accept that if, while acting in good faith, both parties cannot reach an agreement, the backstop would endure with no predetermined end date. I underline the phrase “can be proved to be” acting in bad faith, because that would have to be demonstrated—would it not? —and it would be for the United Kingdom, if it was asserting that position, to prove it. Can the noble and learned Lord confirm that? The burden of proof, as we lawyers say, would be on us.

I also question the likelihood that that could be proved. I have made this point before in the House. It would be a very strong thing—a virtually impossible thing—for this arbitral panel to find on proof that senior statesmen and politicians were acting in bad faith, rather than simply being unable to agree on what are important matters for them—for their constituents, as for ours. As a practising lawyer —at least when he is not fulfilling governmental responsibilities—would the noble and learned Lord agree that the prospects of proving that, when the EU negotiators are saying, “No, we did not regard these proposals as being in the interests of the EU”, are vanishingly small? If he were advising a client, he would tell him so now.

In his previous advice, the Attorney-General referred to the difficulties of proof and the egregious nature of the conduct that would be required to establish a breach of those obligations by the EU. These are very strong things to have to prove. I respectfully suggest that, in reaching a view on how much comfort these arrangements give, that must be borne very much in mind.

The Attorney-General says that he believes the risks of an indefinite stay are reduced. He does not—it seems to me—explain in his advice why they are reduced. I understood that, in short, he sees a greater political will to reach an agreement. That is a political judgement. It is of course open to him and to others to take the same or a different view on the political will. I cannot, however, agree that anything in any of the three documents changes the legal reality.

In paragraph 4 of his opinion, the Attorney-General referred to a,

“systematic refusal to take into consideration adverse proposals or interests”.

A systematic, contumacious or deliberate refusal even to consider proposals would, I suppose, be evidence of bad faith—but that is as far as it goes. A sincere disagreement about the terms, however, is not bad faith.

As for the third document, the unilateral statement, it is that and nothing more. It is what the United Kingdom says that it thinks, but that does not make it so. I do not, therefore, share the view that there is anything in these legal documents that shifts the legal risk.

I am loath to go back to the codpiece that I referred to yesterday. However, I said then that I did not really understand how that soubriquet had come into being. From what I have read since, it is apparently code for figleaf. I regret to say that despite the energy and good faith of both the Prime Minister and the Attorney-General—which I respect—these are no more than a figleaf, and Members of the other place are left to make their political judgments on the basis of the Prime Minister’s deal.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I do not propose to repeat the speech I made yesterday, in which I suggested that it was inappropriate for lawyers to determine an issue as important as whether the backstop had run its course. I am very pleased that in the conclusion to his Statement today, the Attorney-General emphasised that matters of law affecting withdrawal can only inform what is essentially a political decision that each of us must make. As it is a political decision, it is really not right to ask lawyers to determine whether a state is acting in bad faith, as the noble and learned Lord said a moment ago. I commend the Attorney-General for sticking firmly to the opinion that he first gave and not being shifted, despite the enormous pressure I have no doubt he is under.

An aggrieved party under this instrument would have to persuade the arbitrators to prove—as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, said—that the other party had failed the best endeavours test with the objective of applying the backstop indefinitely. Further, he would have to prove that there had been a persistent failure or a systematic refusal to consider the other side’s proposals. Only if the arbitrators found in the aggrieved party’s favour would they be able to use temporary measures to suspend the backstop—and I emphasise the word “temporary”. The other party could cure the problem at will at any time by taking the necessary measures to comply with the ruling.

My first question to the Minister, therefore, is this: what does he envisage to be temporary measures? What does that mean? Clearly, it would not be a permanent unilateral withdrawal from the backstop. What would happen at the Northern Ireland border to the free passage of goods if temporary measures were taken? Would it be a smuggler’s free for all or a clamping down?

The Attorney-General originally advised that it would be highly unlikely that the United Kingdom could take advantage of the remedies available to it for a breach of good faith and best endeavours because of the difficulties of proof and the egregious nature of the conduct, which would have to be established. I remind your Lordships that according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “egregious”, which the Attorney-General in typical fashion rolled off his tongue, means “shocking”. Is it now then all about timetables? That is all that the instrument appears to lay down. I listened to the Attorney-General talking in the other place about time being of the essence. To every lawyer, that phrase means that if the timetable is not adhered to, the whole agreement is defunct. The United Kingdom negotiators have not shown themselves to be particularly conscious of time over the past two and a half years. Will a breach of the timetable on either side now amount to egregious, shocking conduct, sufficient to trigger the dispute settlement arbitration procedures?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

My Lords, I am obliged to noble Lords for their contributions. Referring to the observations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, I will perhaps begin where he finished. If the noble and learned Lord was to revisit his study of early Italian Renaissance sculpture, he might be reminded that the fig leaf can cover some very important bits. Therefore, one must bear in mind that the use of analogies is not always entirely helpful.

In paragraph 19 of his opinion, the Attorney-General set out his view that the legal remains unchanged. But that was not the question that was being addressed. The issue that exercised people was one of an extreme nature, which one would, frankly, never anticipate arising where parties have entered into an international treaty in good faith and intend to discharge their obligations under that treaty in good faith. As I observed in a previous debate, if you simply do not trust the person with whom you are contracting or entering into a treaty, there is little point in doing so—you would not proceed in the belief that they would ever finally discharge their obligations. Here, however, we proceed in the confident belief that their obligations will be addressed and met.

It is therefore important that, in the context of the further agreement, the parties have fixed a date of December 2020 by which to use their best endeavours to arrive at an alternative to the backstop. It is in these circumstances that it is considered appropriate, as the Attorney-General observed in paragraph 7 of his opinion, to note that the provisions now represent materially new legal obligations and commitments which mean that unconscionable behaviour on the part of the EU, and failure to fulfil its obligation to seek suitable and alternative practical means of dealing with the backstop, would have to be properly addressed in the context of the arbitration provisions.

It is in that context that I come to address the questions posed by the noble and learned Lord, which touch upon each other. He began by asking how, if there is bad faith by the European Union, we would prove it. There are circumstances in which it would become apparent that the European Union was intent upon seeking to trap the United Kingdom in the backstop, notwithstanding the provision of alternative arrangements. But let us be clear: one does not anticipate or foresee that that would ever occur.

On that point, I note that the backstop has significant drawbacks for the European Union, just as it has significant drawbacks for the United Kingdom. If it were ever to emerge, the backstop would result in Great Britain enjoying the benefits of a customs union and paying nothing for that. The relevant payment in respect of the customs union would come from trade in Northern Ireland, not in Great Britain. Let us remember that there is very little in this that benefits the European Union, let alone the United Kingdom.

If we were, however, to find ourselves in a situation in which there was shocking or egregious conduct on the part of the European Union, the arbitration measure would be available. In finding that there was a breach, the arbitrators would be entitled to grant temporary measures. That would include a temporary suspension of the operation of the relevant backstop provisions with regard to the border.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, asked, quite rightly, what would happen at the border. One answer is that we would find ourselves in that situation only where the European Union had not been prepared to engage with coherent, sensible proposals put forward by the United Kingdom to deal with the border and ensure that it could remain entirely open. If a suspension was ordered by the arbitrators, it would then be open to the United Kingdom to implement those proposals unilaterally at the border in order to deal with the issue. If thereafter—in utterly extreme circumstances—the European Union was to persist in refusing to engage with the temporary suspension of the protocol, the arbitrators would eventually come to the conclusion, quite rightly, that the protocol was simply not required; that it was no longer “necessary” because the alternative arrangements during the suspension had clearly worked to the satisfaction of the European Union, which had done nothing in the meantime. Again, I stress that we are talking about the most extreme of circumstances. I do not contemplate that, politically, anyone will go there.